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Session Description

Ticketed event: Guest Ticket - Monday Lunch - $55.00

Speakers

1. Dr. Joel Alejandro Mejia

   The University of Texas at San Antonio

   Dr. Joel Alejandro (Alex) Mejia is an Associate Professor with joint appointment in the Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering and the Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies at The University of Texas at San Antonio. His research has contributed to the integration of critical theoretical frameworks in engineering education to investigate deficit ideologies and their impact on minoritized communities. His work seeks to analyze and describe the assets, tensions, contradictions, and cultural collisions many Latino/a/x students experience in engineering through testimonios. He is particularly interested in approaches that contribute to a more expansive understanding of engineering in sociocultural contexts, the impact of critical consciousness in engineering practice, and the development and implementation of culturally responsive pedagogies in engineering education. Dr. Mejia was awarded the NSF CAREER Award in 2020 to support his project titled “CAREER: Breaking the Tradition of Silence through Conocimiento and Consciousness Raising among Latinx Engineers.”

2. Idalis Villanueva Alarcón

   University of Florida

   Dr. Idalis Villanueva Alarcón is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at the University of Florida. In 2019, she received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) award for her NSF CAREER project on hidden curriculum in engineering. She has a B.S. degree is in Chemical Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and a M.S. and Ph.D. degree in Chemical and Biological Engineering from the University of Colorado-Boulder. She also completed her postdoctoral fellowship from the National Institutes of Health in Analytical Cell Biology in Bethesda, Maryland and worked as a lecturer for 2 years at the University of Maryland-College Park before transitioning to a tenure-track position in engineering education.

3. Mrs. Monique S. Ross

   The Ohio State University

   Monique Ross, Associate Professor in the Engineering Education Department at The
   Ohio State University earned a doctoral degree in Engineering Education from Purdue University. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Elizabethtown College, a Master’s degree in Computer Science and Software Engineering from Auburn University, eleven years of experience in industry as a software engineer. Her research interests include broadening participation in computing through the exploration of: 1) race, gender, and identity in the academy and industry; 2) discipline-based education research in order to inform pedagogical practices that garner interest and retain women and minorities in computer-related engineering fields. She has been awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award (2019) titled: Cracking the diversity code: Understanding computing pathways of those least represented in order to foster their representation and uses her scholarship to challenge the perceptions of who belong in computing.