During International Education Week, join Center for Global Engagement staff for training and knowledge sharing in these global topics: 

Passport to Possibility: Demystifying Study Abroad

Monday, Nov 17 - 12PM - Virtual

Discover how UMBC students can take their learning global. This myth-busting brown bag session will clarify the study abroad process, highlight key resources, and explore how faculty and staff can get involved in supporting global learning.

RSVP HERE

Getting Involved in International Student Recruitment

Tuesday, Nov 18 - 12PM - UC 310

Join the International Student Recruitment team to learn about existing projects to connect with prospective international students around the world and how your program or department can connect with our team to support outreach to prospective undergraduate, masters, or doctoral international students.

RSVP HERE 

F-1, J-1, and H1-B Crash Course

Thursday, Nov 20 - 12PM - UC 310

This session will provide staff and faculty with a basic understanding of the F-1, J-1, and H-1B visa categories. We will cover the key characteristics of each visa type, focusing on employment options available to international students and scholars. This will be a fast-paced and high level discussion. Our Office of International Students and Scholars team is always available for questions about more nuanced cases upon request.

RSVP HERE 

Global Grant Application and Fellowship Support

Thursday, Nov 20 - 12 PM - UC 204

RSVP HERE 

Intercultural Connection Games

Friday, Nov 21 - 12PM- UC 204

3-Minute Thesis Competition

Why Participate?

“There’s a little engineer in all of us. Because the truth is you’re iterating all the time. You’re failing, but you’re learning from those awesome failures.” 

Jamie Gurganus ’04, M.S. ’11, Ph.D. ’20, mechanical engineering, doesn’t believe engineers need to be geniuses; she also doesn’t believe failure means it’s the end of the road—so much so that her winding and impressive career over the last twenty years has been a product of taking chances, accepting the small failures, and still marching onwards. 

As an undergraduate, Gurganus pursued an opportunity to teach STEM subjects in local middle schools. The experience sparked her interest in engineering education. Her desire to help everyone see that they, too, could become an engineer has driven her professional life ever since. Students praise her for lifting them up when they felt discouraged and always encouraging them to aim high.

Gurganus’ tireless advocacy for students and continual innovation in teaching will be recognized on October 29, when she will receive the 2025 Outstanding Faculty Award from UMBC’s Alumni Association Board of Directors. 

Building confidence

Gurganus says that as a college student, she never expected to end up where she is today: “I didn’t think I’d ever be faculty or get a Ph.D.”

But when she got a National Science Foundation-funded fellowship in 2002 from the Teaching Enhancement Partnership Program at UMBC’s Shriver Center, she found herself enjoying the STEM classes she was teaching at local schools, especially connecting with students who may have assumed their options in life were limited.

“Many of these students came from precarious situations and weren’t thinking about going to college, much less having a STEM career,” Gurganus remembers of the Title I schools, which means they had high percentages of children from low-income families.

Gurganus taught as part of the partnership program for almost three years, and then proceeded to earn a graduate fellowship both through NSF and later NASA, which in turn cultivated a real passion for teaching and research. 

Gurganus also became a substitute teacher for the Anne Arundel County public school system, focusing on teaching mathematics. “My goals were fostering engineering awareness in these kids and showing them they, too, could do this—and showing them the real-life applications of it all.”

Breaking down the basics of math and engineering got the kids excited. As they got excited, they became more engaged, and as they became more engaged, their grades began to improve significantly. It might not have been the only reason for the successful outcome, but Gurganus believes being a young college student played a hand in it all. The breadth of knowledge and sense of authority was always present but packaged in a way that the students weren’t familiar with.

While in graduate school at UMBC, Gurganus also helped lead professional development for Project Lead The Way, a national nonprofit organization that provides STEM education programs for PreK-12 students, and Engineering is Elementary, which provides engineering teaching materials. In 2012, she became an instructor in mechanical engineering and assistant director of engineering education initiatives in the College of Engineering and Information Technology at UMBC, transitioning to a faculty role in 2014.

Over the years, Guganus’ skills, passions, and love for her students have improved UMBC’s course offerings, reputation, and quality of education. Currently, Gurganus is the associate director for STEMed Research, director for the Center for the Integration for Research, Teaching and Learning in the Graduate School and an assistant teaching professor in the engineering and computing education program. She also serves as a faculty fellow in entrepreneurship for the Alex. Brown Center For Entrepreneurship and Innovation, has mentored around 150 engineering teams under the senior capstone design course (including teaming up with Steve McAlpine to guide the kinetic sculpture team this year), and is an honorary faculty coach for UMBC’s softball team. 

Reaching across borders, she has also built international partnerships in Brazil, Portugal, Africa, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Germany, and collaborates widely on STEM education initiatives.

Embracing the journey

If her professional progression comes across as linear and like it unfolded at breakneck speed, Gurganus is here to assure you it did not.

“It’s been an interesting journey,” she says. “I stopped trying to plan my future and just accept (and expect!) the unexpected. I just take it on and see what happens.”

She’s never strayed from that principle, letting the journey—and the experiences it’s unveiled—guide her to new milestones. One of those milestones has been the nurturing of a strong undergraduate teaching fellows network on campus. Remembering her own experiences as a student and then seeing much of the same insecurity in the local middle school students from years ago, Gurganus struck out to find students who could guide other students by relating to the stresses of failure they might feel. 

“I had this mission to foster a community of individuals who never thought of themselves as being ‘smart enough’ to teach others in their own technical field,” Gurganus says. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s how Gurganus expresses she felt as a student herself.

While the teaching fellows program was started nearly 20 years ago as a tool for undergraduate students to assist faculty, and more importantly their peers, in classes, Gurganus has expanded the program in an organic way. 

“These students just became friends and bonded over their common interests or maybe their similar experiences in undergrad,” she says. 

“The teaching fellow program laid a foundation for growth and confidence-building in the formative stages of my career,” says De’Shaunna Scott ’19, computer engineering, who is now a principal RF integration engineer at Northrop Grumman. “I quickly felt overwhelmed and out of my element, but Dr. Gurganus was the guiding light I could always turn to. There were times, I would just show up after work and sit in Prof’s office unloading all the stresses I endured. Without fail and without question, Prof listened to every one of those complaints and provided words of advice that I still use to this day.”

“Prof G profoundly shaped my life and inspired me to become faculty,” adds Shannon Clancy ’19, mechanical engineering, who is now an assistant professor of engineering at Elizabethtown College. “As her teaching fellow and research assistant, I experienced mentorship rooted in care, unwavering support, and high expectations—even during my most uncertain moments. The teaching fellow program was the catalyst to get my Ph.D. I wanted to teach undergraduate students and build a community in my own way like Prof had.”

The fellows’ connection with each other, as well as the students they teach, has fueled the community’s growth. Gurganus begins naming fellows who are thriving post-UMBC, having gone on to receive master’s degrees, Ph.D.s, research fellowships, and more. It’s an obvious point of pride for her as she recalls the impact of all the work being a two-way street—for both her and the students.

“To teach is to engineer,” she adds. “You try it, you make it better, you bring your own spark, to keep improving with purpose and heart.”

By Nikoletta Gjoni ’09

Mark your calendars for the 2025 Alumni Awards on Wednesday, October 29, at 6 p.m., and consider joining the UMBC community at the Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena to celebrate Jamie Gurganus and the many remarkable individuals receiving awards. The event will be livestreamed for those unable to join in person. You can learn more at alumni.umbc.edu/alumniawards.