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Department of Engineering and Science Education

People

Dr. Melissa Smith - Acting Chair

Smith - Chair

Melissa Smith is a professor of electrical and computer engineering, joined Clemson in 2006. She received her Ph.D. in 2003 in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Tennessee, where she specialized in performance modeling for high-performance computing systems. Prior to joining Clemson University, she was a research associate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Smith received the YMCA Stratford Award for Diversity and Inclusion in 2017.

Dr. Smith has over 25 years of experience developing and implementing scientific workloads and machine learning applications across multiple domains, including 12 years as a research associate at ORNL. Her current research focuses on performance analysis and optimization with emerging heterogeneous computing architectures (GPGPU- and FPGA-based systems) for various application domains, including machine learning, high-performance or real-time embedded applications, and image processing. Her group collaborates with researchers in other fields to develop new approaches to the application/architecture interface, providing interdisciplinary solutions that enable new scientific advancements and capabilities.

ESE Students and Employees

Department Administrators and Staff

Department Contacts
Name Title Email
Melissa Smith Acting Chair smithmc@clemson.edu
Paige Zoltewicz Office Manager pzoltew@clemson.edu
Coltin Bentz Payroll Support cbentz@clemson.edu
Stone Tracy Financial Business Manager stonet@clemson.edu
Ebony Hawthorne Post Awards ebonyh@clemson.edu
Barbara Smith Student Services Coordinator barbar2@clemson.edu

Please view the complete list of faculty, graduate students, and alumni in our department directory.

Department Directory

The Department of Engineering and Science Education (ESED) at Clemson University was established in 2006, and our Ph.D. in Engineering and Science Education was established in 2011. In that short time, the young, dynamic ESED department has experienced outstanding success, boasting three faculty NSF CAREER award winners and two NSF Graduate Research Fellowships (among the first awarded in the area of STEM Education).

Several professional organizations have recognized our faculty and their research: an AAAS Fellowship (2012-13), an election to the APS executive committee of the Forum on Education (2013), the Helen Plant Award for the Best Non-traditional Workshop by ASEE/IEEE in 2008 and again 2014, the Class of '39 Award in 2019, the highest distinction for a faculty member at Clemson, Fellows of the American Society of Engineering Education in 2019. Since the start of the Certificate in Engineering and Science Education, more than 35 graduate students have leveraged their certificates to compete successfully for faculty positions in engineering and science. On average, it is the most active certificate program in the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences at Clemson.

Please view our current list of graduate students and doctoral alumni, including their academic program background information.

Academic Contacts

Parking

Clemson University offers both metered and visitor permit parking. To view a parking map or request a permit, please visit the Visitor's Parking site.

Tour

For graduate program tours, please email the program contact with at least 1-2 weeks' notice prior to visiting so that you may be able to meet faculty and current students and attend some classes.

Graduate Program

For more information about our graduate program or certificate, please e-mail our graduate coordinators.

Barbara Smith
Graduate Student Services Coordinator
Office: 149 Rich Lab
Phone: 864-656-3278
barbar2@clemson.edu

Dr. Eliza Gallager
Graduate Coordinator
egallag@clemson.edu

General Questions

For all other questions, please get in touch with Paige Zoltewicz.

Paige Zoltewicz
Office Manager
Office: 262 Sirrine Hall
Phone: 864-656-7148
pzoltew@clemson.edu