Dr. Charmane V. Caldwell is the Director of Student Access at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering (COE). As Director, Charmane leads a comprehensive effort to retain and graduate students in the engineering profession. She created and manages several student support programs: the Engineering Concepts Institute; Engineering Living Learning Community (LLC); Educating Engineering Students Innovatively (EESI); and Peer-Assisted Study Sessions (PASS).
Charmane is an alumna of the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering receiving her BS, MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering where her research concentration consisted of utilizing Sampling-Based Model Predictive Control for motion planning of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and autonomous ground vehicles (UGVs). She has devoted time, through the Naval Research Enterprise Intern Program (NREIP), conducting research, at the Naval Surface Warfare Center-Panama City (NSWC-PC) and Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, to simulate autonomous mine countermeasure
(MCM) missions employing multiple cooperating vehicles and testing AUV control systems, respectively. Charmane’s years of research experience have resulted in several peer-reviewed publications, an international workshop and a book chapter. During her graduate education, she was a McKnight Doctoral Fellow and Office of Naval Research (ONR) Historically Black Engineering College/University (HBECU) Future Engineering Faculty Fellow.
She co-authored the book, STEM Navigators: Pathways to Achievement in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics that is a compilation of individual success stories of five female professors, mentors and researchers in the STEM community. Recently, Dr. Caldwell was awarded $1M from the National Science Foundation as Principal Investigator (PI) on the S-STEM project, entitled “Retaining Undergraduate Engineering Students Through Experiences in Industry, Entrepreneurship, Community Engagement, and Research.”