Jack Bringardner named Fryrear Chair for Innovation and Excellence

Jack Bringardner, teaching professor and director of education innovation in Engineering, Design and Society, has been awarded the Ben Fryrear Chair for Innovation and Excellence at Colorado School of Mines. 

Endowed by Mines alum Ben Fryrear ‘62 in 2017, the chair recognizes and supports highly accomplished Mines faculty members working to further the vision and mission of the university, for a term of three years.  Each chair receives $25,000 in discretionary funds to fund their work. 

Bringardner plans to spend his three-year term as Fryrear Chair focused on training Mines faculty to guide students through experiential learning opportunities to make the most of those experiences.  

"Experiential learning isn’t just about doing a project,” he said. “It’s about the entire exposure to a subject and the experience the students get out of it. That includes their mindset, application of ethics, their character development and their ability to tell stories.” 

Bringardner said he’d like to be a champion for experiential learning at Mines, not just promoting the involvement of alumni and recruiting faculty but also working toward helping students succeed. 

“I applied for Fryrear Chair because of the impact experiential learning can have on students,” he said. “A well-rounded experience can accelerate student success in both their academic and professional careers. It can help them get jobs at great companies, help them move up in leadership and management in those companies faster than anyone else and to overall thrive as they journey through their careers.” 

During the first year of his term, Bringardner will work with Lakshmi Krishna, director of undergraduate research scholars, to pilot faculty development for advisors involved with the Vertically Integrated Projects for Experiential Research (VIPER) program. Bringardner and Krishna plan to run a workshop on experiential learning for VIPER faculty in summer 2026. 

“Our goal is to get faculty to think holistically about the whole student, their whole person development, how they approach problem solving and how they communicate the impact of the solutions they’re developing,” Bringardner said.  

In his second and third years, Bringardner plans to continue his work with VIPER faculty and expand his focus to supporting other experiential learning opportunities in engineering, design, entrepreneurship and innovation and work-based learning. He also wants to involve faculty that run Mines’ Capstone Design and other industry-sponsored projects, as well as field session. Bringardner envisions student organizations and competitions becoming part of this ecosystem as well. 

“Increasing the total number of opportunities for students to get those experiences is critical for their academic and career success,” he said. “We’re building out the process of encouraging students to seek out those opportunities, helping them understand what’s out there and integrating the process into the student experience. There is a strong culture at Mines surrounding these opportunities, supported by many talented faculty engaged in these programs. I hope I can continue to strengthen this community and learn from one another while sharing effective practices. It should not be experiential learning just for the sake of it, but a well-rounded, holistic approach.” 

Bringardner’s professional focus is on developing curriculum, mentoring students, and engineering education, particularly for project-based courses. He teaches the first-year Cornerstone design class, where students use design thinking and human-centered thinking to solve everyday problems. Bringardner is active in the American Society of Engineering Education, serving as the First-Year Programs Division web manager and past executive board member. He is also on the executive steering committee for the Vertically Integrated Projects Consortium. 

Prior to joining the faculty at Mines, Bringardner was Director of General Engineering (the Cornerstone Design equivalent course Introduction to Engineering and Design), Director of Vertically Integrated Projects, and Assistant Dean of Academic and Curricular Affairs at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. He holds a PhD and a master’s degree in civil and transportation engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Ohio State University.