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The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) inducted Ken Ball, dean of the George Mason University College of Engineering and Computing (CEC), as a Fellow Member at ASEE’s annual conference in June in Charlotte, North Carolina.
ASEE confers the grade of Fellow Member to recognize outstanding contributions to engineering education or engineering technology education, as well as significant individual contributions to ASEE.
Ball became dean at George Mason in 2012. He joined ASEE in 1992 and in his time at the society served: as Chair of the Engineering Deans Council Executive Committee; as a member of the ASEE Board of Directors; on the International Advisory Committee; on the Long-Range Planning Committee; on the Risk Management Committee; on the Nominating Committee, on the Membership Committee; and on the Finance Committee. In addition, he is a long-time Campus Representative and won the award for Most Members Recruited by Section in 2023.
Under Ball’s leadership, CEC’s ranking and reputation improved. In the most recent U.S. News and World Report rankings of our nation’s Best Graduate Schools, the college placed in the top 100 among public universities. Ball helped the college keep pace with its strong growth in student enrollment, advocating for more faculty and staff. He led a proactive response to the needs of our students, placing a high priority on ensuring the college has the faculty to maintain student-faculty ratios to allow vigorous levels of student-faculty interaction and mentoring, to limit the number of large-enrollment classes, and to be able to offer all of the courses that students need to graduate, including elective courses.
He is deeply involved in engineering program assessment and accreditation activities, both in the U.S. and internationally, particularly in the Middle East. He has obtained externally sponsored funding (excluding high-performance computing grants) more than $20M for projects and program development in mechanical engineering, including the thermal/fluid sciences and nuclear engineering.
Prior to coming to Mason Ball served as the L.S. Randolph Professor and Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech from 2004-12, Prior to his appointment at Virginia Tech, he served for 15 years on the mechanical engineering faculty at The University of Texas at Austin, where he was the Temple Foundation Endowed Faculty Fellow in Engineering.