Westmoreland Joins Faculty at U.S. Naval Academy

Recent alumna Sophoria Westmoreland (Ph.D. ’12, mechanical engineering) has accepted a position as assistant research professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the U.S. Naval Academy starting in Fall 2012.

Westmoreland will teach the department’s senior design course. While at the Clark School, she was a teaching assistant for a similar course and worked with her advisor, Linda Schmidt, on a variety of design-related publications and projects. Examples of her work include a visual-based coding scheme for capstone design reports and a cognitive coding scheme to code cognitive activities that occur during the design process. Her membership in the Clark School’s Future Faculty Program also helped her prepare for a career in academia. Not only did she learn essential teaching tasks such as planning and crafting a course and honed her public speaking skills, she also had the chance to travel to three conferences through the funding that the program provides to its members.

“I am grateful that I was able to be chosen to be in the program,” Westmoreland said.

Westmoreland said she plans to expand her network and skill set by shifting her research to materials science with Associate Professor Joel Schubbe at the Naval Academy.

Published September 7, 2012