2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This paper provides further results on continuing research studying the impact of humanitarian engineering projects on student professional formation and views of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Through this project, the authors aim to create a more inclusive and equitable engineering workforce by involving students in humanitarian engineering. Previous results from this study have shown positive results from open-ended questions from a survey, but little difference between those who have and have not participated in a humanitarian engineering project from Likert-scaled items. These mixed results from the quantitative and initial qualitative analysis of the survey suggest that further qualitative investigation would better reveal insights for this project’s objectives. From the results of the survey, the researchers designed a semi-structured interview protocol to explore the deeper nuances of the impacts of humanitarian engineering projects on inclusive behavior. This paper will focus on the interview of two engineering students who participated in the survey before and after involvement in a humanitarian engineering project. Interestingly, from the survey, it seems that one student was highly impacted by their involvement, whereas the other was not. The interviews with these two students examine their experiences in engineering, their participation in a humanitarian engineering project, and how these experiences connect with their views of inclusivity and equity in the field. The paper reviews the thematic analysis of the interviews through coding and provides a comparison of the two students, their experiences, and their behaviors. In addition to the results from these interviews, the paper also briefly describes the interview design and revision as well as the iterative participant selection process. As next steps, the research team will be interviewing a mixture of engineering students and alumni from Lipscomb University. From these interviews, the team will build a model which may be utilized by other engineering organizations to create inclusive engineers and increase diverse representation in the field.