2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 246: Early-Career Engineers’ Experiences with Equity and Ethics in the Workplace

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

Engineers are likely to face issues related to ethics, and the connections between ethics and diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in their careers. Understanding the experiences of engineers can guide the development of education, training, and other interventions to promote ethical and equitable professional cultures. The experiences of early-career engineers as they transition into professional practice can shape their future attitudes and actions related to professional ethics, social equity in the work they do, and equity in the workplace. This NSF-funded project uses a sequential mixed-methods approach to study the experiences of early-career engineers with ethics and equity. Our poster will present findings from the first round of interviews with 13 early-career engineers from various engineering disciplines in the United States of America and Canada. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with volunteering participants allowing them to share their experiences, thoughts, perceived challenges and feelings regarding equity and ethics. Interviews were analyzed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA). RTA is a flexible and inductive approach to qualitative analysis that develops themes and patterns in a systematic and reflexive manner. Initial findings indicate that some participants were exploited as they did not fully understand what their roles entailed as early career engineers, suggesting a lack of preparedness for real-life situations in the workplace. The poster will also present preliminary results from a national survey of early career engineers informed by the themes identified from the interviews as well as findings from prior studies.

Authors

Chika Winnifred Agha http://orcid.org/0009-0001-1986-4402 Colorado State University [biography]

Chika Winnifred Agha is a graduate student in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Colorado State University, working towards her master's degree. She holds a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering and has acquired expertise in both Civil Engineering and Engineering Education. This unique combination of knowledge has equipped her with a distinctive set of skills. Her research interests primarily revolve around engineering education, with a specific focus on equity, ethics, diversity, and inclusion. She is particularly interested in understanding how these factors impact early career engineers and the transition process of engineering students into the engineering industry.
Dr. Amir Hedayati Mehdiabadi University of New Mexico [biography]

Amir Hedayati is an Assistant Professor at Organization, Information & Learning Sciences program at College of University Libraries & Learning Sciences at University of New Mexico.
Dr. Rebecca A Atadero Colorado State University [biography]

Rebecca Atadero is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Colorado State University, specializing in structural engineering. She conducts research on diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in engineering and the inspection, management and renewal of existing sturctures.
Dr. Pinar Omur-Ozbek Colorado State University [biography]

Dr. Pinar Omur-Ozbek is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Colorado State University. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at Virginia Tech. Her research evolved from sensory analyses to medical and biomedical field to further study the effects of metal ions on the oral epithelial cells. During conducting sensory analyses she developed the first international odor standard to be adopted and used for Flavor Profile Analysis of drinking water.

Dr. Omur-Ozbek’s teaching interests include environmental engineering concepts, environmental chemistry, water quality analyses, ecological engineering and engineering ethics. Her research interests include drinking water quality and treatment, odorous and toxic algal blooms, impacts of toxins on crops and humans, impacts of wildfires and hydraulic fracking on surface water quality, and affected indoor air quality due to use of contaminated tap water.
Carlotta Duenninger

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