2025 Outstanding Faculty Innovator in Student Success
California State University, Fresno
Associate Professor, Civil Engineering
Director, LCOE Foundations for Success
“I find joy in helping students see their potential, so that they can achieve high levels of success. I love that my role allows me to influence culture, student experience and student self-efficacy within my college to make pursuing a career in engineering more accessible."
Dr. Kimberly Stillmaker, an associate professor of civil engineering at Fresno State, is director of the Lyles College of Engineering’s new Foundation for Success Program. This program is focused on improving outcomes for all first-year and sophomore students pursuing engineering degrees in the Lyles College of Engineering (LCOE).
Stillmaker has devoted her efforts to improving student retention rates in engineering at a university where more than 70% of the student population comes from groups that have been historically underrepresented in the engineering professions. She works to ensure that those students have the tools to succeed both as college students and as engineers, while also communicating the benefits of diversity, equity and inclusion within the engineering profession and beyond. Overseeing the experience of all first-year LCOE engineering students, she has developed and is implementing a new common ENGR 1 course that enrolls all engineering majors in their first year, focusing on a variety of success strategies for incoming students in historically difficult majors.
Stillmaker has also helped to institute block scheduling for first-year Lyles College students, working to ensure the college’s first-year students are enrolled in the classes that give them the greatest chance of success. Furthermore, she led the implementation of a pre-engineering major aimed at helping first-time engineering students find a clear roadmap to graduation and beyond. Overall, her efforts are showing promising results, with the first-year engineering retention rate increasing dramatically and students providing overwhelmingly positive feedback.
Beyond Fresno State, Stillmaker coordinates the Central California Engineering Design Competition, engaging first-year engineering students from Fresno State and students from Central California community colleges in a joint competition and culminating group project.
Stillmaker has also pursued external funding to support her work. Among her grant projects she is a co-principal investigator on an NSF-funded ADVANCE grant that focuses on establishing a systemwide networking and mentoring program within the CSU that offers data-driven changes that foster diversity and equity among engineering faculty. She has been published in multiple outlets, most with student co-authors, to expand understanding of the importance of diversity and belonging within the engineering field.
Stillmaker earned her bachelor’s degree in civil engineering as well as a master’s degree in business administration from Fresno State. She also holds a master’s and a doctoral degree in civil engineering from the University of California, Davis.