2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The Cal Poly Computer Engineering department is engaged in a process to create a more inclusive and diverse culture for students and faculty through an NSF funded RED grant called “Breaking the Binary”. Our goal is to empower students and faculty to identify barriers to inclusion, and to build an environment where such structures can be dismantled so students can thrive. As part of this work, it is important to understand current faculty attitudes around the department climate and culture, and faculty knowledge of inclusive pedagogical practice and curricular design. Such knowledge will allow us to better guide our change efforts going forward. The work described here explores these current or baseline faculty attitudes as captured by a survey sent to both department and college of engineering faculty members.

The survey includes validated instruments on culturally responsive teaching, department climate and culture, psychological safety, climate for innovation, and feelings of community as it relates to the goals and activities of the department transformation project, and perspectives, specifically from computer engineering department faculty, on their personal alignment with and commitment to the department vision, perceived and anticipated barriers to departmental transformation, and current priorities within the context of the project goals. This survey is part of a larger mixed method approach to record the initial state at the start of the department transformation.

This paper analyzes faculty responses collected across the college of engineering to identify how faculty knowledge and attitudes differ and which departments we may learn from during our transformation process.