Susan M. Lord is a Fellow of the IEEE and the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE). Dr. Lord’s teaching interests include electronics, optoelectronic materials and devices, service-learning, feminist pedagogy, and lifelong learning. From 1993-1997, Dr. Lord taught at Bucknell University. Her industrial experience includes AT&T Bell Laboratories, General Motors Laboratories, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and SPAWAR Systems Center. In 2012, she taught at Southeast University in Nanjing, China. From 2006-2016, she was Chair of Electrical Engineering at USD.

Dr. Lord’s research has been supported by several National Science Foundation (NSF) grants from programs including CAREER, gender in science and engineering (GSE), and research in engineering education (REE). Her research focuses on the study and promotion of diversity in engineering including student pathways, diverse populations including Latinos and military veterans, and cross-cultural studies with non-U.S. students. She is part of the USD team working on “Developing Changemaking Engineers”, funded by the NSF Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) program. 

Since entering college, Dr. Lord has been committed to increasing diversity in engineering particularly supporting women and underrepresented minorities. She co-authored The Borderlands of Education: Latinas in Engineering with Dr. Michelle Madsen Camacho of the USD Sociology Department. She and her research team have received best paper awards from the Journal of Engineering Education and the IEEE Transactions on Education and the 2013 WEPAN Betty Vetter Award for Research.

Dr. Lord is active in the international engineering education community. She served as General Co-Chair of the 2006 Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference and as the Vice President (2007-2008) and President (2009-2010) of the IEEE Education Society. Dr. Lord is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Education and the Journal of Engineering Education. She joined the National Effective Teaching Institute (NETI) facilitation team in 2015 conducting annual workshops for engineering educators