Paper ID #32638Implementing Social Justice Projects in Thermal System and MechanicalDesign CoursesDr. Lauren Anne Cooper, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo Lauren Cooper earned her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering with a research emphasis in Engineering Education from University of Colorado Boulder. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. Her research interests include project-based learning, student motivation, human-centered design, and the role of empathy in engineering teaching and learning.Dr. Jennifer Mott
Paper ID #34091Studying the Impact of Humanitarian Engineering Projects on StudentProfessional Formation and Views of Diversity, Equity, and InclusionDr. Kirsten Heikkinen Dodson, Lipscomb University Dr. Kirsten Heikkinen Dodson is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering in the Raymond B. Jones College of Engineering at Lipscomb University. She graduated from Lipscomb University with her Bachelors degree before completing her Doctoral Degree at Vanderbilt. Upon completing her research at Vanderbilt, she joined the faculty at her alma mater where she has focused on thermal-fluids topics in teaching and
Paper ID #32546Exploring the Role of Project-based Learning in Building Self-efficacyin First-year African Engineering StudentsDr. Heather R. Beem, Ashesi University Dr. Heather Beem is a Mechanical Engineering Faculty at Ashesi University in Ghana, where she leads the Resourceful Engineering Lab. Her research explores the mechanisms and manifestations of resourceful design, particularly along the lines of indigenous innovation, experiential education, and bio-inspired fluid dynamics. Dr. Beem completed her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at MIT/WHOI, and moved shortly thereafter to Ghana. She founded and leads
].Unified voice refers to a team’s shared commitment and sense of purpose and direction for theirproject [9], [14], [16]. One of the first steps of a change team is to establish a unified voice fortheir projects, as it is integral to every step of the change process that follows [2]. As Katzenbachand Smith [9] argue, teams need to then translate their unified voice into specific and measurable 1performance goals and develop methods to assess their progress in order to achieve impactfuloutcomes. Clear goals facilitate communication and constructive conflict, where team memberscan focus on how to achieve (or change) their goals and focus on getting
, and Lifestyle”: Engineering Students’ Perceptions of Homelessness and Implications for Social Justice EducationAbstractThis paper describes how engineering students in a lower division user-centered design courseframed issues of homelessness within an engineering context. We focused on the issue ofhomelessness as the context for the course’s design project because it is one of the largestsocial justice issues impacting the area where the University of the Borderland (pseudonym) islocated. The goal was to determine how the project influenced students’ perceptions ofhomelessness and the role of engineers in this social justice issue. Results indicated thatstudents tend to frame issues of homelessness in simplistic terms aligned
) Engineering. She previously served as the project manager and lead editor of the NSF-funded TeachEngineering digital library (TeachEngineering.org, a free library of K-12 engineering curriculum), during which she mentored NSF GK-12 Fellows and NSF Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) par- ticipants from across the country on the creation and publication of their original engineering curriculum. Dr. Forbes is a former high school physics and engineering teacher and a former NSF GK-12 Fellow.Dr. Odesma Onika Dalrymple, University of San Diego Dr. Odesma Dalrymple is an Associate Professor and Faculty Lead for the Engineering Exchange for Social Justice, in the Shiley Marcos School of Engineering at University of San Diego
: a diversity workshop in anintroduction to engineering course, a student-driven project to encourage welcoming and diversestudy groups, and a junior-level teamwork design project.The study found the engineering program has a positive climate inside the classroom and aslightly less positive climate outside the classroom. Even when junior-level students report thatdiverse teams are more creative, students do not strongly believe that different backgrounds areimportant and maintain biases. The student-driven intervention was successful, as the upper-level students produced a video about the value of diverse study groups. We confirmed thattraditional engineering students are resistant to changes in student culture, as evidenced by thedifficulty
Paper ID #34275Supporting Equitable Team Experiences Using Tandem, an Online Assess-mentand Learning ToolDr. Robin Fowler, University of Michigan Robin Fowler is a lecturer in the Program in Technical Communication at the University of Michigan. She enjoys serving as a ”communication coach” to students throughout the curriculum, and she’s especially excited to work with first year and senior students, as well as engineering project teams, as they navigate the more open-ended communication decisions involved in describing the products of open-ended design scenarios. She is one of the faculty co-innovators behind Tandem.Dr
provide preliminary findings from the Science TechnologyEngineering and Math Foundry Heritage Fellows (STEM FHF) program, a student engagementand retention initiative at Tennessee Technological University (Tennessee Tech), funded by aTennessee Board of Regents Student Engagement, Retention, and Success grant. Two of themajor objectives of the STEM FHF program were to provide traditionally marginalized students ASEE 2021with a diverse array of opportunities to engage in community outreach and service as well asextensive leadership training that leveraged the Renaissance Foundry Model (herein, theFoundry) to help develop two community outreach projects featuring diversity in STEM. TheFoundry provides an
of Transportation, Illinois Tollway Authority, and Federal Highway Administration where he developed a Highway Incident Man- agement Training guide for first responders that received the Illinois Center for Transportation’s ”High Impact Project Award” and the American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials Re- search Advisory Committee’s ”Top Sweet 16 High Value Research Projects Award”. Dr. Williamson has published eleven journal articles and has presented research over 40 research papers at conferences in the areas of transportation engineering, incident management, transportation safety and other related fields. Dr. Williamson’s transportation safety research has been included for use with
c Society for Engineering Education, 2021Abstract The aim of this project is to engage students with course material related to environmentaljustice principles using anti-racist pedagogy. In a senior-level Unit Operations and ProcessSimulation course for chemical engineers, students are asked to take a holistic approach tochemical plant design. However, previous iterations of this course did not ask students to considerthe implications of building them: Who is making the decision to build these plants, and why arethey doing so? Where are these chemical plants being built? Are they safe for the workers and thesurrounding neighborhoods? Who gets to design these plants, and who will be maintaining theseplants? If there's a
transition- ing to an education-focused career track, Melissa taught at Stanford University, Santa Clara University, and Foothill College. These engagements have included courses within and outside the major, aimed at undergraduates at all years, high school students, and working adults. Melissa is now the Science and Engineering Education Fellow (SEEF) for the Bioengineering department, where she works on broader educational research projects and curricular change. Her work includes trying to better understand and support student development as ethical and quantitative thinkers. Through work with Stanford’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), Melissa has also developed diversity and inclusion content for instruc
society. Adopting queer theory as well as critical,anti-capitalist frameworks for this project help provide the tools to critique the STEM institutionas being the ideal environment for maintaining heteronormative, homophobic, and patriarchalideologies, as well as to propose revolutionary ways to dismantle this ideological aspect ofSTEM.Foucauldian Power DynamicsStemming distantly from Marxist economic theory and philosophy, Foucauldian analysis focuseson the immiscible dynamics of power through an anti-capitalist lens. Foucault, a Frenchphilosopher active during the AIDS crisis, discusses class and identity struggles as powerdynamics, which he calls “biopower.” Similarly, “biopolitics'' is the management of the peoplethrough the manufacture and
the survey were invited to an interview conducted near the endof the Winter semester or during the summer.Following the interview findings regarding team project experience (2016), we posed newquestions about peer relations in 2017. Findings from the 2017 interviews revealed topics relatedto equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). New questions were included in 2018 interviews toexplore EDI-related experiences and discourses. This paper focuses on the data from studentswho were interviewed in 2018. In summer 2018, the [first author] met with 4 male and 3 femalestudents, to examine issues linked with inclusion and exclusion. This led to a greaterunderstanding of the issues linked with gender, socioeconomic status, and race, as well as
courses that explored technical and societal integration,and more design courses and projects that included themes of human-centered design andsystems thinking (Wisnioski, 2012). Paul B. Daitch at Rochester Polytechnic Instituteemphasized design as "the major vehicle which relates technique and society" (Daitch, 1970, p.21).PurposeFirst-Year Engineering (FYE) courses have received attention from practitioners and scholarsalike in the past couple of decades (Pendergrass et al., 2001; Kilgore et al., 2007). The First-Year Programs division of ASEE had 28 papers associated with it in the 2020 Annualconference alone. There is some agreement on the content that is taught in these courses,which comprises concepts such as design, mathematical modeling
conceptualized as comprising two dimensions:leadership competence and policy control [16], [17]. Leadership competence encompasses one’sbeliefs about their skills for organizing and leading groups and policy control is a person’s beliefthey can influence decisions about policy in an organization or community [16]. Understandingcivil engineering undergraduate students' sociopolitical control beliefs may provide insight abouttheir agency to participate in activities that promote systemic change related to infrastructureinequities.MethodsParticipants and ProceduresStudy data for this project included survey responses to validated scales measuring: criticalconsciousness, system justification beliefs, social empathy, and sociopolitical control
Paper ID #32956Equity, Engineering, and Excellence: Pathways to Student SuccessDr. Doris J. Espiritu, Wilbur Wright College Doris J. Espiritu, PhD is the Executive Director of the College Center of Excellence in Engineering and Computer Science and a professor of Chemistry at Wright College. Doris Espiritu is one of the first National Science Foundation’s research awardees under the Hispanic- Serving Institutions (HSI) Program. She pioneered Engineering at Wright and had grown the Engineering program enrollment by 700 % within two years of the NSF-HSI project. Doris founded six student chapters of national organizations
understanding of the aims and uses of engineering knowledge. The purpose of this work is to explore if there is a relationship between a participant’srace/ethnic background and the paradigm which they hold, specifically that of the NewEcological Paradigm. This will provide educators and researchers a way to increase ourknowledge for broadening the participation of traditionally marginalized populations inengineering. This project utilized existing survey data of senior engineering students at a U.S.university to investigate this relationship. It is hypothesized that students from traditionallyunderrepresented groups and people of color will be more likely to endorse the New EcologicalParadigm than their White counterparts. A Pearson’s chi-square
taught and collaborated on research related to equity and social justice. With her colleagues at Cal State LA she recently received an NSF grant called Eco- STEM which aims to transform STEM education using an asset-based ecosystem model. Specifically, the Eco-STEM project focuses on shifting the metaphor in STEM education from a factory model to an ecosystem model. This Ecosystem model aspires towards an organic and healthy environment that nurtures students, faculty, and staff to become individuals fulfilled professionally and personally. She is also a co-advisor to Engineers without Borders and Critical Global Engagement at Cal Poly. American c Society
AIAN students [14]. The data from our study showsthat 54% of students identifying as underrepresented minorities graduated with an engineeringdegree, which is better than the national averages. This number is higher (63%) if the student iscontinuing generation and not Pell-eligible.Using Data as Motivation for ChangeThis project began as a collaboration between three engineering departments (ElectricalEngineering, Computer Engineering, and Computer Science; Civil, Environmental, andArchitectural Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering), the Center for Teaching Excellence atour institution, and the Analytics and Institutional Research department with the goal of usinginstitutional data to drive department-level change. Prior to this project
Paper ID #33739Antiracist Institutional Transformation Matters: How Can CommunityCultural Wealth and Counter-space Processes Illuminate Areas for Change?Dr. Emily Knaphus-Soran, University of Washington Emily Knaphus-Soran is a Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Evaluation and Research for STEM Equity (CERSE) at the University of Washington. She works on the evaluation of several projects aimed at improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM fields. She also conducts research on the social- psychological and institutional forces that contribute to the persistence of race and class inequalities in the United
one of the most challenging experiences I had in my pursuit of becoming an engineer. I was in a senior design class with 25 males and only 2 female engineers. I was in a team of 6 and it took us a few months to learn to work together effectively. Many of them had strong personalities and wanted to take over the entire project themselves, so the biggest challenge for me was finding my own space on the team to contribute.”Women also discussed having to prove themselves. As Nafisi explains, “I had many people tell me I couldn't do it and I did face some sexism while pursuing my engineering degree. So proving to everyone that I was capable was a great feeling.”In a similar vein another woman tells readers
department level a newDirector of DEI position was created and filled by Prof. Rob Carpick (one of the authors of thiswork). This person has also created a DEI Task Force within the Mechanical Engineering &Applied Mechanics (MEAM) department (on which the other author is serving). While the fullmandate of the DEI Task Force is still taking shape, the main goal is to tackle pressing issuesrelated to DEI in the department, and to develop a longer-term action plan to address theseissues. This will begin as a descriptive research project to take an honest look at where we are asa department to generate baseline data against which future interventions can be compared.Over the past year there have been several curricular and extra-curricular efforts
less successful negotiating wages, being given less-visible projects, or not being promoted [7]. In academics, women and other minorities areunderrepresented and attain tenure and other faculty positions at lower volumes and rates [8].Women in undergraduate engineering programs describe feelings of not belonging based onexperiences of microaggressions in the environment [9]. These are just a few examples of whenunconscious bias can have a negative and lasting impact.More than merely reducing the negative impacts, mitigating unconscious bias can have positiveimpacts on engineering. Reducing implicit biases in hiring increases diversity in staff and teamdevelopment. Diverse teams create better products to address broader customer needs [10
&M University. He is also the Assistant Lab Director at the Sketch Recognition Lab.Dr. Shawna Thomas, Texas A&M University Dr. Thomas is an Instructional Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineer- ing at Texas A&M University. She is a member of the Engineering Education Faculty in the Institute for Engineering Education & Innovation at Texas A&M. She enjoys project-based learning and incorporat- ing active learning techniques in all her courses. She received her Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 2010, focusing on developing robotic motion planning algorithms and applying them to computational biology problems including protein folding. She continued this work as
Higher Education (ASHE).Prof. Harriet Hartman, Rowan University Professor of Sociology, Chair of Sociology and Anthropology Department Rowan University. Co-p.i. of RED NSF RevED project at Rowan University. Editor-in-chief, Contemporary Jewry. She studies gender and diversity among undergraduate engineering students, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the experiences of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff in higher education.Dr. Stephanie Farrell, Rowan University Dr. Stephanie Farrell is Interim Dean and of the Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering and Professor and Founding Chair of Experiential Engineering Education at Rowan University (USA). Prior to 2016 she was a faculty member in
concept that helps explicate how social justice might be enacted within the academy and draws on Black women theorists in order to frame the project. The lead author, a white woman, receives the reviews, only to find that the reviewer has disparaged the writing style and the methodology, demanding graphs and charts and analysis! The tone of the review is troubling, particularly for a social justice track: as their qualitative study (along with decades of research) shows, the preference for a particular style of writing, for charts and quantitative analysis, often reveals and upholds patriarchal, Western and white supremacist values. Key to social justice, the lead author thinks, is an
underrepresentedbackgrounds that I worked with over two years as they engaged in engineering work through anout-of-school community engineering program. Designed by a team containing the author, theprogram engages youth in defining a community engineering problem of interest, researchingthat problem, and developing a solution. I led the programming multiple times over three yearswithin an afterschool and summer context. 75% of sessions were video-recorded, resulting in atleast ten hours of clearly visible video per youth. I interviewed youth via focus groups at the endof each project and collected all youth-produced artifacts. To conclude data collection, Iconducted reflective, stimulated-recall interviews with each youth. Per qualitative best practices,I member
. Breckon. “Using QSR‐NVivo to facilitate the development of a grounded theory project: An account of a worked example.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology, vol. 13(4), pp. 283- 302, 2010.[22] J. McCabe. “Racial and gender microaggressions on a predominantly-White campus: Experiences of Black, Latina/o and White undergraduates.” Race, Gender & Class, vol. 16 (1-2), pp. 133-151, 2009.[23] M.M. Camacho & S.M. Lord. " Microaggressions" in engineering education: Climate for Asian, Latina and White women. In 2011 Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), Rapid City, SD, USA, October 12 – 15, 2011, pp. S3H-1, IEEE, 2011[24] J. Minikel-Lacocque. “Racism, college, and the power of
electro- chemical energy storage systems.Dr. Corin L. Bowen, California State University, Los Angeles Corin (Corey) Bowen is a postdoctoral researcher in the College of Engineering, Computer Science and Technology at California State University - Los Angeles, where she is working on the NSF-funded Eco- STEM project. Her engineering education research focuses on structural oppression in engineering sys- tems, organizing for equitable change, and developing an agenda of Engineering for the Common Good. She conferred her Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor in April 2021. Her doctoral research included both technical and educational research. She also holds an M.S.E. in aerospace