She has been a faculty member at OSU since 1991. Karen has been active in the CAST division since 1991. She has served several times as session chair as well as presented papers for the CAST division. Most notably, she served as Director from 1997 to 1999. In addition to her responsibilities in Chemical Engineering, she served as the Coordinator of Women in Engineering from 1991 to 1996. From 1998 to 2001, Karen was the OSU site director for the Measurement and Control Engineering Center (MCEC) which is an NSF Industrial/University Cooperative Research Center. She continues to do research with the Center that is headquartered at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.