Keynote Speakers

Last Updated: Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Dr. Timothy M. Stearns

Timothy M. Stearns is the holder of the Coleman Foundation Chair in Entrepreneurial Studies and Founder/Executive Director of the Lyles Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at California State University, Fresno www.lylescenter.com. Professor Stearns received his doctorate in management from Indiana University. He previously was a member of the Management faculty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and Marquette University. Professor Stearns has authored more than 100 research articles and presentations. He has lectured on entrepreneurship and innovation to students and executives in Thailand, Poland, Japan, Kazakhstan, Singapore, Macau, Germany, and China. He was elected to Chair of the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management in 2006 and 2008. Professor Stearns is co-founder of the National Network for Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization www.n2tec.org, Kids Invent! www.kidsinvent.com, and the American Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, LLC in partnership with educators in Singapore. In 2007, Professor Stearns won the prestigious Wang Family Excellence Award given each year to 4 faculty members selected from the 23 campus wide California State System. In January 2009, Professor Stearns was elected a fellow of the U.S. Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, one of 51 Fellows who have been inducted since 1986. He also received the university’s 2009 President’s Award of Excellence which annually recognizes a faculty member at California State University, Fresno. Each week he hosts The Pulse, a radio show on innovation and entrepreneurship on KFSR 90.7

Dr. William C. Oakes

William Oakes is the Director of the EPICS Program at Purdue University, one of the founding faculty members of the School of Engineering Education and a courtesy faculty member in Mechanical Engineering, Environmental and Ecological Engineering and Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education. He earned his B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University and his Ph.D. from Purdue University. Between his M.S. and his Ph.D., he worked for GE Aircraft Engines as a design engineer and is a registered professional engineer. He is a fellow of the ASEE and NSPE. He was the first engineer to win the Campus Compact Thomas Ehrlich Faculty Award for Service-Learning. He also received the National Society of Professional Engineers Educational Excellence Award and was a co-recipient of the 2005 National Academy of Engineering's Bernard Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education for his work in EPICS.

Dr. Edmund Tsang

Edmund Tsang has been a practitioner of service-learning since the mid 1990's and he has integrated service learning into the engineering curriculum at the first-year, sophomore, and senior levels, ranging from "introduction to engineering," to "materials and manufacturing," to senior capstone design. For his work in service-learning in engineering, Tsang was selected by the American Association for Higher Education in 2000 to edit a monograph titled "Projects That Matter: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Engineering," and he was recognized by the American Society for Engineering Education as a 1999 Visiting Scholar. Tsang received a B.S. (distinction) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Nebraska and Ph.D. in Metallurgy from Iowa State University. In addition to service-learning in engineering, Tsang's current professional interests include creating learning communities to support student success and retention. Tsang is the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs and Assessment in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Western Michigan University where he is the Principal Investigator of multiple National Science Foundation grants, including two STEM Talent Expansion Program (STEP) awards.