Charles Henderson, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and director of interdisciplinary STEM research in the College of Sciences, has received the Jay Wright Forrester Award from the System Dynamics Society. The award recognizes the paper judged to have made the most significant contribution to the field of system dynamics over the preceding five years. 

The award honored a 2024 paper in Nature Sustainability co-authored by Henderson entitled “Community-Based Propagation to Scale Up Educational Innovations in Sustainability.” The paper emerged from a highly interdisciplinary collaboration among Henderson, lead author Juliette Rooney-Varga of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, Florian Kapmeier of Reutlingen University in Germany, and David Ford of Virginia Tech.

The paper addresses a problem in educational change: How can effective instructional innovations spread beyond the individuals who develop them? The research team built a system dynamics model to study how educational innovations spread — or fail to spread — among university instructors. They found that building a community of “ambassadors” who are committed adopters and actively mentor and recruit others can create reinforcing feedback loops that accelerate adoption and sustain growth.

The work reflects Henderson’s broader research program on understanding and promoting instructional change in higher education, with a particular emphasis on improving undergraduate STEM instruction. Earlier this year, he was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He joined the NC State faculty in 2025.

Read more about the award at UMass Lowell News.

This post was originally published in College of Sciences News.