2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Lessons Learned: Motivational Factors for Engineering Faculty Seeking Professional Development for Inclusive Teaching

This lessons-learned paper presents qualitative data on the factors motivating engineering faculty to seek professional development for inclusive teaching, that is, teaching that works for all students. We conducted semi-structured interviews with nine engineering faculty who had self-selected into a three-year faculty learning community (FLC) designed to address the recognized gap between the known best practices for inclusive teaching and actual practices. Our study was designed to determine what factors of engineering college culture accelerate or inhibit faculty participation in the FLC and implementation of known best practices for inclusive teaching by those same faculty. Interview recordings were transcripted and coded. Using phenomenographic analysis, we identified three themes, descriptions of which have been submitted to a refereed engineering education research journal. In this presentation, we focus on lessons learned, not reported elsewhere, that emerged from two specific codes: (1) reasons for joining the FLC and (2) benefits of FLC, which address, respectively, why faculty joined the FLC and why they stayed for at least two years, when the interviews were conducted. Faculty joined the FLC because they were invited, because they wanted to learn inclusive teaching, because they desired conversations around teaching. Faculty stayed because the FLC helped them to focus on their students and because they appreciated the focus on teaching. A common theme across both codes, and perhaps the biggest surprise, was that faculty joined the FLC and stayed for at least two years because it provided a stronger and deeper sense of community at work. We intend these lessons learned might help to guide others working to improve the research-to-practice cycle through faculty development, and we welcome feedback from the community following our lightning talk.

Authors

Marie E. Evans University of Colorado Denver [biography]

Marie Evans is a professional that works within diversity and inclusion initiatives and assists in conducting qualitative research focused on working towards a more equitable society.
Prof. Tom Altman [biography]

Dr. Altman received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh. He specializes in optimization algorithms, formal language theory, and complex systems. He has published a book and over 90 journal/refereed papers. He received numerous research and teaching awards. An ABET CAC Program Evaluator, Dr. Altman has expanded his research interests into STEM and, in particular, Engineering Education.
Dr. Maryam Darbeheshti http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7988-0906 University of Colorado Denver [biography]

Maryam Darbeheshti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado Denver. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Denver in 2009. She has been teaching at CU Denver since 2010. Darbeheshti's research interests are in the area of Fluid Mechanics and Engineering Education. She is the PI of a recent NSF award that focuses on STEM identity at Urban Universities.
Prof. Katherine Goodman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5235-3372 University of Colorado Denver [biography]

Katherine Goodman is an associate teaching professor at the University of Colorado Denver in the College of Engineering, Design, and Computing. She also serves as the University's Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. Her research focuses on transformative experiences in engineering education. She has served as program chair and division chair of the Technological and Engineering Literacy - Philosophy of Engineering (TELPhE) Division.
Dr. Heather Lynn Johnson http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-8865-2075 [biography]

Heather Lynn Johnson is a mathematics educator who investigates students’ math reasoning. She designs tasks to help students to expand their math reasoning, and she studies how instructors and departments transform practices to grow students’ math reasoning.
Prof. David C. Mays http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5218-1670 University of Colorado Denver [biography]

David Mays is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Colorado Denver. He earned his B.S. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1995, then taught high school through Teach for America and worked as a contractor at Los Alamos National Laboratory before earning his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley in 1999 and 2005, respectively. He has been at CU Denver since 2005, where he teaches fluid mechanics and hydrology, studies flow in porous media using ideas from complex systems science, leads the graduate track in Hydrologic, Environmental, and Sustainability Engineering (HESE), and advocates for broadening participation in engineering. He is a registered professional engineer (PE) in California and Colorado.

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

For those interested in:

Broadening Participation in Engineering and Engineering Technology
Faculty