I’m not an engineer. But this will be my third time attending the ASEE Annual Conference with Digilent, and each year I leave feeling the same way: inspired.
My background is in psychology and education, and I started my career in the classroom. So while I may not share the same technical expertise as many of the people at ASEE, I do recognize the level of care and intention that goes into teaching.
The People Behind the Work
What stands out most isn’t just what’s being taught. It’s how much thought educators put into how they teach it.
The conversations we have at ASEE tend to circle around the same challenges: How do we get students more engaged? How do we make complex ideas actually click? How do we give students more opportunities to learn by doing, not just listening?
Teaching, at any level, is never just about delivering content. It’s about figuring out what works, adjusting when it doesn’t, and continuing to look for better ways to reach students.
Helping Students Learn How to Think
Something I’ve come to appreciate more each year is how much of engineering education goes beyond the material itself.
It’s about helping students learn how to approach problems, work through uncertainty, and build confidence by trying, failing, and trying again. That isn’t easy to do without hands-on experience. It takes giving students the opportunity to experiment and actually interact with what they’re learning.
A lot of the educators we meet at ASEE are putting real effort into making that possible. They’re reworking course structures, building out hands-on lab experiences, and looking for tools that let students move beyond theory and actually test, build, and explore on their own.
Why Digilent Keeps Showing Up
Digilent has been attending ASEE for years, and it aligns closely with how the company got its start.
Digilent was founded in an academic environment with a focus on making engineering tools more accessible to students. The goal was to give students a way to work with real hardware and concepts without needing access to expensive lab equipment.
That idea still carries through today, and it closely matches what many educators at ASEE are trying to do in their own classrooms. Being at this conference gives us a chance to listen, learn, and better understand what they need.
Why It Matters to Us
Even though I’m no longer in the classroom, it still feels connected to the same purpose.
ASEE is a reminder of how much work goes into helping students move beyond understanding concepts and into actually using them with confidence. Being part of those conversations is something we value as a team, and it’s a big part of why we keep coming back.
