2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 216: Building Community for Inclusive Teaching: Can We Bridge the Valley of Neglect?

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

This work describes an effort to nudge engineering faculty toward adopting known best practices for inclusive teaching through a program called Engineering is Not Neutral: Transforming Instruction via Collaboration and Engagement Faculty (ENNTICE). This monthly faculty learning community (FLC) followed the three-year structure of the Colorado Equity Toolkit: Year 1 (reported in 2022) focused on self-inquiry including reflection; Year 2 (reported in 2023) focused on course design including training new engineering faculty; Year 3 (reported in the current paper) focused on building community. The emphasis on building community allows us to address our research question: To what degree does faculty participation in an FLC impact engineering college culture? Building community is measured through broadening participation by faculty in known best practices for inclusive teaching, including three elements of interest. First, we share within our engineering college the progress each department has made toward inclusive teaching participation, using thermometer-styled graphics like those used to illustrate progress toward a fundraising goal. Second, after reviewing certain sections of our engineering college’s plan for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), we submitted brainstormed ideas for implementation to our dean’s office. And third, after reviewing reports from student focus groups conducted in 2020/21, we evaluated progress and made recommendations for next steps; in this context the clarity and urgency of the student feedback is both motivational and difficult to ignore. The common theme in each of three elements is seeking to bridge the valley of neglect that so often divides scholarly work about DEI from concrete changes that benefit students, employers, and the broader community.

Authors

Prof. Maryam Darbeheshti http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7988-0906 University of Colorado Denver [biography]

Dr. Maryam Darbeheshti is Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado, Denver. She is the PI of a recent NSF award that focuses on STEM identity at Urban Universities.
Darbeheshti's primary research is in the area of multi-phase viscous flow and Engineering Education.
Prof. Tom Altman [biography]

Tom Altman received his B.S. degrees in Computer Science and in Mathematics, and M.S. and Ph.D. (1984) in Computer Science, all from the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Altman specializes in optimization algorithms, formal language theory, complex systems and engineering education
Prof. Katherine Goodman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5235-3372 University of Colorado Denver [biography]

Katherine Goodman is an associate teaching professor at the University of Colorado Denver in the College of Engineering, Design, and Computing. She also serves as the University's Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. Her research focuses on transformative experiences in engineering education. She has served as program chair and division chair of the Technological and Engineering Literacy - Philosophy of Engineering (TELPhE) Division.
Dr. Heather Lynn Johnson http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-8865-2075 [biography]

Heather Lynn Johnson is a mathematics educator who investigates students’ math reasoning. She designs tasks to help students to expand their math reasoning, and she studies how instructors and departments transform practices to grow students’ math reasoning.
Marie E. Evans University of Colorado Denver [biography]

Marie Evans draws her experience from working across different sectors, from domestic and international nonprofit work to education and technology. She partners with teams by facilitating and implementing creative processes and collaborates on initiatives and research projects with social good emphasis. She's worked with cities, non-profits, medical professional teams, K-12 groups, and more. She supports the research process with extensive experience engaging diverse stakeholders, assisting with data collection, and data analysis procedures. She obtained her Bachelor's degree in Cross-cultural Studies from Palm Beach Atlantic University.
Prof. David C. Mays http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5218-1670 University of Colorado Denver [biography]

David Mays is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Colorado Denver. He earned his B.S. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1995, then taught high school through Teach for America and worked as a contractor at Los Alamos National Laboratory before earning his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley in 1999 and 2005, respectively. He has been at CU Denver since 2005, where he applies ideas from complex systems science to study flow in porous media and leads the graduate track in Hydrologic, Environmental, and Sustainability Engineering (HESE).

Download paper (2.44 MB)

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session

For those interested in:

Broadening Participation in Engineering and Engineering Technology