Biography
Leyf Starling is a founding faculty member of the First Year Engineering Center, joining in July 2023. She is currently developing curriculum and teaching the Foundations of Engineering 1 and 2 courses as well as advising 1st year engineering students.
Starling earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering (UVA ‘03); enhanced that with a MAT in Special Education-General Curriculum (University of North Carolina- Charlotte ‘07); and she taught math, science, engineering, and robotics for over 20 years in both public and private middle schools, high schools, and universities. Her goal and passion is to make engineering accessible at all levels and across disciplines.
Starling has led professional development trainings on integrating engineering in the K-12 classroom, spent over 10 years consulting for the NSF funded Research Experience for Teachers program at Michigan State University, was editor and contributor to NSF-funded TeachEngineering.org, has presented at ASEE and NIH conferences on promising practices for making engineering accessible, has collaborated closely with the DO-IT Center at the University of Washington, was the founder and director of the Summer Engineering Experience for Students with Visual Impairments and Blindness, and co-founded and co-coached FIRST Robotics Competition Team DARC SIDE.
Currently, her focus is on developing and implementing ways to best support 1st year students and transfer students coming into the field of engineering. She is working to advance the field of engineering education through accessibility while also researching, developing, and integrating practices to support students' growth in teamwork, leadership, communication, and meaningful engagement in the community. Through this effort, she also works to advance ways to integrate emerging technologies as productive tools to support student learning and assessment.
