Gadgets and gizmos aplenty?
Dr. Luke Mayer touts a few of those.
And the Grand Canyon University mechanical engineering professor isn’t afraid to use them. He’s plumb-pleased to use them – whatever he needs to do to engage his students.
Mayer, who teaches introductory level engineering programming, thermodynamics and fluids, learned earlier this summer that the awards committee for the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) named him the university’s Campus Rising Star. The honor goes to a junior professor with less than 10 years of experience who teaches at a KEEN partner school and is driven by an entrepreneurial mindset.
As a Campus Rising Star, he's also nominated for the National Rising Star Award, to be announced in spring 2025.
He is the fourth of the university’s engineering faculty to be recognized by KEEN.
Biomechanical engineering professor Dr. Kyle Jones in 2022 also was named a KEEN Campus Rising Star. Dr. Michael De Gregorio, now an assistant dean in the College of Engineering and Technology, and mechanical engineering professor Emmy Tomforde were recognized as KEEN Engineering Unleashed Fellows.
"Luke goes above and beyond to make sure that students are engaged in the material," said De Gregorio. "He will often come up with fun projects to highlight principles they have been discussing in class and activate deep learning."
Drop by Mayer’s office in the engineering building and he’ll show you a gadget or two, like one with tiny motors students use to help them in a maze-solving activity that also sharpens their programming skills.
The maze-solving activity, “It’s one of the first projects we do in class – it’s kind of getting us comfortable with programming and troubleshooting,” said Mayer, who also helps fire up students’ brains with a gizmo that contains photo resistor sensors.
“They learn how to record data, measure data, troubleshoot to see if it’s doing what it’s supposed to do … and see whether it’s actually working correctly. So this project helps them see whether it’s bright in the right spots, and if it’s not, what can we do to fix it?”
Mayer isn’t one to stand by and allow students to sit passively in class. He wants them active and engaged in the lessons he’s teaching, like in the introduction to engineering programming class, which teaches basic programming to engineering students, some of whom might be moving on to more program-heavy areas and others who might just be taking a few basic classes.
“I just want to make it a more creative class with projects that connect students to programming, and to stir up creativity in the students,” he said.
Mayer, who received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Texas Tech University, said he wanted to work in a national or research lab, and did do lab work for a time.
But teaching was never far from his mind. He always wanted to teach, he said, just “further down the road.”
“I just like learning, myself, and figuring out how to learn things. I wanted to find out ways to do that better for other people,” he said of wanting to fully embrace the art of teaching – of getting through to students and helping them learn sometimes complicated concepts the best way he can.
For him, that means stirring a little innovation and creativity into the mix.
Teaching was something he knew a little about even before he went to college.
Both his parents taught in Africa, where they served as missionaries. It’s where Mayer grew up, and it shows in his choice of décor in his office on the second floor of the engineering building, which is dappled with images of zebras, plants, bamboo and books on Borneo and Tarzan.
“Teaching for me came sooner than I thought,” Mayer said. “Opportunities came, and I just went with it.”
One of those opportunities was teaching mechanical engineering at the Texas Tech Center in Seville, Spain, which he did for two years. He taught American students who were studying abroad so they wouldn’t fall behind in their engineering program.
I just want to make it a more creative class with projects that connect students to programming, and to stir up creativity in the students.
Dr. Luke Mayer, mechanical engineering faculty
“It just kind of landed on my lap,” he said. “I ran into a former professor who was teaching there, and he was set to retire. He loved the program so much, and he didn’t want to see it die. He said, ‘Would you be interested in teaching there?
“I never would have thought of doing it until he mentioned it.”
Mayer has been teaching for about four years, but he already is finding his own way as an educator, making teaching vibrant and alive and interesting.
“When we work on these projects,” whether it’s solving mazes or working with photo resistor sensors, Mayer said, “students give feedback. Did they learn anything? What was frustrating? What was helpful? … I kind of can see what they’re getting out of it and what they’re not getting out of it.”
He’ll continue to do “something innovative or creative” in the classroom, he said – to continue to be that rising star.
Manger of Internal Communications Lana Sweeten-Shults can be reached at [email protected] or at 602-639-7901.
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GCU News: KEEN Engineering Unleashed Fellow a force in teaching
