2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Creating Inclusive Classrooms: Work Developed during the ASEE Year of Impact on Racial Equity (YIRE)

Presented at Equity, Culture & Social Justice in Education Division (EQUITY) Technical Session 3

As part of the ASEE Year of Impact on Racial Equity (YIRE), a subcommittee of the Faculty and Administrators Pillar focused on creating inclusive classrooms that actively incorporate antiracist pedagogy. To define the commitment and intent of the work, the subcommittee members initially developed the following tenets.

We understand that racial inequality exists, is commonplace, and is perpetuated in engineering education. The members of this group do not position ourselves as experts on antiracism. Throughout our involvement in this endeavor, we aim to learn and grow in our knowledge and implementation of antiracist pedagogy into our courses and curricula, and in how we teach. We aim to amplifying the work and voices of black scholars who are leading this effort. For the white members of the group, we acknowledge our positions of privilege and aim to use that privilege to confront white supremacy and racism and commit to taking action and to speaking up and out against racism. The goal of this antiracist pedagogy is to acknowledge the imbalance of privilege and power, and to work to redistribute these more equitably. We also want to acknowledge the demand on educators and that each educator's approach to antiracist pedagogy will be different based on their own positionally and privilege within their institutions. We aimed to bring more inclusive practices to faculty in easily accessible and applicable chunks.

To achieve these goals, the group of educators focused on providing resources for instructors to help them start and continue incorporating anti-racist teaching and practices. As the deliverable for our work, this subcommittee has compiled inclusive and anti-racist pedagogies. Each pedagogy included a summary of the practice, a list of references, and a reflection about implementing the practice. These reflections provide insight on effectiveness and can help other instructors, as they look to implement new pedagogies. Many of the pedagogies have benefit to general inclusiveness, but the focus of the reflections was on the ant-racist impact.

The ongoing goal of the work is to continue collecting pedagogies and reflections from subcommittee members and any interested educator. By developing this pool of resources, educators can learn from each other, share resources, amplify the work of others, and grow together in our knowledge and implementation of antiracist pedagogy.

Authors

Dr. Shannon D. Barker University of Virginia [biography]

Dr. Shannon Barker completed her PhD at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and completed two post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Washington and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, specializing in gene delivery. Shannon has been in teaching and program development in higher education for the last 13 years, both at the Georgia Institute of Technology and now at the University of Virginia.
Dr. Kenya Crosson University of Dayton [biography]

Dr. Kenya Crosson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Dayton. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the areas of engineering design and innovation, engineering mechanics, hydraulics, and water and wastewater treatment. Kenya Crosson received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Environmental Engineering from Penn State University in 2005 and 2000, respectively, and a B.S. in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering from North Carolina A&T State University in 1998. Dr. Crosson’s research group at the University of Dayton is currently focused on physicochemical water treatment and mitigation of emerging water contaminants and micropollutants.
Dr. Victoria E Goodrich University of Notre Dame [biography]

Dr. Victoria Goodrich is a Teaching Professor in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department at the University of Notre Dame. She holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Oklahoma and a MS and PhD in Chemical Engineering from Notre Dame.

In her role as a teaching professor, she teaches hands-on courses across the chemical engineering curriculum. Her educational research focuses on student belonging in engineering classrooms, hands-on learning, and team/group dynamics.
Dr. Jordan Jarrett, P.E. Colorado State University [biography]

Jordan Jarrett (she/her) is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Colorado State University (CSU). Dr. Jarrett received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering from CSU and then earned her Ph.D. at Virginia Tech. Prior to joining CSU, she worked as a structural engineering consultant for nearly 7 years in Seattle, WA. Dr. Jarrett combines her practical experience and love of teaching to create welcoming classroom environments tailored to preparing students for their future careers and inspiring them to be lifelong learners. She is passionate about making engineering education and the engineering industry more innovative and more inclusive.

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