The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) recently completed its annual election, and Dr. Christi Luks, a chemical engineering faculty member at Missouri S&T, won the national organization’s race for president-elect.

“ASEE has always been the organization that feels like home to me,” says Luks, a teaching professor and associate chair of S&T’s Linda and Bipin Doshi Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering. “This is where I found my family of other engineering faculty who were driven to do the very best they could in the classroom. I feel honored that my peers throughout the country have selected me as ASEE’s next leader.” 
 
Luks has been involved with ASEE since attending the organization’s conference in Rolla in 1998. Since then, she has presented and chaired several ASEE events and won awards for her efforts. In 2021 and 2022, she was the organization’s vice president for professional interest councils, and she then shifted into the role of vice president for member affairs, which she still holds. 
 
She will officially begin serving as president-elect after ASEE’s annual conference in Portland, Oregon, in June. Then, after the 2025 annual conference in Montreal, Canada, she will take the reins as president.  
 
Luks says she is excited that the ASEE membership has elected a teaching-focused, non-tenured professor for its top position. 
 
“When I first requested a teaching-only position at my previous university, that was an unusual thing to do,” she says. “This is now much more common. I am proud that I can represent this group of teaching-focused faculty to help counteract the view of many that this path is somehow lesser.  
 
“I selected this path specifically because I wanted to focus on my strengths in teaching and mentoring students – just as others are allowed to focus on research within the tenure system.”  

Luks joined the S&T faculty in 2014 after teaching at the University of Tulsa for over 20 years. She started at S&T as an associate teaching professor and advanced to teaching professor in 2019. 
 
She earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and a master’s degree in applied mathematics from the University of Tulsa and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Texas A&M. 
 
She is a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and president of Omega Chi Epsilon, the national honor society for chemical engineering. 
 
For more information about Missouri S&T’s chemical and biochemical engineering programs, visit chbe.mst.edu. 

About Missouri S&T

Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top public universities for salary impact, according to the Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.