2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This Practice paper describes a structured “positionality statement” activity designed to help first-year undergraduates to situate themselves within histories of inequality in engineering practice and embrace their unique perspectives as integral to inclusive and equitable engineering design. This exercise used the classroom as a terrain of struggle, where personal identities and relationships with our society and the practice of engineering are sources of tension. The activity formed the basis of a lecture in a first-year engineering design course embedded in a Catholic, Jesuit university core curriculum and was open to all majors. The course integrated historical engineering practice with study of engineering fundamentals. The course included a separate, semester-long laboratory focused on improving accessibility on campus. The positionality reflection was introduced at the mid-point of this project, when stakeholder engagement was at a critical point.
The in-class exercise invited 130 students to engage in written reflections responding to prompts that: (1) describe their own identities, (2) consider how those identities affect how they view engineering problems, (3) think of a lived experience that shaped their understanding of accessibility and privilege, (4) consider how to share their identities with their project teammates, (5) articulate the value of the course to themselves, and (6) reflect on the value of the exercise in their future lives, and (7) imagine how we might create more ethical and inclusive engineering practices. These reflections served as pedagogical exercises on how identity informs engineering design, and as research artifacts illuminating how first-year students understand their own identities, power, and responsibility.
Analysis of more than 60 short reflections revealed that students contend with bias, privilege, and empathy in the context of effective engineering design. Students reflected on assumptions around cost, usability, and what constituted “average” users, revealing unexamined privileges. Several students described noticing gendered design, with one reflecting that “as a woman, I see problems men don’t consider, like lack of safe public spaces or design of restrooms.” Several connected family relationships to ableism in society: “I want to design so no one feels excluded the way my sister does.”
By centering these reflections within an introductory course, this activity demonstrates how a brief, early intervention can begin to cultivate ethical reflection within a campus community. Moreover, this activity contributes to work that demonstrates how engineering education can support societal reform, positioning reflection of one’s identity as an introduction to understanding and combating structural harms that underpin our diverse communities.
This practice paper contributes to ongoing ECSJ discussions on the transformative potential of the classroom setting to facilitate student engagement in inclusive, equitable engineering and details facilitation methods and prompts that instructors can adapt to diverse institutional contexts.