Get to know Dr. Elizabeth Spingola, ENGE alumni!

Elizabeth Spingola ‘20 has spent her career living in the intersection of accessibility and technology.

From her dissertation, “Understanding the Relationships Between Disability, Engineering, and the Design of Engineering Course Websites Through Disabled Engineering Students' Perspectives” to her current role as a senior consultant for data engineering and accessibility at IBM, Spingola is committed to ensuring ease of access and use on all her projects.

Elizabeth has her B.S. in engineering education from Ohio Northern University, with a dual minor in computer science and math education. 

After graduation, she became certified to teach in Ohio. She taught middle school math before deciding to pursue an engineering education Ph.D. at Virginia Tech. She also received her Master’s in data analytics and applied statistics. 

Get to know more about Elizabeth in our ENGE alumni Q&A!

Can you tell us a bit about your current role, what you do there, and how you got connected to this position? 

I’m a data engineer and accessibility specialist for IBM, but my technical title is senior consultant. I specialize in federal government contracts. I’m currently working on a project with the General Services Administration and Veterans Affairs. We’re revamping their human resource systems – there’s a lot going on with that, making sure there’s proper tools in place and making sure the software we’re developing is actually accessible.

One of my coaches (that’s what we call our bosses) is actually pushing me to make accessibility a bigger thing at IBM in our federal contracts, that I think that’s something I’m really proud of – that they allow me the space to pave my way, and really make something that’s important. I’m pretty excited that I get to push the agenda a little bit further with accessibility. 

What led you to Virginia Tech, and to pursuing the Engineering Education Ph.D.?

Like so many people who go into the engineering education program, I was looking at both Purdue and Virginia Tech – both my parents are Purdue alumni, and I really wanted to go there. Then, what I realized when I went to Virginia Tech was that everybody was amazing.

The people really made me choose Virginia Tech. The friendliness – just, everybody was so welcoming. It was also nice that some of the research was what I was interested in at the time, and it turned out to be absolutely fantastic.

What was it like for you going through the Ph.D. program? Did you have any challenges? How did your advisor support you?

There were definitely some growing pains going through the Ph.D. program; I think anybody who goes through a Ph.D. has some growing pains, and it was very interesting in general. Probably one of my biggest struggles was finding an advisor that supported me. You know, I had difficulty with communication – as someone who’s autistic, I have difficulty anyway, but that added to it – so the transition period was truly a struggle. But my advisor from undergraduate and I actually came to Virginia Tech at the same time (he came as a faculty member); it was nice also having him in my court, to just a little bit keep me grounded. 

But I was really lucky to be able to have really great people in the Ph.D. program for me. My advisor was David Knight, and he is – he’s the best, like hands down, he’s the best, and he really advocated for me. I did a very unique dissertation, and especially at the time, no one was really focused on accessibility in engineering. He allowed me to take on this dissertation that wasn’t his speciality and it was fantastic. 

Typically, our students in the engineering education Ph.D. go onto faculty roles, but you went the industry route. What advice do you have for those Ph.D. students or graduate students looking to go into industry?

The biggest thing for me was making sure to actually get involved with conferences outside the traditional engineering education space. For me that was going to human computer interactions conferences, accessibility conferences, computer programming conferences and data conferences, anything that I had interest in. 

But the other big thing that I did, that I think definitely helped me, was I tried to specifically take more office jobs instead of just teaching or just research. I taught one year, did research one year, but I also took a job in the Dean’s Office for Engineering as Instructional Technology Help. Then went over to the Internal Audit office as a data analyst. It was so neat for me to be able to like, sit there, be in the office, and get that experience doing a more traditional industry type job.  

What’s next on the horizon for accessibility?

I think the big thing is moving forward and making sure when we write bids and proposals with accessibility sections, we actually focus on doing that work. Yes, it’s the law, but we go beyond law when it comes to accessibility. The phrase I’ve started using is “full stack accessibility.”  We’re looking at it from the programming standpoint, the middle, the front end – we’re looking at the entire picture. So that’s what we’re looking for when it comes to working in accessibility. 

Written by Kyleigh Dawson for Virginia Tech Engineering Education.