Board 118: Systems Engineering Initiative for Student Success (SEISS) Framework for Transforming Organizational Designs

Arunkumar Pennathur; Priyadarshini Pennathur; Emily Blosser; Nicholas A Bowman

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Conference: 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Baltimore , Maryland
Publication Date: June 25, 2023
Start Date: June 25, 2023
End Date: June 28, 2023
Conference Session: Industrial Engineering Division (IND) Poster Session
Tagged Division: Industrial Engineering Division (IND)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 10
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--42415
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/42415
Download Count: 323

Paper Authors

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Arunkumar Pennathur The University of Texas at El Paso

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Dr. Arunkumar Pennathur is Associate Professor of Industrial, Manufacturing and Systems Engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso. He is the author/co-author of over 100 papers in peer-reviewed forums, and has authored 4 textbooks. His research in engineering education has been supported by the National Science Foundation.

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Priyadarshini Pennathur University of Texas at El Paso

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Dr. Priyadarshini R. Pennathur is an associate professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

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Emily Blosser University of Louisiana Lafayette

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Emily Blosser is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Louisiana Lafayette. She has expertise in qualitative methods, including grounded theory and narrative analysis. She prioritizes the importance of using sociological theories to shed light on the underrepresentation of women and people of color in engineering. Her work is committed to shifting engineering environments towards diversity, inclusion and equity.

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Nicholas A Bowman University of Iowa orcid.org/0000-0001-8899-7383

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Nicholas A. Bowman is the Mary Louise Petersen Chair in Higher Education, professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs, senior research fellow in the Public Policy Center, and director of the Center for Research on Undergraduate Education at the University of Iowa. His research uses a social psychological lens to explore key issues in higher education, including student success, diversity and equity, admissions, rankings, and quantitative research methodology.

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Abstract

In this paper, we present the Systems Engineering Initiative for Student Success (SEISS) framework we are developing for enabling educational organizations to scan, evaluate and transform their operations to achieve their diversity, equity, and inclusion goals in student recruitment, retention, and graduation. The underlying structure and logic in our SEISS framework is that an organization such as a college of engineering is a sociotechnical system (STS) consisting of a social subsystem and a technical subsystem. The social subsystem consists of people, their roles and is a model of who talks to whom about what. The technical subsystem consists of all the activities, programs, policies, and operations that help the organization achieve its goals. In a sociotechnical system, the social and technical subsystems are interdependent in their functioning, and they must be jointly optimized from an organizational design perspective. Our SEISS framework which views a college or a similar organizational unit as a sociotechnical system lends the organizational designer a unique systems lens with which to view, analyze and design the operations and organize the capacities and resources in the college. The systems lens views an organizational unit, its sub-systems, components, and its corresponding capacities not in isolation, but as entities that interact with each other. With support from an NSF IUSE grant, we have been developing the SEISS framework and have piloted the framework in a predominantly white college of engineering to identify existing and potential technical and social system capacities for underrepresented minority (URM) students to succeed in the college. Preliminary results from our qualitative analyses of URM student interviews reveal the utility of the SEISS framework and the STS lens in unearthing the barriers and enablers for these students in the social and technical subsystems in the college. We also model the interactions between the social and technical subsystem elements in the SEISS framework, revealing latent opportunities for leveraging the connections between the social and technical subsystem capacities and resources.

Citation
Format

Pennathur, A., & Pennathur, P., & Blosser, E., & Bowman, N. A. (2023, June), Board 118: Systems Engineering Initiative for Student Success (SEISS) Framework for Transforming Organizational Designs Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--42415

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - In this paper, we present the Systems Engineering Initiative for Student Success (SEISS) framework we are developing for enabling educational organizations to scan, evaluate and transform their operations to achieve their diversity, equity, and inclusion goals in student recruitment, retention, and graduation. The underlying structure and logic in our SEISS framework is that an organization such as a college of engineering is a sociotechnical system (STS) consisting of a social subsystem and a technical subsystem. The social subsystem consists of people, their roles and is a model of who talks to whom about what. The technical subsystem consists of all the activities, programs, policies, and operations that help the organization achieve its goals. In a sociotechnical system, the social and technical subsystems are interdependent in their functioning, and they must be jointly optimized from an organizational design perspective. Our SEISS framework which views a college or a similar organizational unit as a sociotechnical system lends the organizational designer a unique systems lens with which to view, analyze and design the operations and organize the capacities and resources in the college. The systems lens views an organizational unit, its sub-systems, components, and its corresponding capacities not in isolation, but as entities that interact with each other. With support from an NSF IUSE grant, we have been developing the SEISS framework and have piloted the framework in a predominantly white college of engineering to identify existing and potential technical and social system capacities for underrepresented minority (URM) students to succeed in the college. Preliminary results from our qualitative analyses of URM student interviews reveal the utility of the SEISS framework and the STS lens in unearthing the barriers and enablers for these students in the social and technical subsystems in the college. We also model the interactions between the social and technical subsystem elements in the SEISS framework, revealing latent opportunities for leveraging the connections between the social and technical subsystem capacities and resources. 
AU  - Arunkumar Pennathur
AU  - Priyadarshini Pennathur
AU  - Emily Blosser
AU  - Nicholas A Bowman
CY  - Baltimore , Maryland
DA  - 2023/06/25
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Board 118: Systems Engineering Initiative for Student Success (SEISS) Framework for Transforming Organizational Designs
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/42415
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--42415
ER  -