A professor of electrical and computer engineering at Montana State University’s Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering recently won an international award for a textbook he authored.
Brock LaMeres, who also serves as director of MSU’s Montana Engineering Education Research Center, won the Bhagawandas and Rajani Lathi Award for Excellence in Engineering Textbooks from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for the book “Embedded Systems Design using the MSP430FR2355 LaunchPad,” published in 2020. The award, which carries a $10,000 honorarium and a travel allowance up to $1,600 to attend the Frontiers in Engineering Education conference where the award is given, was announced in October.
To be selected, the textbook must have been published in its first edition five years prior to the award year, establishing a history of demonstrating the impact the textbook has had on its field of instruction within engineering education.
“Any textbook winning the award must have clearly made an impact in its field of instruction through adoption at institutions of higher education, user reviews, citations in scholarly works, or through similar bibliographic metrics,” according to the IEEE website.
“[LaMeres’] textbook covers the hardware and software used in embedded microcontrollers, which are the most ubiquitous technologies in digital systems and the modern world,” according to the award’s citation. “The textbook builds foundational knowledge first before diving into an example-rich presentation of the material designed for the reader to code along using an inexpensive, but powerful, development board.”
“This award recognizes an engineering textbook based on the impact it is having through people reading and using it,” said David Dickensheets, head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “While this excellent textbook is serving our own lucky students, students around the world are also benefiting from Professor LaMeres’ scholarship, dedication and skill in teaching engineering. It’s a wonderful example of how excellent faculty like Brock LaMeres elevate education and scholarship at MSU while extending the influence of the institution beyond the State of Montana.”
According to its publisher, Springer, the book is available at 230 libraries internationally and has been downloaded 62,000 times since its publication in 2020. The work has also been adopted for use at MSU, as well as California State University, Northridge; Monmouth College; North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University; Norwich University; University of South Florida and the State University of New York at Albany.