About us

Rebecca Brent, Ed.D.
President, Education Designs, LLC.
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Email: rbrent@mindspring.com
Threads: rebeccabrent

Dr. Brent is President of Education Designs, Inc., a consulting firm in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She has more than 40 years of experience in education and specializes in staff development in engineering and the sciences, qualitative research of gender and race in engineering, teacher preparation, and evaluation of educational programs at both pre-college and college levels, and has authored or coauthored roughly 130 papers on those topics. She earned a B.A. in Music Education from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, an M.Ed. in elementary education from Mississippi State University, and an Ed.D. in curriculum and teaching from Auburn University. She holds a Certificate in Evaluation Practice from the Evaluators’ Institute at George Washington University. Click here to find out more about Dr. Brent’s evaluation work. Prior to entering private consulting, she was an Associate Professor of Education at East Carolina University where she won an outstanding teacher award. In 2014, Dr. Brent was named a Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education, and in 2024 she received the WEPAN (Women in Engineering Pro-Active Network) Engineering Education Leadership Award. Click here to read a profile of Dr. Brent.

Richard M. Felder, Ph.D.
Hoechst Celanese Professor Emeritus of Chem.  Engr.
North Carolina State University
Email: rmfelder@mindspring.com
Website: https://www.engr.ncsu.edu/stem-resources/

Dr. Felder joined the N.C. State University faculty in 1969. He is a co-author of the book Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes, which has been used as the introductory chemical engineering text by roughly 90% of all chemical engineering departments in the United States and many abroad, and he has authored or co-authored over 300 papers on chemical process engineering and engineering education. He received his Bachelor in Chemical Engineering degree from the City College of New York, and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University. He has won numerous awards for his teaching, research, and publications, including the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies Global Award for Excellence in Engineering Education and the American Society for Engineering Education Lifetime Achievement Award. Click here to read a profile of Dr. Felder.

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We are coauthors of Teaching and Learning STEM: A Practical Guide (2nd edition, Jossey-Bass, 2024). Separately and together, we have presented over 450 workshops on effective teaching, course design, mentoring and supporting new faculty members, and faculty development, on campuses around the world, and we co-directed the American Society for Engineering Education National Effective Teaching Institute from 1991 to 2015.

Education Designs, LLC (EDI), is a company started by, run by, and consisting entirely of the two of us, with the goal of promoting the widespread adoption of research-proven teaching methods. The company produces and provides education-related resources (publications, a blog, and an assessment tool called the Index of Learning Styles) and programs (workshops and presentations and program evaluation services).

Visit our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/felderandbrent.