2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Like many universities, Unnamed University has several initiatives to improve the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in its various programs. The authors have received an internal grant to develop the “New Engineering Toolbox”, which will be a resource to help instructors bring DEI concepts into engineering courses. As part of this project, students were surveyed at the beginning and end of their first-year engineering (FYE) cornerstone course and at the beginning and end of their capstone design course. This allowed the authors to measure the impact of DEI materials that had been incorporated into courses. The intent of the survey was to examine student perceptions of the diversity of the program and the college/university to determine if they were satisfied with the present level of diversity and productive discourse between students of different backgrounds. These perceptions were investigated using a series of Likert scale questions. Additionally, students were asked open-ended questions about how they defined inclusion, equity, diversity, and inclusive design. They were also asked to provide examples of inclusive and non-inclusive design. Finally, they were asked whether they felt DEI topics should be covered in engineering courses. Open-response responses were analyzed to find common themes. The survey resulted in a total of 409 responses from FYE students representing all engineering disciplines. Only mechanical engineering capstone design students were surveyed, resulting in 52 responses. The surveys were anonymous, although a non-identifying marker was used to match before and after surveys from the same respondents. A total of 9 capstone students and 13 FYE students responded to both surveys. Results showed that incoming FYE students generally understand the concept of diversity, as do capstone design students. However, many FYE students conflate inclusion and diversity. Moreover, they struggle to define inclusive design and cannot generate many examples of inclusive designs. Capstone design students were better able to separate diversity and inclusion and were able to provide definitions and examples of inclusive and equitable designs. Both groups struggled to identify non-inclusive designs. Additionally, FYE students tended to be more satisfied with the diversity of the college and the university than capstone design students. Encouragingly, both groups reported refining their definitions of these concepts over the course of the term and several students reported altering their original design ideas to make them more inclusive. Based on these results, more specific examples of inclusive design are required, particularly at the freshman level. Students should also be required to specifically address DEI issues in their projects and should document their efforts in this vein. Future work involves expanding the survey to sophomore and junior-level classes so as to map the evolution of these concepts over time, as well as to generate course-specific examples of DEI concepts used to enhance learning in engineering courses.