This week I was part of the first Engineering Education Research (EER) group session of 2016. It was a combination of University of Michigan professors, faculty, PhD candidates, grad students, and undergrads all with an interest in the new and growing field of engineering education. It’s a small community on campus, so the purpose of the session was to meet other people working towards this really special purpose of improving engineering education! The plan was to discuss EER readings and provide feedback on each other’s work. There will be several more sessions throughout the rest of the summer.

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What comes to mind when you hear “social innovation?” Is it entrepreneurship? Technology? Big ideas? When I hear “social innovation,” I think optiMize. I think unity, trust, family and community — the real things that will inspire people to change the world.

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Foreigner. Conservative. Oppressed.

America, 2016: I find myself placed into a seemingly indestructible box with steel reinforcements because of the cloth that lies purposefully on my head. I wear my hijab by choice, and yet those around me see me as a helpless, weak woman.

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For a long time I had a dream of being a teacher. When I co-founded optiMize I thought that dream was gone. I was an “education entrepreneur” now, not a teacher.

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A lot of people talk about having a mid-life crisis when they’re older, but when I was a junior at the University of Michigan, I was having a quarter-life crisis.

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