The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) has named Dr. Malini Natarajarathinam as a 2024 Fellow Member. The society states the esteemed distinction “recognizes outstanding contributions to engineering education or engineering technology education and considerable individual contributions to ASEE.”
Natarajarathinam is the program coordinator of the Industrial Distribution program within the Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution (ETID) department and holds the Leonard and Valerie Bruce Leadership Chair. The breadth and scale of her educational excellence while teaching more than 1800 undergraduate and 750 graduate students at Texas A&M University make her an ideal ASEE Fellow. She has been an active member of ASEE for over a dozen years, serving as secretary for the Women in Engineering Division and as program chair, vice-chair and chair of the Community Engagement Division.
“I am honored by this recognition. This gives me more motivation and energy to focus on my initiatives that impact our students and communities at the same time and enrich everyone along the way,” said Natarajarathinam.
ASEE, a distinguished 131-year-old society, is driven by a mission to advance research, innovation, and access to education that will empower engineering professionals to make a lasting impact on society and the world. Natarajarathinam personifies ASEE’s vision with her award-winning classroom teaching, original approach to applying the disciplines of industrial distribution to charitable work, and research enriching the field of industrial distribution and engineering education.
Natarajarathinam’s research interests focus on engineering education and helping others develop as engineers. This includes involving rural high school students in production engineering-based career and technical education; evaluating the skills and training needed for technicians in Industry 4.0 warehouses; and assessing the impact of engaging college students in service-learning activities that boost their sense of belonging, civic identity and character development. She is the founder and director of the “Hunger Free Texas” program funded by a Tier 1 priority grant from Texas A&M. This project connects multidisciplinary student groups from engineering and sociology with emergency food assistance providers across the state of Texas to improve operational efficiency and enhance impact on local communities.
An active and accomplished educator, Natarajarathinam received the AFS College Level Teaching Award in 2022 and the 2023 Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution Teaching Award. She is a Faculty Aspiring Leadership Program Fellow in the College of Engineering, the vice-chair of Texas A&M’s Engineering Education Faculty Group and the Co-Director of The Texas A&M Institute of Technology Infused Learning. She founded the Society of Women in Industrial Distribution in response to student needs and has directed the TAMU-FIRST Robotics competition in the local Bryan-College Station area for many years.
Natarajarathinam is an engaged member of the Institute for Engineering and Innovation and serves on the Texas Education Agency’s Innovative CTE Course Committee for logistics and supply chain education, for which she presented the course and curriculum design at their 2020 annual conference. Natarajarathinam has been widely recognized, including her distinction as a “20 under 40” faculty by the American Society of Engineering Education’s Prism Magazine in 2018 for designing, developing, and deploying the “Hunger-Free Texas” initiative.
ETID Interim Department Head Dr. Bimal Nepal stated, “Dr. Natarajarathinam is a passionate educator who has made a notable contribution to the field of engineering education. Her work on service learning and community engagement is particularly noteworthy. I am very pleased she has been honored by the ASEE. This is a great accomplishment for her as well as recognition for the ETID department.”
Natarajarathinam was honored as a Fellow Member at the 2024 ASEE Annual Conference June 23-26, joining Dr. Kristi Shryock of Texas A&M’s multidisciplinary engineering department in this year’s induction of six ASEE Fellows. They will become part of the exclusive group of 236 current fellows, five of whom represent Texas A&M: Walter Buchanan (ETID professor emeritus), Leroy “Skip” Fletcher (mechanical engineering professor emeritus), Leland Carlson (aerospace engineering professor emeritus), Hamid Parsaei (industrial and systems engineering professor) and Karan Watson (electrical and computer engineering professor).