UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Two Penn State College of Engineering (COE) faculty members — Jacqueline O’Connor, professor of mechanical engineering, and Parisa Shokouhi, professor of engineering science and mechanics — were selected as part of the 2024-25 cohort of Drexel University’s Executive Leadership in Academic Technology, Engineering and Science (ELATES) program. The one-year, part-time leadership program provides training and development for women faculty and administrators.  
 
ELATES at Drexel is designed to promote women, as well as faculty allies of all genders, into institutional leadership roles, according to the program webpage. Fellows typically hold senior positions in academic engineering, computer science, and other science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields and must be committed to increasing the representation of women in STEM.  
 
O’Connor and Shokouhi are part of a cohort of 46 faculty members from 35 institutions across the United States and Canada, Drexel announced. Numerous other Penn State COE faculty have completed the program since its first year in 2017, including four in 2022-23 and three in 2020-21.  
 
Fellows complete three in-residence sessions of four to six days each to enhance their knowledge and skills in business practices of higher education, project management and leadership communication. Alongside in-person seminars, participants complete online readings and assignments, participate in monthly conference calls with learning communities and senior advisers, interview officials at their home institutions, and receive professional and peer mentoring.  
 
The program concludes with a forum in March 2025, where fellows will present an Institutional Action Project that they developed throughout the year in collaboration with their home institution’s leadership. 
 
“Through this program, I am looking forward to building more confidence in myself as a leader and broadening my network,” O’Connor said. “I have found in the past several years as my leadership roles have increased that a supportive network of peers has been key to developing leadership efficacy and self-confidence. I am excited to broaden that network of women from around the country and learn from each of them.” 
 
O’Connor has served in various leadership roles at Penn State since joining the University in 2013. She is the founding director of the Center for Gas Turbine Research, Education and Outreach and leads the Reacting Flow Dynamics Laboratory. She currently serves as associate department head for faculty for the Department of Mechanical Engineering and previously chaired the department’s honors advising and strategic operations committees. The Penn State Climate Consortium, a University-wide initiative that brings together researchers from disparate fields to collaborate on solutions to the climate crisis, recently named O’Connor an associate director. 
 
O’Connor’s research focuses on renewable fuels, combustor operability and high-temperature materials in hard-to-decarbonize technologies like aircraft engines, power-generation gas turbines, boilers and diesel engines. She recently concluded a sabbatical serving as a visiting researcher at the Electric Power Research Institute in Charlotte, North Carolina. 
 
As a researcher, Shokouhi is the principal investigator of several multidisciplinary projects funded by federal agencies like the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. National Science Foundation. Her research centers on using methods of ultrasonics and acoustics in industrial and geophysical applications, such as ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation of materials or characterizing fractured rocks through ultrasonic and acoustic monitoring.  
 
“I believe this program will provide me with personal and professional leadership skills necessary to be able to take on influential leadership positions,” Shokouhi said. “I will learn tools to develop and refine a community-supported vision to become a more effective leader and communicator. Finally, I would like to deepen my understanding of various administrative roles and their range of responsibilities and challenges, which will help me decide whether I might want to pursue a career in higher education administration.” 
 
In addition to serving on several departmental and college-level committees including strategic planning committees and search committees, Shokouhi is the editor-in-chief of Research in Nondestructive Evaluation, the flagship research journal of the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT). She also is the vice chairperson of the ASNT local chapter to help connect local industries with related academic activities at Penn State.  
 
Shokouhi spent the last academic year doing research at Université Gustave Eiffel in Nantes, France, as part of the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program.