Board 278: Faculty and Staff Ideas and Expectations for a Culture of Wellness in Engineering

Eileen Johnson; Sara Rose Vohra; Jeanne Sanders; Joseph Francis Mirabelli; Karin Jensen; Andrea J Kunze

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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 Topics: Diversity and NSF Grantees Poster Session
Page Count: 24
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--46852
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/46852
Download Count: 123

Paper Authors

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Eileen Johnson University of Michigan orcid.org/0000-0001-8324-0568

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Eileen Johnson received her BS and MS in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She previously worked in tissue engineering and genetic engineering throughout her education. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan. After teaching an online laboratory class, she became interested in engineering education research. Her current research interests are in engineering student mental health & wellness with a focus on undergraduate experiences with stress and engineering culture.

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Sara Rose Vohra University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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Sara Vohra is an undergraduate studying Bioengineering in The Grainger College of Engineering and minoring in Chemistry.

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Jeanne Sanders University of Michigan orcid.org/0000-0002-8865-5444

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Jeanne Sanders (she/her/hers) is a researcher in Engineering Education. She graduated with her Ph.D from North Carolina State University in the Fall of 2020. She currently works as a researcher at the University of Michigan.

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Joseph Francis Mirabelli University of Michigan orcid.org/0000-0002-2394-1247

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Joseph Mirabelli is a postdoctoral fellow in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor who researches engineering education. He earned his PhD in Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a focus in Engineering Education. His interests are centered around mentorship, mental health, and retention in STEM students and faculty. Additionally, he helps support the development of new engineering education scholars and researches quality in mixed methods research methodologies.

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Andrea J Kunze University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

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Karin Jensen University of Michigan orcid.org/0000-0001-9456-5042

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Karin Jensen, Ph.D. (she/her) is an assistant professor in biomedical engineering and engineering education research at the University of Michigan. Her research interests include mental health and wellness, engineering student career pathways, and engagement of engineering faculty in engineering education research.

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Abstract

Mental health challenges are a growing concern in engineering education. A culture that promotes wellness in engineering could support both student and faculty psychological health. As part of a larger, ongoing project on the mental health and wellness of undergraduate engineers, our team has investigated how stress and culture interact in engineering education to produce environments that promote hardness over wellness. We posit that faculty and staff are influential stakeholders in defining the culture of academic programs, thus making them important sources of information for understanding the associated core shared beliefs and assumptions. The goal of this paper is to qualitatively analyze what faculty imagine or believe a culture of wellness would look like in engineering. To collect their perceptions of mental health and wellness in engineering culture, our team conducted interviews with faculty and staff informed by the engineering cultural framework proposed by Godfrey and Parker. Participants (N=28) worked primarily with undergraduate students and represented a range of engineering disciplines, from biomedical engineering to engineering physics, as well as a variety of institution types and sizes. Specifically, responses to the question “What do you think a culture of wellness in engineering or your department would or should look like?” were separated from the rest of the data for thematic analysis. We developed a codebook, applied it to the data, and used thematic analysis to identify topics grouped by motif, resulting in three overarching themes representing the data. With a focus on actionable patterns of meaning, the three themes are (1) Building a Supportive Community, (2) Improving Work and Academic Policy, and (3) Supporting Self-Care with Student Wellness Resources. Participants expressed their views on what a culture of wellness might look like and suggested ideas that they believe would be beneficial to implement. These suggestions included aspects of a caring community, mindful policy change, and support for students through wellness resources. Implementing participant suggestions regarding a culture of wellness could lead to changes in the existing culture, which would support engineering student mental health and wellness. To better understand how engineering culture and undergraduate wellness interact, future work will expand interviews to include engineering student views on a culture of wellness. These interviews will be analyzed and synthesized with prior work, which will facilitate the identification of strategies to promote wellness in engineering. Culture is built by the minute actions of all participants, thus identifying individual perceptions of well-being in the engineering community is critical to working towards a culture of wellness that is productive and rewarding for all involved.

Citation
Format

Johnson, E., & Vohra, S. R., & Sanders, J., & Mirabelli, J. F., & Kunze, A. J., & Jensen, K. (2024, June), Board 278: Faculty and Staff Ideas and Expectations for a Culture of Wellness in Engineering Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--46852

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Mental health challenges are a growing concern in engineering education. A culture that promotes wellness in engineering could support both student and faculty psychological health. As part of a larger, ongoing project on the mental health and wellness of undergraduate engineers, our team has investigated how stress and culture interact in engineering education to produce environments that promote hardness over wellness. We posit that faculty and staff are influential stakeholders in defining the culture of academic programs, thus making them important sources of information for understanding the associated core shared beliefs and assumptions. The goal of this paper is to qualitatively analyze what faculty imagine or believe a culture of wellness would look like in engineering. To collect their perceptions of mental health and wellness in engineering culture, our team conducted interviews with faculty and staff informed by the engineering cultural framework proposed by Godfrey and Parker. Participants (N=28) worked primarily with undergraduate students and represented a range of engineering disciplines, from biomedical engineering to engineering physics, as well as a variety of institution types and sizes. Specifically, responses to the question “What do you think a culture of wellness in engineering or your department would or should look like?” were separated from the rest of the data for thematic analysis. We developed a codebook, applied it to the data, and used thematic analysis to identify topics grouped by motif, resulting in three overarching themes representing the data. With a focus on actionable patterns of meaning, the three themes are (1) Building a Supportive Community, (2) Improving Work and Academic Policy, and (3) Supporting Self-Care with Student Wellness Resources. Participants expressed their views on what a culture of wellness might look like and suggested ideas that they believe would be beneficial to implement. These suggestions included aspects of a caring community, mindful policy change, and support for students through wellness resources. Implementing participant suggestions regarding a culture of wellness could lead to changes in the existing culture, which would support engineering student mental health and wellness. To better understand how engineering culture and undergraduate wellness interact, future work will expand interviews to include engineering student views on a culture of wellness. These interviews will be analyzed and synthesized with prior work, which will facilitate the identification of strategies to promote wellness in engineering. Culture is built by the minute actions of all participants, thus identifying individual perceptions of well-being in the engineering community is critical to working towards a culture of wellness that is productive and rewarding for all involved. 
AU  - Eileen Johnson
AU  - Sara Rose Vohra
AU  - Jeanne Sanders
AU  - Joseph Francis Mirabelli
AU  - Andrea J Kunze
AU  - Karin Jensen
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Board 278: Faculty and Staff Ideas and Expectations for a Culture of Wellness in Engineering
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/46852
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--46852
ER  -