2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Diversity is a key concern for universities, especially in the engineering field. North American universities have been recently pushing for diversity, equity, and inclusion in their education system. University X started by diversifying the teaching team in one of its engineering programs to check the effectiveness of diversifying the teaching team on the education system. It replaced the teaching team for two courses from white males of European descent to racialized females with no other instructions on how to deliver their courses. Both teams were given the same teaching notes and instructions to teach from, however it was fascinating to see what levels these courses were taken to by just diversifying the teaching team.

In one of the studio courses, the principals of universal design have never been included explicitly in years past. The previous lecture material, which served to introduce a similar project that focused on furniture design in past years, included slides that referenced “man as the universal standard” and contained many slides of architectural graphic standards based on the average European man’s body proportions. In 2022, the teaching team is entirely female, bringing more diversity to the presentation of materials than ever before. The instructors are focusing on human-centered design and universal design methods in multiple lectures over the course, encouraging students to design equitable user experiences and empathize with the diversity of the greater public.

In another mechanics course, the female instructor transformed the activities delivered in the class to include the ethical and social impact effects. She did so by transforming the delivery of the same hands-on activity from a simple report to a presentation to middle school kids in the community around them. The aim was to present the mechanics concepts learned in class through hands-on activities to middle-school kids while focusing on how such structures affect society. They need to do so through well guided ethical behavior guidelines taking into consideration their audience and engaging all students with their different capabilities. The aim was to increase the engagement of women and marginalized students and kids in such activities as they get to clearly relate to the benefits to the society for these structures and the engineering disciplines in general.

This paper discusses in detail the transformation done through these two courses by the simple fact of diversifying the teaching team as well as the effects noticed on the education system