2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Problem: Increasing the graduation rates of BIPOC+ and women in the engineering field is at the core of this multi-institutional Alliance. The work described in this piece of a larger project centers on an equity-lens for both internal and external collaborative work with the common goal of diversifying the engineering field.

Research Questions: There are two research questions. 1) How is equity understood and centered in the work of the Alliance from the perspective of the collaborators? 2) How do well established professionals, who have been working in the engineering field for decades, think outside the box to implement new best and promising practices for recruiting, retaining and graduating BIPOC and women engineering students?

Methodology: In this qualitative study, we used the framework known as the GEAR Model (Getting Equity Advocacy Results) to develop semi-structured interview questions for collaborators within a multi-institutional Alliance. In total we completed 15 interviews, which were recorded and transcribed for coding purposes.The interviews were transcribed using the “Gold Standard,” which is an approach where one member of the research team codes all of the narratives in the data set, setting the standard. A second member of the research team serves as the reliability coder. The reliability coder codes a subset of the total data set, but that person’s coding is used only to establish interrater reliability with the master coder; it is the coding of the master coder that is used in the final analysis. The proportion coded by the reliability coder will depend on the size and complexity of the data set, but a common figure is 20% of the total data set (e.g., Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011; McLean & Pratt, 2006).

Findings: Several common themes emerged from coded interviews. The themes that were found include a lack of common voice and knowledge, top-down decision making, lack of organization resulting in slow movement, communition, and the focus on equity as an overarching goal, but lack in the internal workings of the Alliance.

Implications: Based on this research, the Alliance is moving forward with recommendations centered on inclusive voice and advocacy to ensure the voices of the engineering education practitioners and other experts in the Alliance are amplified and de-siloed. The first step is to form a working group guiding the implementation of the GEAR model to focus on equity. Additionally, the work within this Alliance will provide a guide for other multi-institutional collaborations that focus on equity within the engineering field.