Lueny Morell Award for Educational Innovation

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Lueny Morell Award for Educational Innovation

Please join IFEES and the Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC) in honoring the wonderful memory of Lueny Morell, an educator, an innovator, and a leader of inspiration.

Her legacy will live eternally in the hearts and minds of her family, friends, and the world of engineering. We celebrate her memory and her dynamic global impact.

May she rest in peace.

Read Uriel Cukierman‘s message about Lueny in English or in Spanish.

My Discovery

Before her passing, Lueny wrote the following message for her friends, family and colleagues.

Dear children, family, colleagues, friends all. I want to leave – etched in your imagination – this discovery, result of spiritual discernment, about my happiness in unearthing the greatness of the Creator. Close your eyes and imagine, as I did, a firefly, a lightning bug, an extremely small being, but possessing light. Imagine this firefly has a light that does not go out. This firefly is walking through an infinite, black space. Searching, looking all the time. Looking for another light, other lightning bugs, a bigger light. And so, it finds another one, and it gets happy. And it goes around whirling and dancing. And it moves closer, and starts to move around it, to know it, to love it. I think that we all human beings are like that: that we seek and seek, in the blackness of infinite space, until at a given moment, we get to know it. It starts small, and then it grows.

That’s how it happened to me when I met Waldy. I could only be turning and spinning, and knowing him. And yes, we had highs and lows, but that’s how I got to know more about him. Maybe not everything, since it is trying to get to know a person fully. And then my three luminous stars were born: Tonio, Caro, Gaby. And for a few moments I also had Juan Pablo, who I couldn’t touch or caress, but I had it. And through those three stars, those three luminaries, which filled my heart, with the three of them I knew the true dimension of love, of creation, of the essence of the Creator.

With Tonio, I’ll never forget when he came home from school at 11, and he explained the theory of relativity to me. He said, “Mommy, do you want to know it?” And I, in my little mind, did not know it, I did not understand it, something that he in simple terms explained to me: “Well look, Mommy, an ant is a two-dimensional being. It walks to the front and sideways on a flat surface, but it does not know the third dimension, depth, upwards and downwards – although it feels its effects! If someone crushes it, it dies; if
someone puts a barrier on its way, it feels it without understanding it.” Then he added, “We humans are three-dimensional beings: X, Y, Z. We walk, we have three dimensions, but there are other dimensions which we don’t understand.” And at that moment, I realized why human beings cannot understand God. We cannot see Him, we cannot grasp Him as we would like. He is everything, He is everywhere, but we do not fully understand Him. Yet, we feel his effects, because he embraces us, holds us in His arms, carries us when we hurt, takes us by the hand towards Him, little by little.

Then Caro was born, with her ever-present gift of joy, always happy, always sweet, always authentic… a little girl, but what an immense sweetness! What a joy when she walks through the door! Like a lovely firefly. That little light that comes right into me and fills the house with peace, confident expectation, and inexplicable jubilation… Just as when Christ comes into our hearts. Through her I learned that must be the crux of God: an inexplicable, ever-present joy.

It was then Gaby’s turn to teach me a great lesson, at 5 years old. We had already moved into our current house, and he was going down the stairs. He had done “something”, although I don’t know what wrong a 5-year-old could have done. I was returning home from the University, tired and weary, and I gave him a sharp scolding – as we parents do to children without knowing the pain we are inflicting. I’m sure he wasn’t deserving of any such reprimand. He was crying and crying, and came up to me and –
rather then saying, “Mommy, will you forgive me” – he told me, “Mommy, I forgive you.” I understood that the one who feels the pain has to forgive – as Christ did on the cross: He forgave those ignorant of what they were doing. Love, the essence of the Creator, the essence of God, is above it all.

And so, little by little, I have been discovering the wonder of God, my heart. I know I haven’t been perfect, I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes. But to know how to love, you have to be humble, you have to understand,
you have to know the other person, put yourself in their shoes. Don’t pass judgment, because we’re all different. Understand that every person comes from a different environment, with a different DNA, and thinks differently. And if our light and that other person’s are together, it means there’s an opportunity to get to know fully. And how is it that you know fully? With humility, listening with your heart. Listening not to words, not sounds, but by putting us in the other person’s heart, taking away from our minds all that we are to position ourselves within the other person, and trying to understand why she/he is feeling like this, why she/he is thinking like this, and not passing judgment, just accepting, accepting with love, accepting the essence of that person. And when we hurt each other, forgive, but forgive with our hearts, because rarely do we hurt each other on purpose. Rarely do we plan the wound, rarely. We do it unintentionally.
And if we realize that we have hurt, we must take that first step: say “Forgive me. Will you forgive me for what I did you, for what I told you?”, and heal. It’s the greatest relief that can come to the heart after a wound: ask forgiveness, even if we’re hurt, even if we’re bleeding.

I don’t know what else to tell you, what else. I love you, I love you with passion. And – to my beloved children – I adore you, and want to thank you for the last few days you’ve given me to enjoy you. It’s a gift that has no price, to see you cheerful, to see you near me. I’m taking with me all that love. I’m taking with me all that joy. I take with me your faces, your voices, your hands. I want you to know that I love you. I love you, and I will love you. And will always, always, always be with you. And if you share the faith that I have, you can be sure that I will embrace you, that we will all embrace together at the end of the days.

Time will not pass for me, nor will space change. But for you, it will. Be patient and trust in God’s creation. That wonderful Creator whose way of doing things we do not understand but whose creation is precious and for us to enjoy eternally. Stay with God, my dear children, my dear family, my dear Waldy, my dear friends. Stay with God. Ask him for patience, ask him for hope. Everything’s going to be okay.

Remember that: everything has always been well, it is well, and it will be well, until the end of days. God bless you.

Lueny Morell
August, 2020

About Lueny Morell

Lueny Morell, MS, PE, Ing.Paed.IGIP was a co-founder of IFEES and served as Past President. She was an important voice in the creation of the GEDC and Student Platform for Engineering Education Development and the Founder & Director of InnovaHiEd, a world-class team of experts with extensive academic and industry experience offering services to help higher education leaders in transforming their institutions to better respond to their stakeholders’ needs and the socioeconomic development challenges they face.

With a BS and MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico and Stanford University, Lueny was co-founder of NEU, a new school of engineering established in Silicon Valley, California in 2012 as well as the School of General Engineering at Beihang University in China in 2017. From 2002 to 2012 she was part of the Strategy, Open Innovation and University Relations teams at HP Labs Strategy and before that, a full professor of Chemical Engineering at University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez for 24 years, where she had various academic and administrative positions, including Director of R&D.

She was an IEEE Senior Member, an ASEE Fellow a member of the Pan-American Academy of Engineering, ABET Program Evaluator, member of the Advisory Board of the International Centre for Engineering Education (ICEE) of the UNESCO-Chinese Academy of Engineering and has received various awards for her work, including the prestigious US National Academy of Engineering Gordon Prize for innovations in engineering education in 2006. Recognized as one of the Engineering Education Pioneers in the US in 2014, Lueny was passionate about engineering education and innovation as fundamental pillars for economic and social well-being. She was the author of Essentials to Innovate Engineering & Related Disciplines booklet.

Lueny maintained two blogs on topics associated with innovation and engineering education and her team consulting/mentoring activities (www.luenymorell.com; www.innovahied.com).