2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Nuestro Impacto: An Insider Look into the Connections between Our Past Experiences and Current Teaching and Mentoring Practices

Presented at Faculty Development Division (FDD) Technical Session 2

This full research paper discusses the experiences of five Latiné/x faculty in engineering and what motivated them towards developing equity-minded educational practices for their undergraduate students. The five faculty participants provided written reflections on how their life and professional experiences have informed said practices. From a social constructionism paradigm and using narrative inquiry methodology, a combination of in vivo and descriptive coding (first cycle) followed by emergent and focused coding (second cycle) were used by the first three authors to generate a codebook. The theoretical frameworks of Community Cultural Wealth, LatCrit, and Hidden Curriculum guided the data analysis and interpretation process. Two layers of member-checking were conducted amongst the last two authors as well as additional Latiné/x faculty in engineering who were adjacent to this work and acknowledged at the end of the paper. From the analysis, four themes were identified: (a) Counter-storytelling, (b) Structural Determinism (c) Language Origins, and (d) Four Capitals of Community Cultural- Navigational, Aspirational, Social, Familial Capital. Two emerging themes identified were Arrebatos and Nepantla; and Hidden Curriculum. From the findings, a collective narrative was generated by weaving the stories and experiences of the authors. From the narrative, we conclude with recommendations for future faculty development programs as they consider faculties’ non-Monolithic backgrounds, cultures, languages, and experiences in engineering education. It is the hope of this paper that more consciousness is raised on nuestro impacto (our impact) in the practice of engineering education.

Authors

Dr. Idalis Villanueva Alarcón http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-8767-2576 University of Florida [biography]

Dr. Villanueva Alarcón is an Associate Professor in the Engineering Education Department at the University of Florida. Her research areas of interest are hidden curriculum, multi-modal methods, mentoring, and professional development.
Dr. Laura Melissa Cruz Castro University of Florida [biography]

Dr. Laura Melissa Cruz Castro is an instructional assistant professor in the Department of Engineering Education at University of Florida.
Dr. John Mendoza-Garcia http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4943-6222 University of Florida [biography]

John Mendoza Garcia is an Instructional Associate Professor at the Department of Engineering Education in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering at the University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. in Engineering Education at Purdue University, and he has a Master's and a Bachelor's in Systems and Computing Engineering from Universidad de Los Andes, in Colombia, and Universidad Nacional de Colombia respectively. He teaches and investigates the development of professional skills such as problem-solving, systems thinking, and design thinking. He worked in Industry before transitioning to academia.
Dr. Edward Latorre-Navarro University of Florida [biography]

Dr. Edward Latorre is an Associate Engineer with the Department of Engineering Education at UF and the Director of the Integrated Product and Process Design (IPPD) program. His current research areas are in support of his teaching in IPPD, a multidisciplinary senior and graduate level design course sequence where student teams develop solutions for industry sponsored projects. https://www.eng.ufl.edu/eed/faculty-staff/edward-latorre-navarro/
Mr. Diego Alvarado University of Florida [biography]

Diego Alvarado is an Instructional Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at the University of Florida. He obtained his M.Eng. in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University and his B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University. His research interests involve engineering education research for video development to increase engagement and methods to teach artificial intelligence and machine learning in higher education.
Dr. Lilianny Virguez http://orcid.org/0009-0007-1672-3907 University of Florida [biography]

Dr. Virgüez is an engineering educator with several years of teaching experience at the first-year level. Her research interests include motivation to succeed in engineering with a focus on first-year students. She has work experience in the telecommunications industry. Dr. Virgüez holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Education and a Masters’ degree in Management Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech and a bachelor’s degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the National Experimental University of the Armed Forces in Venezuela.

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