Meet The Leadership

Dr. Nelson Baker, Dean of Professional Education

Dr. Nelson Baker, dean of Professional Education at the Georgia Institute of Technology and associate professor in the university’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, leads a multifaceted operation at Georgia Tech Professional Education. The division is comprised of the Global Learning Center, Georgia Tech-Savannah, the Language Institute, and an extensive program of professional education courses in science, technology, engineering, and math, with online professional master’s degrees, as well as an array of distance learning courses, both credit and noncredit.

Baker particularly seeks to create and assess ways in which technology impacts the learning of engineering students. His award-winning work has generated projects such as multi-­lingual web-­based intelligent simulations for problem solving; intelligent tutors; student models; an online faculty assistant tool for creating course objectives; and a variety of technology-based assessments and virtual reality interfaces for education.In addition to his role as dean, Baker serves as the U.S. principal investigator for a FIPSE Atlantis programme grant (P116J090074), an international activity exploring quality management and benchmarking of continuing engineering education programs; and also as a co-principal investigator on a five-year NASA project, Electronic Professional Development Network (ePDN), which develops and delivers STEM content to high school teachers.

In February 2012, Baker was appointed by Chancellor Huckaby to serve on the University System of Georgia’s (USG) Distance Education Task Force to create a framework to better coordinate and guide the future use of distance education for the 35 colleges and universities within the USG system. He currently serves as the President of the International Association for Continuing Engineering Education, and is past-chair of the Georgia Board of Regents Administrative Committee on Public Service and Continuing Education. Baker is a board member for the University Professional and Continuing Education Association, and is an active member of ASEE and ASCE.