Dr.Veerle Keppens, Associate Professor Department of Material Science and Engineering
Dr. Veerle Keppens is nominated on behalf of the Department of Material Science and Engineering for the 2009 Academic Outreach Award. After obtaining her PhD in physics from the Katholieke Univeriteit in Leuven, Belgium she worked in Oak Ridge National Lab, at Ruprecht-Karls-Univeritat Heidelberg, and the University of Mississippi. Dr. Keppens joined the University of Tennessee in 2003. Besides her outstanding scholarship achievements (59 journal publications, 900 citations and 10 invited talks in the last 3 years), she finds time and enthusiasm to get involved in various Outreach activities.
In the framework of the UTK Pre-Collegiate Research Scholars program she welcomes high school students in UT research laboratories so that they can experience the excitement of scientific research and engage in their own original research.
”I thought it was the greatest initiative. These students are tomorrow's leaders. These kids are the future. Getting them involved in something they are excited about or making them excited about something important, such as engineering and science, is the best thing we can do. Instead of taking so much of their time in McDonalds we can get them working in the lab and get the real feeling what research is all about. In school everybody can learn facts and numbers but really doing it yourself in the lab, in real life, is something unique that I think not very many students are exposed to,” Dr. Keppens says.
Her second Outreach engagement is to go out to schools and talk to students about material science. For her, trying to reach the students is taking outreach a step further.
“In the first program you have high school students coming to the lab. Those are the ones who took the initiative by themselves. By going out to schools and giving talks you also reach students who maybe did not think about doing that. I hope that some of them get inspired by hearing my talks. It’s really about going out and reaching the students who did not think about science yet.”
Armed with balls and sticks, Dr. Keppens also goes to kindergarten classes where she tries to make material science understandable for the youngest students. One of the most fulfilling memories for her comes from kindergarten classes.
“Later (after the class) I saw one of the kids. He came to me and said - ‘I remember you, you came to my class and brought balls and sticks and that’s what materials are like. I thought that was really cool.’ It makes you hug him. If there is just one student that I can inspire that’s all it takes. It’s a personal satisfaction.”
Dr. Keppens is also a faculty advisor for the Society of Women Engineers on campus. She says she got involved in this activity to inspire young women.
“When you first come to campus, you go to engineering, you are in a man’s world. If I can be a source of inspiration for these young women and show them that they are not by themselves, that’s a big cause. I am there for them if they need advice or signature for the paperwork, or anything else.”
Dr. Keppens thinks that motivating and educating students are the most important reasons for faculty members to engage in the Outreach activities.
“There are not very many students that even consider science as a possible study in college. If we go out and show them how exciting science can be and cool things they can do, maybe we can motivate more students to take science and engineering. Even in Knoxville, where you have University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge Lab, where you are surrounded by science energy, there is relatively few students who seriously consider going to science and engineering. If we go out and show them that it’s cool, it’s fun, that they can do it, maybe we can motivate some more. Also, we have to educate people, whether they want to go to science or not. Even if somebody really does not have any interest or talent to go in science, at least they see some things we do, they can better understand what we are doing and why it is good and useful.”
She considers her biggest achievement to be the spreading of the driving force of engineering and science among young people.
“One of the high school students was very shy and not very communicative, and he was not sure what he wanted to do and where he wanted to do it. He was undecided. After a few months working with me he totally transformed and he said to me that he wanted to do material science and engineering and that he wanted to be here, at UT. He is now a freshman here and he is doing great. Seeing how he grow from a teenager who did not really know what to do to a very determined young man is my biggest achievement.”
She proposes that getting middle school students instead of high school students interested in science could be more productive.
“Because in high school most of the students have already decided how much science they want to take, it’s maybe too late to get them interested at that point. If we could go to middle schools where students have not yet decided how much math they want to take, if you reach them there they could be put on the right track to be successful.”
Her pledge to continue doing what she is doing now, the best she can, seems to justify the words of Dr. George Pharr, the head of the Department of Material Science and Engineering who described Dr. Keppens as “an exemplary young faculty member and scholar who is never too busy to walk an extra mile” and “pass on her passion for research and education.”
Contact Information
Dr. Veerle Keppens
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
312 Dougherty Hall
Phone: (865) 974 3494
Email: vkeppens@utk.edu
