The College of Engineering is pleased to announce the addition of two new members to its senior leadership team. Dr. Sandy Pettit, Assistant Dean for Student Success, and Dr. Peter Ludovice, Executive Director of the Engineering Entrepreneurship Program, assumed their roles at the start of the fall 2023 semester.
In her role, Dr. Pettit will serve as a strategic and operational champion to enhance student outcomes by developing and implementing student success strategies to advance learning, engagement, retention and completion for all students across the College. Pettit will also organize and coordinate both ongoing activities within the College related to student success and create new initiatives and programs that enhance the student experience.
Dr. Pettit previously served as the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering at the University of South Florida. There she utilized evidence-based instructional techniques to support and promote student success. Several of her programs and initiatives, including the transition to remote labs during COVID-19 and the development of a learning assistant program to improve student success, were recognized with academic excellence awards. In recognition of excellence in teaching and service contributions, Pettit was elected to the USF Academy of Distinguished Engineering Educators and recognized as the 2022 Outstanding Emerging Engineering Educator by the Society of Women Engineers.
Dr. Pettit started her academic career at the Georgia Institute of Technology as a lecturer in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and the Coordinator of the Pulp and Paper Certificate Program. Prior to joining academia, she had more than 15 years of diverse industrial experience in manufacturing, plant design and construction with companies including Procter & Gamble, Jacobs Engineering and TECO Energy. Pettit has served on the Board of Directors of the Society of Women Engineers, of the USF Alumni Association and of the Central Florida Section of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Her dedication to the engineering community and technical achievements earned her recognition as the recipient of 2018 USF Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award.
Similarly, Dr. Ludovice will also lead the development of the new Engineering Entrepreneurship Program for the College of Engineering. As director of the program, he will be responsible for leading activities to support and enhance the entrepreneurial spirit and activities of students and faculty members. In addition, he is leading development of coursework and programming for students that will allow them to complete an engineering entrepreneurship experience.
Ludovice brings a wealth of experience to the role, having previously served on the board of CREATE-X, Georgia Tech’s overarching entrepreneurship program. He also advised and helped select finalists for the InVenture Prize Competition at Georgia Tech. He received his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois and MIT, respectively. After completing post-doctoral research positions at the ETH-Zurich, IBM Almaden Research Center and NASA, he was the director of polymer products at Molecular Simulations Inc., the world’s largest publisher of molecular modeling software at the time. He later joined the chemical and biomolecular engineering faculty at Georgia Tech where for the past 30 years he continued his research on molecular modeling of synthetic and biological polymers and more recently expanded his activities into entrepreneurship and creativity with education related to improving creativity of engineering students.