Donna M. Riley

Donna Riley is a founding faculty member in the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College, the nation’s first accredited engineering program for women. Riley received her Ph.D. in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University and her B.S.E. in chemical engineering from Princeton University. Riley’s technical research considers indoor air quality and chemical consumer product risks stemming from household pesticide use and cultural and religious uses of elemental mercury.

In 2005 Riley received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation for implementing pedagogies of liberation – feminist and critical pedagogies based on the work of Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and others – into engineering education. Aspects of liberative pedagogies that are operationalized in Riley's classrooms include connecting course material to student experience, emphasizing students as authorities in the classroom, integrating ethics and policy considerations in the context of social justice, problematizing science as objectivity, and de-centering western (and male) civilization. Her work capitalizes on the intimate, creative and collaborative environment at Smith, where intentional learners grow into critical thinkers and reflective actors. Riley’s recent book Engineering and Social Justice (Morgan and Claypool, 2008) “calls upon engineers to cultivate a passion for social justice and peace and to develop the skill and knowledge set needed to take practical action for change within the profession.”