2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 356: Providing and Implementing Inclusive Practices in Engineering Classrooms: Final Reflections from Three Partner Institutions

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

Historically marginalized and minoritized students often have negative racially charged and discriminatory experiences in their classrooms that impact their achievement and persistence. Research demonstrates the positive impacts of prioritizing and improving inclusivity in the classroom in order to improve student experiences and belonging. Though these impacts are well studied, faculty in technical disciplines such as engineering have had difficulty finding actionable and relevant guidance. This study aims to address this gap through providing both tools and community to faculty who seek to improve inclusivity in their classrooms.

In the first two years of this study, we developed and piloted the inclusive engineering practices menu and its accompanying matrix, the inclusive learning communities (ILC) for the faculty participants, and both the student and faculty assessments. This presentation will focus on communicating the cumulative data collected from both student and faculty participants and include results from faculty interviews at each partner institution. We will also discuss how archetypes of the ILCs at each institution may have impacted the experiences in the learning communities and with the study overall as well as the lessons learned from implementing this study across three institutions. We will also link these essential pieces to strategies for supporting successful implementation of inclusive practices in engineering classrooms.

Authors

Miss Jessica Moriah Vaden University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Miss Jessica Vaden is a PhD Candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh where she is a STRIVE Scholar. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in Chemical Engineering where she was a Meyerhoff Scholar (M26). Jessica’s research spans a number of different areas including sustainable engineering, empowering communities about air quality, and engineering education efforts to create inclusive classrooms and programming.
Dr. April Dukes http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6626-9331 University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Dr. April Dukes is the Faculty and Future Faculty Program Director for the Engineering Educational Research Center (EERC) and the Institutional Co-leader for Pitt-CIRTL at the University of Pittsburgh. April's research and teaching efforts engage graduate students, postdocs, and faculty to inform and support systemic change toward excellence and inclusivity in higher education.
Dr. Amy Hermundstad Nave http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6561-3455 Colorado School of Mines [biography]

Amy Hermundstad Nave is a Faculty Developer in the Trefny Innovative Instruction Center at the Colorado School of Mines. She earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado State University before going on to earn her PhD in Engineering Education and
Dr. Melissa M. Bilec University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Dr. Bilec is an associate professor in the Swanson School of Engineeringâ€™s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Dr. Bilecâ€™s research program focuses on the built environment, life cycle assessment, sustainable healthcare, and energy im

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