2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Board 232: CAREER: Disrupting the Status Quo Regarding Who Gets to Be an Engineer—Highlights from Year 2
Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session
Although broadening participation efforts aim to transform who has access to engineering by targeting those historically excluded, Black and Brown students’ participation remains stifled by the exclusionary culture and practices ingrained in engineering. Consequently, there is a need for scholarship that advances our understanding of systemic changes that center equity, challenge exclusionary cultural norms, and ultimately contribute to a disruption in the status quo of who gets to be an engineer.
The overarching research question guiding this study is: What combination of insights and actions form a robust, actionable change model for broadening participation in engineering and set Colleges of Engineering on a viable path to parity? Using a multi-case research design that is framed by Kotter’s Leading Change theory and Acker’s Inequality Regimes as theoretical foundations, this CAREER award aims to uncover the change strategies institutionalized by four exemplary COEs to improve Black and Brown students’ access to engineering education and careers. The institutions included in this study are: 1) Florida International University, 2) University of Maryland- College Park, 3) University of Maryland-Baltimore County, and 4) George Mason University. Semi-structured interviews with university personnel, focus group interviews with students, on-campus observations, and publicly-available reports make up the database associated with each case.
To date, we have conducted 31 interviews with faculty, staff, and leaders across the four exemplary institutions. These data have illuminated a suite of best practices for advancing equity in historically exclusionary areas of student experiences – admissions, financial aid, and degree requirements. Moreover, the data are also informing the adaption of Acker’s Inequality Regimes for a higher education context rather than the workplace setting in which it was designed. Lastly, the research team continues to engage in professional development activities that will build our capacity to construct compelling impact narratives that tell the story of how equity-oriented change came about at each exemplary COE. In the coming years, we will shift our focus to translating the research findings into a toolkit that can be implemented by university leaders at institutions across the United States.
The most substantive elements of this executive summary will have two foci. One, we will present the data analysis strategy we plan to use for analyzing interviews. Lastly, it will include an application of the analytic strategy to the data as part of developing preliminary findings about the “internal calculus” students perform (or may want to consider performing) when processing the messages they receive during critical junctures in their academic journey. Preliminary findings suggest that most messages fall on a spectrum of benign and malignant and come from messengers who range from benevolent to hostile. The findings have implications for the sender and receiver of such messages, and researchers focused on engineering identity formation.
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Dr. Jeremi S. London Virginia Tech [biography]
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Dr. Brianna Benedict McIntyre Virginia Tech [biography]
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Ms. Nicole Adia Jefferson Virginia Tech [biography]
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For those interested in:
- Broadening Participation in Engineering and Engineering Technology