SCD Spotlight: Affiliate Elle Wroblewski

Shoutout to teaching assistant professor and SCD affiliate Elle Wroblewski, who has continually worked hard to advocate for the integration of human-centered design within the Department of Aerospace Engineering.

Wroblewski’s efforts have garnered them recognition as the 2026 Campus KEEN Rising Star at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The Rising Star award was given to just 19 faculty members nationwide this year.

“It's important to teach human-centered engineering design because the world we live in should prioritize human needs and human experiences,” Wroblewski said. “Teaching engineering this way allows students to bring their own human experiences into their toolkit for design, which promotes innovation and creates a culture where diversity of experience and diversity of thought is valued.”

Among the courses that Wroblewski regularly teaches, they worked with SCD’s Assessment and Research (AR) team to lead the collaborative design and implementation of a new design-for-requirements mini project in the required design course Aerospace Flight Mechanics (AE 202). Since known as the glider-catapult project (Wroblewski et al., 2026), Wroblewski’s in-class project tasks teams of students with designing and fabricating glider-and-launcher systems to compete in a final competition. A key consideration of the designs is the experience of a fictional stakeholder in the form of a small cat keychain, which is introduced to students at the start as the catpilot and subsequently flies on every glider test.

SCD’s collaboration with Wroblewski has resulted in significant growth in students’ development of human-centered design related competencies. For example, during the Fall 2024 semester, 48 202 students self-reported their confidence levels in their understanding of aerospace safety as significantly higher at the end of 202 as opposed to the beginning.

Excerpt from preliminary pre-/post-test survey results published in our 2025 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) conference paper. For the full framework of engineering design competencies under investigation, see our 2024 ASEE paper.

“The most fascinating thing about the catpilots’ impact on students to me is how they affect the iteration process when building the gliders,” they said. “Before I implemented catpilots, students would build a glider and be satisfied with whatever initial performance it exhibited. With the catpilots integrated, students contend with stakeholder needs every time they fly. [They] will adjust their design to meet stakeholder-informed performance requirements.”

Wroblewski presented a practical paper on implementing the glider-catapult project at the 2026 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) annual conference. They have also
published a classroom card about the project and its catpilots in KEEN’s engineering unleashed network. The glider-catapult project and other course-based efforts have been supported by the Academy for Excellence in Engineering Education (AE3)’s Strategic Instructional Innovations Program (SIIP).

“The biggest benefit of working with the SIIP team is having the accountability and knowledge from others in order to make this project work,” they said of the collaborative team comprised of AR members, graduate students, and fellow SCD affiliate and aerospace professor Tim Bretl. “Working on my own presents many challenges and self-doubt. With the SIIP team, it is easier for me to stay on track, and the team gives me advice and feedback which is invaluable in making the work happen and go well.”

Wroblewski will continue to work with the team on a new SIIP grant starting this academic year focused on developing and implementing aerospace technical writing requirements.

Referenced works:

Parks, T., Bretl, T., & Shehab, S. (2025, June 22–25). WIP: Assessing aerospace students’
human-centered engineering design competency across multiple required courses [Poster
session]. American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference &
Exposition, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Parks, T., Shehab, S., Bretl, T., Wroblewski, E., & Lembeck, M. (2024, June 23–26). WIP: Using
a human-centered engineering design framework to develop learning progressions in an
aerospace engineering program [Paper session]. American Society for Engineering
Education (ASEE) Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, OR, United States.

Wroblewski, E., Parks, T., & Bretl, T. (2026, June 21–24). Human-centered pilot stakeholder
design project development for second-year aerospace students. [Technical session].
American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference & Exposition,
Charlotte, North Carolina.