DanielÌýKnight, PhD
- MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
- ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
- ENGINEERING EDUCATION
Daniel Knight is an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering as well as Program Faculty in the Environmental Engineering and Engineering Education Programs. Dr. Knight's current research investigates the impact on engineering identity development of CU students' mentoring of environmental monitoring projects in rural high schools in Colorado, Mongolia and Brazil.
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Dr. Knight's teaching in support of his research prepares CU student mentors as lead instructor of MCEN 4/5291 Project Based Learning in Rural Schools, a two-semester course which prepares CU students for mentoring environmental monitoring projects in high schools in the fall semester and deploys them to rural schools to mentor high school student projects in the spring semester. He co-teaches the course with Dr. Mike Hannigan whose lab designs the environmental monitors used in the course.
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Dr. Knight also directs summer camps in Colorado and travelled to Mongolia in 2024 to run summer camps in the current capital, Ulaanbaatar and the ancient rural capital, Kharkhorin. Dr. Knight will be traveling to Curitiba, Brazil in 2025 under a Fulbright award to launch a version of his course in partnership with Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná.
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Education
- PhD in Engineering Education, University of Tennessee Knoxville
- MS in Industrial/Organization Psychology, University of Tennessee Knoxville
- BS in Psychology, Louisiana State University
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Recent Publications and Presentations
- Knight, D., & Coffey, E. (2025). SCENIC Mongolia: Design, Development and Results of Environmental Engineering Summer Camps in Ulaanbaatar and Kharkhorin. Presentation at the Under Shared Blue Skies: Mongolia and the North American West Conference, November 2025, Denver, CO.
- Knight, D., Bielefeldt, A., Polman, J., & Hannigan, M. (2024). Work in Progress: On the Use of Low-Cost Environmental Monitors in Rural K-12 Outreach to Enhance Engineering Identity Development. ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, June 2024, Portland, OR.
- Tran, T., Polman, J. L., & Knight, D. (2022). Organizing outreach for cultural transformation: The design of a STEM education learning pathway. In Chinn, C., Tan, E., Chan, C., & Kali, Y. (Eds.), International Collaboration Toward Educational Innovation for All: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), June 2022, Hiroshima, Japan.
- Lauff, C. A., Knight, D. (2020), Kotys-Schwartz, D. A., & Rentschler, M. E. The role of prototypes in communication between stakeholders. Design Studies, 66, 1–34.
- Knight, D. W., Hinojosa, L., Polman, J., & Hannigan, M. (2019). An Air Quality Inquiry: A Curricular Approach to Preparing Student Mentors of Air Quality Research Projects in Rural Schools. Proceedings of the Research in Engineering Education Symposium, July 2019, Cape Town, South Africa.
- Bielefeldt, A. R., Polmear, M., Canney, N., Swan, C., & Knight, D. (2018). Ethics Education of Undergraduate and Graduate Students in Environmental Engineering and Related Disciplines. Environmental Engineering Science, 35(7), 684–695.
- Knight, D. W., Savage, S., & Polmear, M. R. (2017). An Ethnographic Investigation into the Culture of an Engineers Without Borders USA Team During Preparation for a Design Project in Peru. In Proceedings of the Research in Engineering Education Symposium, July 2017, Bogota, Colombia.