Dr. Besterfield-Sacre's research area involves examining engineering education issues through the eyes of assessment. The work involves using primarily quantitative approaches and statistical modeling as well as mixed methods to study the impact of curricular innovations/pedagogies (e.g., model eliciting activities, flipped/inverted classroom), and issues that affect engineering pathways (e.g., freshmen attitudes, gender/URM issues, K-12 STEM pipeline). The heart of the work involves using assessment techniques to investigate how and whether particular learning outcomes develop in engineering students under different contexts, and subsequently determining ways to improve this learning. Specifically, the work focuses on measuring process-oriented technical and professional skills (e.g., ethical reasoning, teamwork, innovation attributes, and more recently global competency/preparedness). Such process-oriented outcomes are often hard to measure as the focus of measurement is not on the product produced but rather on students engaged in performing aspects of that outcome (i.e., the process).