Professor of the Practice, Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Anne M. Spence is a leader in engineering education in the state of Maryland and across the country. An active member of both the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), she is the chair of the ASME K-12 Committee working to connect both students and teachers to content and careers in Mechanical Engineering. She serves as the Director for the Project Lead the Way Pre-engineering program for the state of Maryland. Most recently, she led the development of a teacher preparation program in Engineering and Technology Education at UMBC. Dr. Spence has served as the Principal or Co Principal Investigator on numerous NSF funded projects to include a comprehensive Mathematics and Science Partnership project with the Baltimore County Public Schools, several S-STEM scholarship programs and STEP projects. She is the recipient of numerous awards from both the state and national level that recognize her work in engineering education. Dr. Spence serves on numerous state and national advisory boards including the STEM Girls Consortium and the Governor’s P ~ 20
Council, PARCC Career and College Readiness Workgroup. She is actively involved in curriculum reform in both her own courses, through flipped classroom models, and with the Hrabowski Innovation Fund to infuse community service into lower level Mechanical Engineering courses. She has served as the Undergraduate Program Director for the Mechanical Engineering program and the COEIT Entrepreneurship Fellow. Most recently, she was awarded the USM Regents Award for Public Service. Her teaching responsibilities include freshman engineering design, statics, dynamics, and an upper level aerospace engineering elective. Additionally, Dr. Spence serves as the Director of the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) which seeks to expand and enhance professional development opportunities for graduate students and post docs who desire to improve their teaching skills and prepare themselves as future faculty.
Dr. Spence graduated with her BS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Missouri – Rolla (now the Missouri University of Science and Technology), a MS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas – Arlington and a PhD in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland. Prior to her graduate work at Maryland, she worked for Bell Helicopter in Ft. Worth, TX as a Flying Qualities Engineer.