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After helping to develop the Systems Engineering and Cyber Security Engineering programs at George Mason, Professor Peggy Brouse has received the 2023 David J. King Award.
A member of the Mason nation for over three decades, Brouse joined the university as a PhD student in Information Technology (incidentally, the first program of its kind in the U.S.). After working as a systems engineer at MITRE for nine years, she started a research lab studying requirements engineering at Mason. She notes that while she enjoys research, has published widely, and has graduated many PhD students, her love as always been “in the teaching arena.”
“When I was teaching was when I really lit up,” she recalls. So, when Dean Andrew Sage approached Brouse roughly thirty years ago about starting a Systems Engineering department at Mason, she was happy to help develop the curriculum. She helped create the Systems Engineering bachelor’s degree program and went on to create the first bachelor’s degree program in Cyber Security Engineering in the country. She currently enjoys a split appointment between the Systems Engineering and Operations Research department and the Cyber Security Engineering department.
Not only must nominees for the David J. King award be at Mason a minimum of 20 years, but they also must meet a host of other criteria. The award, created in 2001, carries on the legacy of former Vice President for Academic Affairs David J. King and recognizes the work of an excellent teacher whose research has brought honor to Mason and whose work has enhanced the student experience at an institutional level.
“It wasn't a real dry speech; it was emotional for me,” Brouse says of her speech at the award ceremony. Several members of her family including her daughter Becky Brouse and sister, Robin West, were in attendance, along with what Brouse described as an eclectic group of colleagues from across the College of Engineering and Computing (CEC). In her speech, Brouse thanked her support system.
“You don't get anywhere without other people being a big part of that, and a lot of that is my family,” says Brouse, adding, “I've been so blessed to have just amazing colleagues.” Colleagues she mentioned include the CEC’s Director of Undergraduate Academic Advising, DaFran Ware; Director of IT and Security, Jonathan Goldman; associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and Director of the Criminal Investigations and Network Analysis Center, Jim Jones; and professor of cyber security engineering and computer science Duminda Wijesekera. In addition, she acknowledged the impactful work of Paulo Costa, a longtime colleague and the chair of the Cyber Security Engineering department, and both Becca Stevenson and Lori Stevenson, the academic advisors for the department.
During the ceremony, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and Development Kim Eby asked Brouse to share some advice with fellow educators. In addition to treating students fairly---for example, by grading assignments anonymously---Brouse suggested an exercise that has been especially fruitful with students in her senior seminars for both systems and cyber security engineering: an end-of-semester curriculum review.
“We ask them [students], ‘What did we do that we could do better?’,” she said. Brouse has worked to change both programs several times based on feedback from this exercise. She encourages fellow faculty to remain open to student feedback. “Whatever you've done, the fact is that these students are our future. They're the ones that actually know a lot more than they're given credit for.” She adds, "That doesn't mean you have to take all their ideas, but they've come up with ideas we never would have thought of as faculty members.”