Skip to main content
Search for something
Search...

Staff Profile

Dr Sarah Dunn

Senior Lecturer in Engineering Education, Director of Education

  • Email: sarah.dunn@ncl.ac.uk
  • Address: School of Engineering
    Room 4.032, Stephenson Building
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

Background

I am a Senior Lecturer in Engineering Education, Director of Education in the School of Engineering, and a Leading Edge Curriculum (LEC) Design Fellow. My work focuses on the design and improvement of engineering education, with particular interests in curriculum design, assessment and feedback, student transition and belonging, active learning, and the responsible integration of generative AI within engineering education.


My scholarship draws directly on educational practice. Current projects include evaluating approaches to first-year engineering education and student transition, assessment and feedback, active and flipped learning, curriculum innovation, and the development of students' capabilities to use AI ethically and responsibly.


I originally trained and worked as a civil and structural engineer and researcher. My earlier research focused on infrastructure resilience, network modelling and disaster risk, including externally funded research on electricity infrastructure, climate resilience and emergency response. This research background continues to influence my approach to engineering education, particularly my emphasis on evidence, systems thinking and the application of engineering judgement to complex educational problems.


Roles and Responsibilities

Director of Education - I provide strategic academic leadership for learning, teaching and the student experience across the School of Engineering, working across undergraduate and postgraduate provision and with programme leadership teams across the engineering disciplines. My current areas of leadership include curriculum transformation through Newcastle University's Leading Edge Curriculum, assessment and feedback, student transition and belonging, educational quality and enhancement, and the development of innovative approaches to engineering teaching.


Leading Edge Curriculum Design Fellow - I support curriculum transformation across the University, working with programme teams to apply the principles of the Leading Edge Curriculum in programme design, pedagogy and assessment. The role extends my curriculum leadership beyond the School of Engineering and enables me to contribute to institution-wide educational change.


Qualifications

PhD in Civil Engineering (Newcastle University - Feb 2014) - Thesis Title "An Investigation to Improve Community Resilience using Network Graph Analysis of Infrastructure Systems"

MEng in Civil and Structural Engineering (Newcastle University - Sept 2010) (1st Class (Hons))


Links

Google Scholar Profile: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3tHQ8moAAAAJ&hl=en

LinkedIn Profile: https://uk.linkedin.com/pub/sarah-dunn/74/37a/517

ResearchGate Profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sarah_Dunn3


Research

Educational Scholarship

My scholarship focuses on understanding and improving engineering education through evidence-informed educational practice and evaluation. Current areas of interest include:

  • engineering curriculum design and programme-level educational change;
  • student transition, belonging and inclusive engineering education;
  • assessment, feedback and the development of evaluative judgement;
  • active and flipped learning in engineering;
  • large-cohort and first-year engineering education;
  • generative AI, assessment and the development of responsible AI capability;
  • international and transnational engineering education.

Current projects include evaluation of a common first-year engineering curriculum, student belonging and transition through experiential learning, approaches to improving assessment and feedback practice, and the integration of generative AI capability within engineering curricula.


Previous Research Interests

Infrastructure resilience; critical infrastructure; disaster risk and emergency management; complex networks and network graph theory.


PhD Supervision (Completed)

Beth Barnes - Development of a Modelling Framework to Improve Mitigation Methods and Contingency Planning for Emergency Scenario

Louise Westoby - The Road to Recovery: Understanding the Process of Rebuilding Seismic Resistant Schools in Nepal

Xiaoyan Zhang - A computational model incorporating individual and social behaviour for building emergency evacuation

John Naylor - How can architectures increase the use of full-culm bamboo to provide adequate urban housing in tropical developing economies? (co-supervised with School of Architecture)

Alaa Alkrud - Automated Decision Making Framework for Smart City Open Data Publishing (co-supervised with School of Computing)


MPhil Supervision (Completed)

Hanan Tamimi - Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation of Co-ordinated Emergency Responses to Major Incidents (co-supervised with School of Computing)


Research Funding

  • Jan 2022 - Jan 2023: ACCELERATE: Assessment of Climate Change Event Likelihood Embedded in Risk Assessment Targeting Electricity Distribution, CoI
  • July 2021 - April 2023: "CS-NOW: Climate Services for a net zero resilient world": BEIS, CoI
  • Jan 2020 - Nov 2020: "Averted!", gaming app to challenge perception of engineering in young people: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), PI, £30,000
  • May 2017 - Aug 2019: "Emergency Resource Location-Allocation and Deployment (eROAD) too": Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), PI, £121,339
  • Feb 2016 - Jan 2018: "Realtime assessments of wind related damage to electricity infrastructure": Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), CoI, £177,321
Teaching

My teaching is principally within interdisciplinary first-year engineering and civil engineering design. I use active, flipped and project-based approaches, with a particular interest in helping students develop engineering judgement, integrate knowledge across disciplinary boundaries and reflect on their professional development.


Undergraduate Teaching

ENG1009: Sustainable Design Creativity and Professionalism

CEG3099: Supervision of undergraduate BEng projects

CEG8099: Supervision of undergraduate MEng projects 




Publications