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Board 269: Equity-focused Goals of Humanitarian Engineering Students: Addressing Systemic Oppression, Amplifying Community Cultural Wealth, Developing Social Justice Self-Efficacy, and Elucidating Career Concerns

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Conference

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Portland, Oregon

Publication Date

June 23, 2024

Start Date

June 23, 2024

End Date

June 26, 2024

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Tagged Topic

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Page Count

13

DOI

10.18260/1-2--46842

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/46842

Download Count

78

Paper Authors

biography

Emma Sophie Stine University of Colorado Boulder Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-0822-9937

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Emma Stine is pursuing a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she is researching student experiences before, during, and after attending a graduate program in humanitarian engineering, focusing on how these experiences influence career goals and outcome expectations. She is interested in how these goals align with social justice movements, including if and how students and practitioners are addressing global inequality and the SDGs in career pathways, especially now, when activists are calling for the development sector to implement decolonized and anti-racist structures. Emma graduated from the California Polytechnic with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 2019 and an M.S. in Irrigation Engineering in 2020.

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biography

Amy Javernick-Will University of Colorado Boulder Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-3933-2614

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Amy Javernick-Will is a Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder in the Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering Department.

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Abstract

Humanitarian Engineering (HE) programs, aimed at training engineers to address infrastructure and public service inequality, have gained popularity and are drawing diverse and passionate students, including those from historically underrepresented minority groups in STEM. However, there is a lack of comprehensive data on how these students' career aspirations and capabilities evolve within HE programs. Furthermore, the HE field is undergoing a transformation, grappling with its colonial legacy, which has contributed to perpetuating disparities through infrastructure and environmental racism and the need for decolonization. This research explores how these changes influence students enrolled in HE programs. Specifically, we collect and analyze data from longitudinal interviews and surveys with 47 graduate students enrolled in seven HE graduate programs in the US. Through this research, we explore and characterize HE students’ evolving (1) self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and career interests in the HE sector; (2) social justice activism, including their critiquing of social oppression and motivation for social justice; and (3) self-efficacy in social justice activism, tying changes to learning experiences throughout the program. Further, we (4) examine how the cultural capital of marginalized students adds value to HE education and the support provided to and barriers encountered by these students in their programs. As a result, this study longitudinally documents how social justice calls influence pedagogy and student growth, pushing students to challenge colonial narratives and engage in equity-oriented changes. Overall, this research contributes to the understanding of how HE students navigate their evolving career aspirations, activism, and the decolonization of the HE field.

Stine, E. S., & Javernick-Will, A. (2024, June), Board 269: Equity-focused Goals of Humanitarian Engineering Students: Addressing Systemic Oppression, Amplifying Community Cultural Wealth, Developing Social Justice Self-Efficacy, and Elucidating Career Concerns Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--46842

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