Amelito Enriquez, engineering professor and HP Technology for Teaching grant recipient at Cañada College (Redwood City, California, USA) has been honored by ASEE. On March 27^th, he received the “Outstanding Community College Educator Award” for the Pacific Southwest Section of the American Society of Engineering Education!

I’m thrilled – it is recognition that is well deserved…

From the Canada College website:

Enriquez will be honored at the organization’s regional banquet on March 27 at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Ariz. He’ll receive a $1,000 honorarium and a plaque. Enriquez was chosen as the top community college engineering professor from a field of educators in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Hawaii.

“It’s really a tremendous honor because there are so many great engineering professors at the community college level in this region,” Enriquez said.

This latest award is just one in a growing list of professional citations received by Enriquez. Last year, he received the Hewlett-Packard Excellence in Technology for Teaching Award for his work on innovative and effective uses of technology in education. In 2006, he was honored by his peers at the Hewlett-Packard Worldwide Technology for Teaching Conference for developing an interactive learning network in sophomore-level engineering course and demonstrating the impact this had on his students.

In 2005, Enriquez and a team of faculty members at Cañada College were selected to present at the HP Worldwide Technology for Teaching Conference. Only six colleges and universities worldwide were chosen to make presentations at the conference and the Cañada team was the only community college selected.

Cañada was one of only 31 colleges and universities worldwide to receive the Hewlett-Packard Technology for Teaching grant in 2005, which is designed to transform and improve learning in the classroom through innovative uses of technology. Enriquez and the Cañada team are using wireless technology in engineering, math, and physics courses to create an Interactive Learning Network (ILN) that allows professors to monitor students in real-time as they progress through problems. This is accomplished by linking notebook computers used by the students to a central computer used by the professor to allow professors to monitor their progression.

“As students work through problems, we can see where they struggle because we can monitor their progress and we can help them understand how to overcome the problem,” Enriquez said.

For more information about Dr. Enriquez’s use of Tablet PCs in the classroom, visit his HP Technology for Teaching project website at http://www.smccd.net/accounts/enriquez/HP-Technology-for-teaching.htm

Congratulations, Amelito!