2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Lessons Learned: Designing an Empathy Workshop for Engineering Faculty to Promote Equity-Focused Teaching

Presented at Faculty Development Division (FDD) Technical Session 3

This paper shares lessons learned from designing and reflecting on an empathy workshop for engineering faculty. The workshop design is grounded in research that shows empathy is crucial to building positive faculty-student relationships inside and beyond class. This workshop will first introduce empathy as a vehicle to promote equity-focused teaching in engineering, and then engage faculty in role-playing scenarios, self-reflection, and discussions. Through those interactive activities, faculty will be encouraged to practice empathy skills in a low-stakes environment. The paper also captures the inner voice of the educational developer to reflect on the nuances of demonstrating empathy skills in workshop facilitation. This workshop is currently under development to deliver in Fall 2023 to meet the emerging needs of the college of engineering at [X university]. This paper will be presented in a lightning talk format to obtain feedback on the workshop design from the audience.

Authors

Dr. Linjue Wang University of Michigan [biography]

Dr. Linjue (Jade) Wang is an instructional consultant at the Center of Research on Learning & Teaching in Engineering (CRLT-Engin) at the University of Michigan. She creates teaching & learning workshops, provides consultation, and leads programs to support faculty development for tenure track and lecturers in Michigan Engineering. She received a Ph.D. in Engineering Education and an M.S. in Industrial Systems Engineering from The Ohio State University. Her doctoral research focused on 1) how engineering students develop empathy during community-based learning (e.g., service-learning) and 2) how engineering educators can integrate empathy into their teaching. Before studying in the U.S., Linjue (Jade) earned her B.E. in Building Environment and Energy Engineering from the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University in China.

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