2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 404: The Process of Building Faculty Buy-in for Course-Based Adaptations of an Ecological Belonging Intervention to Transform Engineering Representation at Scale

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

This project uses an ecological intervention approach that requires one class or recitation/discussion session to implement and has been shown to erase long-standing equity gaps in achievement in introductory STEM courses. We describe these disparate impacts in a given course as equity gaps because they exist not from any deficit of the students themselves but rather systemic issues of marginalization that make students feel as if they do not belong. Despite the stated intent of institutions and faculty to provide students with equal access to educational opportunities and success, equity gaps in achievement continue to be evident in STEM. Our analysis of institutional data in engineering at the institutions we study revealed equity gaps in student academic performance in first-year engineering courses by race and ethnicity when controlling for gender, international student status, first-generation college student status, term, and instructor. Our preliminary results at one of the institutions who employed the intervention indicate that this intervention is effective in reducing belonging losses for Black, Latino/a/x, and Indigenous students within this first-year engineering course and partially addressing the equity gaps in academic performance.

Instructors play a key role in students’ experience in engineering courses and their perspectives on diversity, equity, and inclusion are valuable determiners of willingness to implement this intervention within their classroom. As a part of a NSF IUSE: EDU Program, Institutional and Community Transformation track grant, we are investigating student-level and instructor-level issues: 1) the ways in which our brief intervention should be customized for different course contexts; 2) the key mechanisms for how the intervention supports proximal and distal student outcomes; and 3) the efficacy and mechanisms by which the course onboarding strategies involving leadership messaging and community learning processes are successful across course, departmental, and university contexts in transforming each targeted course.

In this paper, we focus on that third component and describe our process for building buy-in with leadership and faculty for this intervention. As a part of this process, we have gathered survey information to understand instructor willingness to use this intervention in their classroom including instructor attitudes about diversity, equity, and inclusion; barriers for implementation; and other concerns. One of the goals is to identify differences between faculty who would be willing to take action to address these equity issues through implementing the ecological belonging intervention and those who will not. We will also provide an update on the results of the intervention on student outcomes. The results of this work can help inform strategies for institutional scaling and transformation and potential barriers for others interested in the uptake of evidence-based classroom engineering education efforts.

Authors

Dr. Linda DeAngelo http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8508-5909 University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Linda DeAngelo is Associate Professor of Higher Education, Center for Urban Education Faculty Fellow, and affiliated faculty in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. DeAngelo studies social stratification, investigating how social inequities are produced, maintained, and interrupted. Currently her scholarship focuses on access to and engagement in faculty mentorship, the pathway into and through graduate education, and gender and race in engineering.
Dr. Allison Godwin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0741-3356 Purdue University, West Lafayette [biography]

Allison Godwin, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University. Her research focuses on how identity, among other affective factors, influences diverse students to choose engineering and persist in engineering. She also studies how different experiences within the practice and culture of engineering foster or hinder belonging and identity development. Dr. Godwin graduated from Clemson University with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and Ph.D. in Engineering and Science Education. Her research earned her a 2016 National Science Foundation CAREER Award focused on characterizing latent diversity, which includes diverse attitudes, mindsets, and approaches to learning to understand engineering students’ identity development. She has won several awards for her research including the 2021 Journal of Civil Engineering Education Best Technical Paper, the 2021 Chemical Engineering Education William H. Corcoran Award, the 2022 American Educational Research Association Education in the Professions (Division I) 2021-2022 Outstanding Research Publication Award, and the 2023 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Research.
Dr. Erica M. McGreevy University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Teaching Associate Professor
Department of Biological Sciences
Dr. Eric Trevor McChesney http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7831-9642 University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Eric McChesney (he/him) is a Postdoctoral Scholar for Psychosocial Interventions at Scale with the Learning Research and Development center at the University of Pittsburgh. His work focuses on the development of robust, transferrable psychosocial interventions that improve the outcomes of and environments experienced by women, people of color, and other historically-marginalized students pursuing degrees in Science, Engineering, Mathematics, and Technology (STEM). A further strand of his research examines the development of interdisciplinarity in the sciences and works to define the mechanisms by which it is formed, identify the contexts conducive to its flourishing, and develop the educational experiences that accelerate its development.
Kevin R. Binning http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5396-4183 University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Social psychologist with an interest in diversity and belonging in STEM.
Prof. Natascha Trellinger Buswell http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8503-5787 University of California, Irvine [biography]

Natascha Trellinger Buswell is an associate professor of teaching in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, Irvine. She earned her B.S. in aerospace engineering at Syracuse University and her Ph.D. in engineering education at Purdue University. She is particularly interested in inclusive teaching conceptions and methods and graduate level engineering education.
Dr. Christian D. Schunn University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Dr. Christian D. Schunn is a professor of Psychology, Intelligent Systems, and Learning Sciences and Policy at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also a senior scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center. He received his Ph.D. in Psycholo
Charlie Díaz University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Charlie Diaz is a PhD student studying Higher Education at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a recipient of the K. Leroy Irvis Fellowship. His research interests include minoritized student experiences in Higher Ed, student activism, and the development of inclusive policy and practice in Higher Ed.
Gerard Dorvè-Lewis http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5542-2057 University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Gerard Dorvè-Lewis (he/him) is a higher education Ph.D. student and scholar at the University of Pittsburgh. His broad research interests include emerging adulthood, equity, inclusion, and justice in higher education, first-generation college students, Black students, sense of belonging, and student success. Before beginning his doctoral journey, he worked full-time in student affairs at the University of Florida, informing his research interests. At the University of Florida, he earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in family, youth and community sciences.
Kevin Jay Kaufman-Ortiz http://orcid.org/https://0000-0001-6488-7104 Purdue University, West Lafayette [biography]

Kevin Jay Kaufman Ortiz is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Engineering Education at Purdue University. He has a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez Campus and is a certified mathematics teacher in the Department of Education in Puerto Rico. Kevin is currently a Ph.D. student at Purdue University, and his interests currently lie in cultural identity, engineering culture, acculturation, belonging, and inclusion for populations of the U.S. territories.
Beverly Conrique University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Beverly Conrique is a PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research seeks to understand social psychological and ecological influences in two topical areas: U.S. politics and education. Her research in education focuses on understanding how people’s experiences in educational domains are shaped by their subjective understandings of themselves and their social environment. She is also passionate about social justice and service work, both in her research and in her professional roles.
Maricela Bañuelos University of California, Irvine [biography]

Maricela Bañuelos received her Sociology B.A. from the University of California, (UC) Santa Barbara in 2016, and graduated with Summa Cum Laude. She received her master’s in Educational Policy and Social Context from UC Irvine in 2020 and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Sociology at UC Irvine with an emphasis in Chicano Latino studies. Maricela was awarded the Ford Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in 2021, to support her doctoral research on issues of access and persistence in higher education. Her research centers the social mobility of first-generation college students, low-income students, and underrepresented students of color.
Carlie Laton Cooper, M.Ed. University of Georgia [biography]

Carlie is a doctoral student in the Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education at the University of Georgia (UGA). She earned a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from UGA (2017) and a Master of Education in Higher Education Administration from Georgia Southern University (2021). She has higher education experience in business affairs and academic advising. She researches structures that contribute to underrepresentation in STEM majors and is currently a Graduate Assistant for the UBelong Collaborative.
Anne-Ketura Elie University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Anne-Ketura Elie earned a BS degree in 2019 in psychology from the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.

She is currently a graduate student researcher at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her research interests are the factors that foster sense of belonging in academic settings, more specifically teacher-student relationship factors that promote student’s sense of belonging and adaptive meaning making.

Ms. Elie is also a member of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
Rachel Kelly Forster University of Pittsburgh
Ms. Brianna Julia Gonzalez University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Brianna Julia Gonzalez was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. She obtained her B.A. in Psychology at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). In 2022, she participated in an internship program with the Learning and Research Development Center (LRDC) at the University of Pittsburgh. She is currently applying to graduate programs to continue her education with an interest in belonging and higher education. She hopes to work with minority students to encourage and aid in continuing education for underserved communities.
Danielle Vegas Lewis http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7266-6328 SUNY Fredonia [biography]

Danielle Vegas Lewis is currently the SUNY PRODiG Fellow at SUNY Fredonia where she teaches sociology and gender courses. She also serves as a Research Associate for Dr. Linda DeAngelo at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research agenda aims to understand and disrupt the ways in which socially constructed identities allow for the reproduction of social inequality, with a focus on understanding the ways institutions of higher education and other social structures challenge or uphold hegemonic environments in which majority populations accumulate power that harms students underrepresented in certain contexts.
Dr. Heather Lee Perkins http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8757-0545 University of Illinois, Urbana - Champaign [biography]

Heather graduated from the Applied Social and Community Psychology program in the spring of 2021, after completing her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Cincinnati. She has participated in various research projects examining the int
Nelson O. O. Zounlomè University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Nelson O. O. Zounlome, Ph.D., is the Founder, CEO, and a mental health & academic thrive consultant through Liberate The Block (https://liberatetheblock.com/) ~ an agency dedicated to helping Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in higher ed thrive. Dr. Z. is also a first-generation college graduate, child of immigrants, and a published author. He is a former McNair Scholar, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, & Medicine-Ford Foundation Fellow, Herman B. Wells Graduate Fellow, International Counseling Psychologist, former Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky, and current Post-Doctoral Research Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Z.'s research program focuses on examining the impact of intersectional oppression on historically excluded groups & creating culturally relevant interventions to enhance their well-being. Within this framework, he studies academic persistence and mental wellness to promote holistic healing among BIPOC. He earned Bachelor's degrees in Psychology & Sociology, a Master's degree in Learning Science-Educational Psychology Track, and is a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Indiana University. In addition to work, Dr. Z. loves reading, discovering new music/art, outdoor activities, time with friends and family, and living a holistically full life.

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