Charlie Michaels is the Managing Director of the Center for Socially Engaged Engineering & Design (C-SED) and a Lecturer in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. In this role, he leads the Center’s academic and co-curricular programs, including designing and teaching courses within C-SED’s academic program in Socially Engaged Engineering & Design (SEED), developing student fieldwork experiences, managing the C-SED Lab (an interdisciplinary makerspace), and founding C-SED’s graduate facilitator program. Through this work, Charlie advances the Center’s mission to create transformative learning experiences that strengthen the sociotechnical thinking and skills of engineers and designers.
Charlie has over a decade of experience teaching and developing interdisciplinary, community-based programs that integrate social responsibility, community engagement, and cultural humility into engineering, design, and art education. He is a co-author of the Socially Engaged Design Process Model, led the development of Introduction to Socially Engaged Design—a Massive Open Online Course on Coursera—and regularly collaborates with faculty across the university to embed socially engaged practices into curricula. He is also a Lecturer in the College of Engineering’s Design Science program, where he teaches the required graduate seminar for incoming master’s and PhD students.
Charlie holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art & Design from the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art & Design and a BFA from Bradley University. His academic and creative work has been recognized through fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Arts Strategies, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Ragdale Foundation.