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A descriptive examination by race/ethnicity in how engineering faculty understand their efficacy and responsibility for engaging in equity-based initiatives for faculty of color

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Conference

2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Publication Date

June 22, 2025

Start Date

June 22, 2025

End Date

August 15, 2025

Conference Session

ERM Technical Session: Faculty Influences on Student Support

Tagged Division

Educational Research and Methods Division (ERM)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

15

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/55360

Paper Authors

biography

Linda DeAngelo University of Pittsburgh Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-8508-5909

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Linda DeAngelo is Associate Professor of Higher Education, Director of Graduate Studies with a secondary faculty appointment in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. DeAngelo studies social stratification, investigating how social inequities are produced, maintained, and interrupted. Currently her scholarship focuses on access to and engagement in faculty mentorship, the pathway into and through graduate education, and gender and race in engineering.

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Christa E. Winkler Mississippi State University

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Blayne D. Stone University of Pittsburgh

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Charlie Díaz University of Pittsburgh

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Charlie Diaz is a PhD student studying Higher Education at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a recipient of the K. Leroy Irvis Fellowship. His research interests include minoritized student experiences in Higher Ed, student activism, and the development of inclusive policy and practice in Higher Ed.

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Abstract

This full empirical research paper addresses how engineering faculty perceive their roles and responsibility in creating an equitable environment within academia, an understudied but important area to address in organizational change efforts. To begin to fill this gap, we developed a survey to understand the ways that faculty take up responsibility for driving diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) changes. The instrument included 7 scales measuring faculty perceptions of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belongingness (DEIB) policies and practices, professional development and support for faculty of Color, and efforts to recruit and retain faculty of Color, as well as their perceptions of personal responsibility and self-efficacy to enact DEIB change. We collected data from 179 engineering faculty at three private engineering institutions in the Northeast region of which 137 provided race/ethnicity data and make up our analytical sample - Asian faculty (n=29, 16.2%), Black, Latiné, Indigenous (BLI), and multiracial BLI faculty (BLI(M)) (n=18, 10.1%), and white faculty (n=90, 50.3%). Mean standardized factor scores were created for each scale and pairwise comparisons using t-tests with a Bonferroni correction were used to examine differences between groups. The results highlight differences and trends among Asian, White, and BLI(M) faculty in DEIB readiness and responsibility. The findings of this study have implications for understanding how faculty assess their environments and how they view their responsibility and readiness to engage in enacting equity-based initiatives.

DeAngelo, L., & Winkler, C. E., & Stone, B. D., & Díaz, C. (2025, June), A descriptive examination by race/ethnicity in how engineering faculty understand their efficacy and responsibility for engaging in equity-based initiatives for faculty of color Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . https://peer.asee.org/55360

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