2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Mobilizing Resources in a Community of Practice: How Academic Change Agents Work Toward Equity in their Change Projects

Presented at Equity, Culture & Social Justice in Education Division (EQUITY) Technical Session 1

Transforming academic organizations to be more equitable and inclusive requires a range of change agents working together and engaging in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Central to this DEI work is learning how to create change. Yet, change agents do not always know at the outset what resources are necessary to enact change; they often acquire the necessary resources and skills over time. This research paper investigates how change agents participating in a community of practice (CoP) across academic institutions learn about and mobilize resources to transform engineering education.

This analysis of resource mobilization mechanisms comes from research with the National Science Foundation (NSF) Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) grant recipient teams. To date, 26 teams have been funded through the RED mechanism to create revolutionary organizational and cultural changes within their departments with the goal of improving equity, inclusion, and educational outcomes. Projects vary in how they define and the degree to which they focus on equity.

We find that resource mobilization practices in the CoP center and strengthen DEI values in two main ways. Firstly, participants learn about and gain access to resources that are explicitly DEI-related: they mobilize resources to advance equity at the institutional level as an outcome of the projects and collaborate on additional projects to embed DEI into the process of change-making itself, starting from the initial stages of writing a proposal. Secondly, the way participants engage with each other and approach change goals puts equity and inclusion into practice: participants identify and tackle structural barriers to change through DEI-aligned behaviors, from addressing how institutional circumstances create resistance to DEI, to developing a shared vision for systemic change that is inclusive and collaborative.

Authors

Selen Güler University of Washington [biography]

Selen Güler is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Washington, and a research assistant at the University of Washington’s Center for Evaluation and Research for STEM Equity (CERSE). Selen’s research interests include institutional change, social movements, and the cultural foundations of policy-making.
Dr. Elizabeth Litzler http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0626-8473 University of Washington [biography]

Elizabeth Litzler, Ph.D., is the director of the University of Washington Center for Evaluation and Research for STEM Equity (UW CERSE) and an affiliate assistant professor of sociology. She has been at UW working on STEM Equity issues for more than 17 years. Dr. Litzler is a member of ASEE, 2020-2021 chair of the ASEE Commission on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and a former board member of the Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN). Her research interests include the educational climate for students, faculty, and staff in science and engineering, assets based approaches to STEM equity, and gender and race stratification in education and the workforce. She was awarded the 2020 WEPAN Founders Award.
Dr. Cara Margherio University of Washington [biography]

Cara Margherio is the Manager of Qualitative Research at the SEIU 775 Benefits Group.
Dr. Julia M. Williams http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-8367-9463 Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology [biography]

Dr. Julia M. Williams is Professor of English at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Her research areas include technical communication, assessment, accreditation, and the development of change management strategies for faculty and staff. Her articles ha
Dr. Eva Andrijcic Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology [biography]

Eva Andrijcic serves as an Associate Professor of Engineering Management at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
Dr. Sriram Mohan Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology [biography]

Sriram Mohan is a Professor in the Deparment of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Rose-Hulman institute of Technology. Sriram received a B.E degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Madras and M.S and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Indiana University. During his time at Rose-Hulman, Sriram has served as a consultant in Hadoop and NoSQL systems and has helped a variety of clients in the Media, Insurance, and Telecommunication sectors. In addition to his industrial consulting activities, Sriram maintains an active research profile in data science and education research that has led to over 30 publications or presentations. At Rose-Hulman, Sriram has focused on incorporating reflection, and problem based learning activities in the Software Engineering curriculum. Sriram has been fundamental to the revamp of the entire software engineering program at Rose-Hulman. Sriram is a founding member of the Engineering Design program and continues to serve on the leadership team that has developed innovative ways to integrate Humanities, Science, Math, and Engineering curriculum into a studio based education model. In 2015, Sriram was selected as the Outstanding Young Alumni of the year by the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University. Sriram serves as a facilitator for MACH, a unique faculty development experience, aimed at helping faculty and administrator develop a change agent tool box.

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