2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Exploring Department Readiness for Equity-Work and Inclusive Practices in Engineering PhD Programs: A Competing Values Approach

Presented at Institutional inclusion: Advancing equity and belongingness in engineering education

There is a growing awareness of the inequities that are embedded within graduate education in engineering. However, addressing these iniquities requires systems-level changes, which are difficult in higher education. In alignment with this understanding, our team is developing a center focused on organizational change at the graduate level within one university’s College of Engineering (COE). As members of this center strive to make equity-focused changes within the COE, we must ensure our thinking considers the decentralized nature of graduate education within the institution. Moreover, we must also grapple with faculty resistance to change, regardless of reason. The purpose of this work-in-progress research study is to report on the development of a reflection instrument that can be used to assist change leaders in determining their faculty’s readiness for change. In particular, we will report on instrument development, piloting results, and the current instrument iteration. We leverage the Competing Values Culture Framework (CVCF) to better understand engineering faculty members’ values as it relates to graduate education. By exploring faculty readiness we will uncover barriers that must be considered before addressing equity work in a local context.

Authors

Teirra K Holloman Virginia Tech Department of Engineering Education [biography]

Teirra Holloman is a postdoctoral associate in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. Teirra received her Ph.D. in Engineering Education and M.Eng. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech and her B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Clemson University. Her research interests include organizational resilience; organizational change; diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in engineering and global education programs.
Julia Machele Brisbane http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-9580-0646 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

Julia Brisbane is a Ph.D. student in the Engineering Education Department at Virginia Tech. She received her M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences Engineering and her B.S. in Bioengineering from Clemson University. Her research interests lie in undergraduate research experiences in engineering, racial health disparities, and broadening participation in engineering.
Natali Huggins [biography]

Dr. Natali Huggins is a Research Scientist in the Engineering Education Department at Virginia Tech. She holds a master's in public administration from the National Experimental University of Táchira in Venezuela. In addition, she has several years of experience in research and practice at graduate education level in the engineering field, with special focus on assess based perspectives, minoritized students’ socialization, and agency in graduate education. Her strengths include qualitative research study design and implementation. Her dissertation examined Latinx motivation to pursue Ph.D. in engineering, minoritized engineering doctoral students’ socialization and the impact of the engineering context in their experiences. Her research expertise lies in diversity and inclusion in graduate education, with a particular interest in minoritized students' socialization, the engineering context, and the best ways to support students' persistence to degree completion.
Dr. Walter C. Lee http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5082-1411 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

Dr. Walter Lee is an associate professor in the Department of Engineering Education and the director for research at the Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity (CEED), both at Virginia Tech.
Dr. David B Knight http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4576-2490 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

David Knight is a Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech and also serves as Chief of Strategy in the College of Engineering and Special Assistant to the Provost. His research tends to be at the macro-scale, focused on a systems-level perspective of how engineering education can become more effective, efficient, and inclusive, and considers the intersection between policy and organizational contexts. Knight currently serves as the co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Engineering Education.

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