A nationally recognized authority on workplace design is the new associate dean for research and industrial outreach in Mississippi State's College of Engineering.
Lesia L. Crumpton, a member of the university's industrial engineering faculty since 1992, recently assumed her new duties. Formal approval of the appointment is pending by the state Board of Trustees, Institutions of Higher Learning.
"This is a position designed to strengthen our research partnerships with industry and to identify new opportunities for university/industry cooperation," said engineering Dean A. Wayne Bennett. "Dr. Crumpton brings an established record of research in service to the business community to this outreach position."
A specialist in ergonomics--the science of adapting work and living environments to people--Crumpton established and serves as the director of MSU's Ergonomics and Human Factors Laboratory. She also heads the National Science Foundation-funded Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Ergonomics, a partnership between Mississippi State and Texas A&M University.
In 1997, Career Communications Group, publisher of U.S. Black Engineer and Information Technology magazine, named her Black Engineer of the Year in Education. Earlier this year, she received the National Society of Black Engineers' Janice A. Lumpkin Educator of the Year Award.
Crumpton holds bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from Texas A&M, where she was the first African-American female to earn a doctorate in engineering.
