Rajala Named Phi Kappa Phi Scholar
May 24, 2010
BATON ROUGE, LA— Dr. Sarah A. Rajala has been selected by The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi as the 2010-2012 Phi Kappa Phi Scholar for her accomplishments in research, teaching, administration and public service.
Rajala is professor and dean of engineering at Mississippi State University and holds the Earnest W. and Mary Ann Deavenport Jr. Endowed Chair. Before coming to Mississippi State in 2006, she was a member of the faculty at North Carolina State University from 1979 to 2006 and served as director of the Center for Advanced Computing and Communication, associate dean for academic affairs, and associate dean for research and graduate programs.
“Dr. Rajala possesses that rarest of academic gifts – the ability to excel simultaneously as a scholar in her chosen discipline, as a highly regarded teacher, as a practitioner in the scholarship of teaching and learning, as an academic leader in her current role as an engineering dean,” said Dr. William McKinney, chair of the Phi Kappa Phi Artist selection committee.
The focus of Rajala’s research has been on the analysis and process of images and image sequences and on engineering educational assessment. She has directed numerous master’s theses and Ph.D. dissertations, authored and co-authored nearly 200 publications and secured a patent on image sequence compression.
In the classroom and through professional organizations, Rajala has worked to improve engineering education for all students. She has received numerous teaching awards, provided key leadership in implementing methods to reform engineering education and was elected President of the American Society for Engineering Education for 2008-09. In this position, she traveled around the world advocating for improvement in the engineering education process and for ways to improve the representation of women and minorities in the engineering professions.
Named Mississippi State’s first female dean of engineering in 2008, Rajala has a history of opening doors for women and minorities in engineering. As the first female tenure-track professor in the engineering department at NCSU, she organized networking activities for the college of engineering women faculty and helped create a maternity leave policy for tenure-track faculty members where none had existed. Further, she helped establish the Women in Engineering program, which serves to coordinate, educate and sponsor many programs for women and provides K-12 outreach.
Rajala received her B.S. degree from Michigan Technological University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Rice University.
First presented in 1974, Phi Kappa Phi Scholar Award recognizes those who have excelled in teaching, research and public service. Recipients receive a $1,000 honorarium.
More About Phi Kappa Phi
Founded in 1897 and headquartered in Baton Rouge, La., Phi Kappa Phi is the nation’s oldest, largest and most selective all-discipline honor society. Phi Kappa Phi inducts annually more than 30,000 students, faculty, professional staff and alumni. The Society has chapters on more than 300 select colleges and universities in North America and the Philippines. Membership is by invitation only to the top 10 percent of seniors and graduate students and 7.5 percent of juniors. Faculty, professional staff and alumni who have achieved scholarly distinction also qualify.
Since its founding, more than 1 million members have been initiated. Some of the organization’s more notable members include former President Jimmy Carter, NASA astronaut Wendy Lawrence, writer John Grisham and Netscape founder James Barksdale. The Society has awarded approximately $13 million since the inception of its awards program in 1932. Today, more than $700,000 is awarded annually to qualifying members and non-members through graduate fellowships, undergraduate study abroad scholarships, member and chapter awards and grants for local and national literacy initiatives. The Society’s mission is “To recognize and promote academic excellence in all fields of higher education and to engage the community of scholars in service to others.”