- Villanueva’s study of hidden curriculum uncovered disruptions in communication, and she translated those insights into actionable solutions.
- Receiving the Richard Felder Award honored her leadership in engineering education and coincided with her Fulbright Specialist research in London.
- She will weave the evidence‑based lessons into EEd’s curriculum, moving the hidden curriculum to a visible component of engineering education.
For Idalis Villanueva, Ph.D., 2026 started with a happy surprise.
In January, she was presenting remotely at the inaugural North Carolina State University Engineering Education Symposium. After she finished, the meeting took a turn when she and another presenter were informed they had won the inaugural Richard Felder Award for Transformative Work in Engineering Education Award.
Award namesake Richard Felder, Ph.D., was a pioneer in engineering education and student-centered learning in chemical engineering at NC State. In short, he was an inspiration for Villanueva, now the chair of the University of Florida’s Department of Engineering Education.
That presentation set the pace for a breathless spring semester. The following month, she traveled to London to participate in the Fulbright Specialist Program to research their integrated engineering program.
Villanueva was able to slip away from engineering education in Florida to the Centre of Engineering Education at the College of London.
Last year, she joined about two dozen academics for a symposium on Integrated Engineering. As a thought leader in engineering education, she was tasked with evaluating the symposium and other Centre programs.
They wanted her back this year, so she applied to the Fulbright Specialist Program, which offers two-to-six-week project opportunities. They settled on four weeks to conduct and present her research.
In layman’s terms, she said she explored “the unwritten rules of the road … unwritten expectations, norms or assumptions made about a working or learning environment.” She called this “hidden curriculum,” which earned her a presidential award in 2019.
“It’s like when you move to a new job or environment; it’s very frustrating when people act like you should have known something that you couldn’t possibly have known,” she said.
Her 20-plus years of gathering data through interviews and classroom observations, as well as translating that data into tangible solutions, have been well-received at engineering colleges across the United States. She can identify where interruptions in communication happen, how it impacts faculty and students, and how to correct the sticking points.
“In the engineering spaces, hidden curriculum had never been discussed or acknowledged, let alone studied in a mixed-method way. I believe that both quantitative and qualitative data are important in helping uncover what that hidden norm is,” she said.
Villanueva has developed proprietary methods of gathering information, creating mapping tables, evaluating her observations and data, and then presenting solutions.
“I think people are pleasantly surprised in the sense of, ‘Oh, OK. Now that we know, we can do something about it,” she explained.
How will the London experience shape her work in Gainesville?
“It’s certainly given me ideas about our department, and it’s made me think, ‘Oh, maybe I need to look at things a little bit more integrated and see where there are areas of opportunities that I haven’t really thought about before,’” she said.
Villanueva has some advice for anyone considering applying for the Fulbright program.
“There are many types of Fulbright programs. Getting oriented and looking for the right one for you is No. 1. You must also preemptively talk with the potential host institution about what they need, what is or isn’t feasible, when is the right time to visit,” she said.
But it wasn’t all work on her trip.
Villanueva had some time to enjoy the sights, her favorite being Windsor Castle. It’s the largest and oldest occupied castle in the world. And she was particularly impressed with Queen Mary’s dollhouse.
“It was almost like its own building,” she said. “It was huge.”
Now she is back in swampy Gainesville, where there are no castles but plenty of opportunities to deploy lessons learned from across the pond.