Dr. Chachra is passionate about working with undergraduate students and about improving engineering education. She is currently collaborating with Olin students to study biological materials, including the polymer nest cell linings of Colletes bees. She is concurrently involved in research on the undergraduate engineering experience. Her primary project is an investigation of self-efficacy in first-year, project-based design courses, with an eye towards improving these experiences for students at Olin and beyond. She has also studied and published on other aspects of the student experience, including studies of persistence and migration (why students stay in engineering or choose to leave), as well as differences in the engineering experience between male and female students. Prior to joining the faculty of Olin College, Dr. Chachra was a postdoctoral associate at MIT in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. She joined MIT from the University of Toronto, where she received her master's degree and Ph.D. in materials science. Dr. Chachra has a bachelor's degree in engineering science, also from the University of Toronto. She was a recipient of a National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada postdoctoral fellowship and a Medical Research Council of Canada graduate fellowship, as well as numerous other honors for her research and publications. In 2010, she received an NSF CAREER Award in support of her research on engineering education.
Articles
The Long-Term Effects of Water Fluoridation on the Human Skeleton (with H. Limeback, T. Willett, and M. D. Grynpas), The Journal of Dental Research (2010)
Municipal water fluoridation has notably reduced the incidence of dental caries and is widely considered...
Outcomes of a Longitudinal Administration of the Persistence in Engineering Survey (with Ozgur Eris, Helen Chen, Sheri Sheppard, Larry Ludlow, Camelia Rosca, Tori Bailey, and George Toye), Journal of Engineering Education (2010)
BACKGROUND Understanding more about student decisions to leave engineering may lead to higher retention. This...
A New Tool to Assess the Mechanical Properties of Bone due to Collagen Degradation (with C. Wynnyckyj, S. Omelon, K. Savage, M. Damani, and M. D. Grynpas), Bone (2009)
Current clinical tools for evaluating fracture risk focus only on the mineral phase of bone....
Persistence, Engagement, and Migration in Engineering Programs (with Matthew W. Ohland, Sheri D. Sheppard, Gary Lichtenstein, Ozgur Eris, and Richard A. Layton), Journal of Engineering Education (2008)
Records from the Multiple-Institution Database for
Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development indicate
that engineering students are typical of...
Fluoride and Mineralized Tissues (with A. Vieira and M. D. Grynpas), Critical Reviews in Biomedical Engineering (2008)
This review focuses on the interaction of fluoride with the material properties of bone and...