2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This NSF-funded project (Research Initiation in Engineering Formation, Award #2106206) investigated how professional development experiences can strengthen faculty agency for ethically grounded and socially responsive engineering education. The work responded to national calls for engineering programs to integrate social responsibility and sustainability within disciplinary instruction. Although many faculty development models emphasized individual learning outcomes, they often overlooked the organizational and collaborative conditions needed to sustain pedagogical transformation.

The project centered on a structured Community of Practice (CoP) organized through the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). The CoP engaged chemical engineering faculty who sought to incorporate ethics, equity, and social responsibility into their teaching. Guided by the Transformational Agency (TA) framework, the study examined how different forms of agency (i.e., strategic, sustained, relational, and coalitional) emerged as faculty enacted changes in curriculum and professional engagement. Ecological Systems Theory (EST) was used to consider how micro, meso, and interpersonal systems shaped participants’ capacity for change.

Data collection included three in-depth interviews with each participant over the course of the CoP, reflective artifacts, and session observations. The analysis focused on how agency developed over time and how contextual supports or barriers influenced faculty decision-making. Results from the reflexive thematic analysis revealed that participants’ agency trajectories evolved through three overlapping phases: (1) reflective practice, where participants articulated tensions between disciplinary norms and social responsibility; (2) community involvement, where collaborative dialogue within the CoP fostered relational and coalitional agency; and (3) curricular implementation, where participants translated reflective insights into formal and experiential learning activities for students. Findings indicated that Communities of Practice provided critical relational infrastructure for faculty to exercise and sustain agency in teaching for social responsibility. The project produced a set of evidence-informed design principles for professional learning environments that emphasized reflection, collaboration, and structural support rather than solely content delivery.

By connecting individual faculty growth with systemic and organizational contexts, this work contributes to the engineering education community’s understanding of how professional learning networks can drive cultural change in disciplinary teaching. The poster will present key project milestones, the CoP structure, and resources developed to guide future faculty development initiatives.