Contact Information

North Carolina State University
Director, Women in Engineering and The Engineering Place

laurab@ncsu.edu
https://www.engr.ncsu.edu/people/laurab/
Raleigh NC 27695-0001

Biography

Dr. Laura Bottomley, ASEE and IEEE Fellow, is the Director of Women in Engineering and The Engineering Place for K-20 Outreach and a Teaching Associate Professor in the Colleges of Engineering and Education at NC State University.  She teaches an Introduction to Engineering class for incoming freshmen in the College, and Children Design, Invent, Create, a course for elementary education students that introduces them to engineering design and technology as well as various electrical engineering classes.

In 2007 Dr. Bottomley was selected for a Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics, Science and Engineering Mentoring by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and by the Educational Activities Board of the IEEE for an Informal Education Award.  She was also inducted into the YWCA Academy of Women in 2008 for her contributions to eliminating racism and empowering women and was selected as the 2011 Woman of the Year by the RTP chapter of Women in Transportation.  In 2013 she was named one of 125 Transformational Women by NC State University.

In her role as director of The Engineering Place at NC State, Dr. Bottomley and her colleagues reach more than 10,000 students, 2000 teachers and 1500 parents each year. The programs she leads include summer camps for K-12 students; programs that send undergraduates and graduate students into schools to work with elementary and middle school students; training sessions for NC State engineering alumni who want to be volunteer teachers in their communities; and professional development and classroom support for K-12 teachers who want to introduce engineering concepts to their young students.  In addition, she co-authored statewide engineering standards for K-12 and delivers teacher professional development in integrated STEM.

Bottomley also directs NC State’s Women in Engineering program, which works to boost the number of women engineers in academia and industry.  The NC State Women in Engineering Program was selected as the outstanding program for 2008 by WEPAN, the Women in Engineering Program Advocates Network for the progress made in recruiting and retaining women students in engineering at NC State University.  She is a Fellow of the IEEE and ASEE.

 In addition to her roles at the University, Dr. Bottomley has taught fifth grade science as a volunteer consultant, helped schools reinvent themselves as engineering magnet schools and acted as a consultant to the N.C. Dept. of Public Instruction and Wake County Public Schools.  She served on a national team for the National Assessment of Educational Progress developing an assessment for engineering and technological literacy, works with IEEE and the National Academy of Engineering on the Engineering Equity Extension Project and served as a curriculum consultant on a National Science Foundation Gender Equity grant.  She also co-authored the Engineering Connections to STEM document published by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.  She is currently serving on a committee with the National Academy of Engineering, Guiding the Implementation of K-12 Engineering.

Bottomley received her bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech in 1984 and 1985, respectively. She received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from NC State in 1992. She has previously worked at AT&T Bell Labs on ISDN standards and Duke University teaching classes and directing a lab in the electrical engineering department.