2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Creative Changemaking within Complex Institutional Contexts

Presented at Liberal Education/Engineering & Society Division (LEES) Technical Session 10: Institutions and Structures

The rise of neoliberalism within higher education - with its tendencies toward marketization, public underfunding, the rise of managerialism, and the deprioritization of undergraduate education - creates different pressures on different types of institutions and engineering education programs. For example, highly competitive departments at grant-funded, research-focused institutions may have less incentive to improve their undergraduate education programs. In the face of these trends in higher education, change efforts exist across institutions that seek to transform curriculum, pedagogy, and other aspects of undergraduate experience. However, these higher education trends also complicate expectations about what changemakers can achieve and shape how they may navigate institutional change in their different contexts in creative ways. Investigation is needed regarding how the structures, systems, and contextual realities of higher education impact change efforts.

Comparisons across teams who receive the same National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, and thus share overarching goals and requirements, allow us to investigate how different institutional and organizational contexts relate to changemaking processes and outcomes. This analysis is situated in the context of participatory action research with the NSF Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) grant recipient teams. We use an abductive approach to interpret two data sources: 1) baseline focus groups with change teams conducted in the first year of their grant period, and 2) retrospective individual interviews with key change team members after the grant period has concluded. We utilize these data sources to develop in-depth case studies based on six RED teams’ changemaking processes.

We leverage the holistic, ecological lens of Kezar’s (2018) change macro framework, which highlights layered dimensions of context that can facilitate or inhibit changemaking processes in higher education. Specifically, the framework includes cultural contexts, higher education as an institution, external stakeholders, and broader social, political, and economic factors as forces that shape transformation efforts. Guided by critical and sociopolitical theories, we are also attuned to the role of social relations, power, and political dynamics in interaction with these other contextual factors.

In this paper, we focus on findings regarding the interplay between departmental and disciplinary culture and the broader institution of higher education. We describe how elements of neoliberal higher education such as the pressures of earning tenure, securing grants, and achieving individual research success can inform or reinforce aspects of departmental and disciplinary culture. In addition, cultural norms and values, histories, and dynamics (e.g. the degree of centralization versus openness) within departments and disciplines can shape how the structures of higher education are perceived by changemakers and the extent to which they are experienced as barriers to transformation. In our explorations of the interrelationships between contextual characteristics, we highlight how higher education changemakers practice creativity to identify and cultivate possibilities for transformation within these complex realities. These findings contribute to understanding of how, despite substantial constraints, engineering programs can transform to respond to pedagogical and societal needs.

Authors

Dr. Rae Jing Han University of Washington [biography]

Dr. Rae Jing Han (they/them) is a Research Scientist at the University of Washington Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity.
Selen Güler University of Washington [biography]

Selen Güler is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Washington, and a research assistant at the University of Washington’s Center for Evaluation and Research for STEM Equity (CERSE). Selen’s research interests include institutional change, social movements, and the cultural foundations of policy-making.
Dr. Elizabeth Litzler http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0626-8473 University of Washington [biography]

Elizabeth Litzler, Ph.D., is the director of the University of Washington Center for Evaluation and Research for STEM Equity (UW CERSE) and an affiliate assistant professor of sociology. She has been at UW working on STEM Equity issues for more than 20 years.
Dr. Teodora Rutar Shuman http://orcid.org/https:// 0000-0001-8640-1224 Seattle University [biography]

Professor Teodora Rutar Shuman is the former Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Seattle University, a role she served in for 12 years until 2024. She was the PI on an NSF-RED grant between 2017 and 2023. Her research includes culture change and electro-mechanical systems for the sustainable processing of microalgae. Her work is published in venues including the Journal of Engineering Education, IEEE Transactions on Education, International Journal of Engineering Education, Transactions of ASME, Chemical Engineering Journal, Bioresource Technology, Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, and Combustion and Flame. She is a member of the ASEE, ASME, and the Algae Biomass Organization. Dr. Shuman served as Chair for the ASEE Energy Conversion and Conservation Division.
She received a Dipl. Ing. degree in mechanical engineering from Belgrade University and an M.S.M.E. and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington. She has held the title of Paccar Professor and is an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington.
Dr. Alan Cheville Bucknell University [biography]

Alan Cheville studied optoelectronics and ultrafast optics at Rice University, followed by 14 years as a faculty member at Oklahoma State University working on terahertz frequencies and engineering education. While at Oklahoma State, he developed courses
Dr. Eva Andrijcic Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology [biography]

Eva Andrijcic serves as an Associate Professor of Engineering Management at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Her major interests are in the areas of risk analysis and management, and organizational change management.
Dr. Sriram Mohan Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology [biography]

Sriram Mohan is a Professor in the Deparment of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Rose-Hulman institute of Technology. Sriram received a B.E degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Madras and M.S and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Indiana University. During his time at Rose-Hulman, Sriram has served as a consultant in Hadoop and NoSQL systems and has helped a variety of clients in the Media, Insurance, and Telecommunication sectors. In addition to his industrial consulting activities, Sriram maintains an active research profile in data science and education research that has led to over 30 publications or presentations. At Rose-Hulman, Sriram has focused on incorporating reflection, and problem based learning activities in the Software Engineering curriculum. Sriram has been fundamental to the revamp of the entire software engineering program at Rose-Hulman. Sriram is a founding member of the Engineering Design program and continues to serve on the leadership team that has developed innovative ways to integrate Humanities, Science, Math, and Engineering curriculum into a studio based education model. In 2015, Sriram was selected as the Outstanding Young Alumni of the year by the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University. Sriram serves as a facilitator for MACH, a unique faculty development experience, aimed at helping faculty and administrator develop a change agent tool box.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

« View session