Assistant Professor of Engineering Management Amir Momenipour, PhD, is teaching Rose-Hulman students the leading-edge technology knowledge and skills in industrial and systems engineering to make a difference in a rapidly changing world. 

That’s why he has been named an Engineering Unleashed Fellow, a national Kern Family Foundation program honoring faculty for their contributions to undergraduate engineering education, specifically entrepreneurial engineering. The 2024 Fellows class includes 31 educators from 27 higher education institutions across the United States.

This marks the fourth straight year that at least one Rose-Hulman professor has been recognized as an Engineering Unleashed Fellow. 

As part of this professional development fellowship, Momenipour will spend this school year participating in workshops that highlight entrepreneurial-minded learning. He also will integrate the entrepreneurial mindset into practices that benefit his students, Rose-Hulman, and other STEM educators.

Momenipour is developing a roadmap that will help other engineering educators integrate Extended Reality (XR) in their teaching and learning processes, while also exploring potential applications of XR at Rose-Hulman for teaching engineering management, in collaboration with the Office of Learning and Technology.

In the future, Momenipour hopes to collaborate with engineers and educators to develop pilot use cases that leverage existing resources. The initial phase will focus on creating virtual scenarios for teaching engineering management concepts, allowing students to practice methods in a dynamic and safe virtual work environment. 

Momenipour also plans to collaborate with STEM educators, including Engineering Unleashed network members, to explore how XR can be utilized to teach engineering and science concepts through Entrepreneurial Mindset Learning. This would establish a network of faculty members to exchange best practices, strategies, lessons learned, concerns, and challenges related to the use of XR technologies for educational purposes.

“This hands-on approach promotes experiential learning by encouraging students to stay curious, connect concepts to propose solutions, practice agile management, and measure the impact of their decisions — all within a safe virtual environment,” he says. 

Momenipour’s professional development efforts are supported by a $10,000 grant from the Kern Family Foundation.

Since joining the Rose-Hulman faculty in 2019, Momenipour’s involvement in the Engineering Unleashed program’s conferences, workshops, and networking opportunities have played a significant role in his development as an engineering educator. He participated in workshops on Integrating Curriculum with Entrepreneurial Mindset (2021) and Unleashing Academic Change (2023), became an Engineering Unleashed Ambassador (2022), and contributed to professional development initiatives that promote the entrepreneurial mindset within the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers and Human Factors and Ergonomics Society organizations.

Momenipour states, “Through these professional activities and the opportunity to learn from colleagues, I have deepened my understanding of how the entrepreneurial mindset can be effectively integrated into engineering education and have had the chance to share these insights with other educators.”

At Rose-Hulman, Momenipour has developed and taught eight new courses within the Department of Engineering Management, covering facilities management, work analysis and design, safety engineering, and manufacturing planning and control. He also has worked with Engineering Design program students on several practicum courses and mentored graduate and undergraduate students on a variety of research and design projects.

Momenipour earned his doctorate in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Iowa, a master’s degree in management information systems from Morehead State University (Kentucky), and a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Azad University in Iran. 

Five Rose-Hulman professors previously honored as Engineering Unleashed Fellows have been Adel Alhalawani, PhD, and Michelle Marincel Payne, PhD, in 2023; Miles Canino, PhD, and Namita Shrestha, PhD, in 2022; and Kosta Popovic, PhD, in 2021.

Engineering Unleashed is a community of more than 6,000 members from 380 institutions of higher education, supported by the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network, a 60-partner educational collaborative that includes Rose-Hulman.