2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Mapping Macroethical Access from Cross-Disciplinary Data Analysis at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Presented at Aerospace Division (AERO) Poster Session

Efforts to integrate ethics and equity into aerospace engineering often treat them as separate concerns centered on individual responsibility, overlooking how institutional systems shape both who gains access to ethical learning and whose perspectives are upheld as the accepted norms of ethical practice through appeals to tradition and disciplinary culture. This study applies an information-analytic approach to identify measurable patterns of ethical access and equity across the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Using a mixed-methods design, the project links aerospace faculty interviews to student survey data collected from undergraduate and graduate students across multiple engineering disciplines. The goal is to detect how structural and cultural factors within departments shape two key constructs—ethical access and pathway equity—that together represent students’ ability to engage meaningfully with ethics in their coursework.
The survey, developed from patterns found in the faculty interviews, combines existing measures of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1986) and communal or agentic goal perceptions (Diekman et al., 2011) with new Likert-scale results capturing two key constructs: the Ethical Access Gap and Structural Pathway Inequality. Analyses will map and compare patterns across disciplines and degree levels, check reliability, explore how items group together, and interpret results carefully to remain transparent despite varying response rates. By translating qualitative findings into measurable indicators, the study uses visual analytics to reveal how ethics and equity opportunities are distributed based on engineering disciplines within UIUC. The results will provide evidence of how macroethical access differs within aerospace education and across the broader engineering landscape at UIUC.

Authors

Ms. Sneha Gayen University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign [biography]

Sneha Gayen is a Ph.D. student (teaching researcher) in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her work focuses on engineering education and human factors in engineering, emphasizing ethical learning, and astronaut-centered user design for spacecraft systems. She aims to advance inclusive, safe, and human-centered aerospace engineering practices.
Elle Wroblewski University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign [biography]

Dr. Elle Wroblewski (they/them) is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department at UIUC. Their background is in sustainable aviation and engineering education outreach, and their current work is focused on making aerospace engineering education more accessible and applying aerospace engineering technology to social and environmental benefit.
Mr. Alexander Pagano University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign [biography]

Alex Pagano is a PhD student studying engineering design. His work is focused on the early phases of design and the use of human-centered design or design thinking as a teaching tool. Alex holds a BS in Materials Science and Engineering from University of
Miss Taylor Parks http://orcid.org/0009-0005-3311-7795 University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign [biography]

Taylor Parks is a research fellow in engineering education at the Siebel Center for Design. She earned her bachelor's in engineering mechanics and master's in curriculum & instruction from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on promoting teamwork in complex engineering problem solving through collaborative task design. She currently co-leads the integration of human-centered design principles within select departments across the Grainger College of Engineering.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026

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