Virtual - 1pm to 5pm Eastern Time Each Day
January 24, 2021
January 24, 2021
January 28, 2021
Diversity and CoNECD Paper Submissions
7
10.18260/1-2--36073
https://peer.asee.org/36073
387
Elizabeth Litzler, Ph.D., is the director of the University of Washington Center for Evaluation and Research for STEM Equity (UW CERSE) and an affiliate assistant professor of sociology. She has been at UW working on STEM Equity issues for more than 15 years. Dr. Litzler is a member of ASEE, incoming chair of the ASEE Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and a former board member of the Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN). Her research interests include the educational climate for students, faculty, and staff in science and engineering, assets based approaches to STEM equity, and gender and race stratification in education and the workforce.
Dr. Julia M. Williams is Professor of English at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Her research areas include technical communication, assessment, accreditation, and the development of change management strategies for faculty and staff. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Engineering Education, International Journal of Engineering Education, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, and Technical Communication Quarterly, among others.
Cara Margherio is the Assistant Director of the UW Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity (CERSE). Cara manages the evaluation of several NSF- and NIH-funded projects, primarily working with national professional development programs for early-career academics from groups underrepresented in STEM. Her research is grounded in critical race and feminist theories, and her research interests include community cultural wealth, counterspaces, intersectionality, and institutional change.
Ms. Doten-Snitker is a Graduate Research Assistant at the University of Washington's Center for Evaluation and Research for STEM Equity, where she is part of a team conducting research on university-level educational and professional training, with a focus on increasing equity and participation of underrepresented and minority students and professionals. She has contributed to evaluation research for a range of programs funded by the NSF, NIH, and USAID. Additionally, she is a Doctoral Candidate in Sociology at the University of Washington, where her scholarship focuses on political processes of inclusion and exclusion.
Sriram Mohan is a Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Rose-Hulman institute of Technology. Sriram received a B.E degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Madras and M.S and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Indiana University. During his time at Rose-Hulman, Sriram has served as a consultant in Hadoop and NoSQL systems and has helped a variety of clients in the Media, Insurance, and Telecommunication sectors. In addition to his industrial consulting activities, Sriram maintains an active research profile in data science and education research that has led to over 30 publications or presentations. At Rose-Hulman, Sriram has focused on incorporating reflection, and problem based learning activities in the Software Engineering curriculum. Sriram has been fundamental to the revamp of the entire software engineering program at Rose-Hulman. Sriram is a founding member of the Engineering Design program and continues to serve on the leadership team that has developed innovative ways to integrate Humanities, Science, Math, and Engineering curriculum into a studio based education model. In 2015, Sriram was selected as the Outstanding Young Alumni of the year by the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University. Sriram serves as a facilitator for MACH, a unique faculty development experience, aimed at helping faculty and administrator develop a change agent tool box
Eva Andrijcic serves as the Associate Professor of Engineering Management at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. in Systems and Information Engineering from University of Virginia, where she worked at the Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems. She received a B.S. in mathematics from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. Her major interests are in the areas of risk analysis and management, critical infrastructure management and protection, interdisciplinary engineering education, and risk education.
Developing “shared vision” is an often repeated recommendation for effective and sustainable change from organizational consultants (Kania and Kramer, 2011) and scholars of higher education (Henderson, Beach, and Finkelstein, 2011). Embracing stakeholders as full partners through sharing vision is a proactive way to bridge connections and incorporate a variety of viewpoints into the change process. Building shared vision requires broad stakeholder engagement and infuses the change project with both personal agency and effective participation. Shared vision is a useful concept that can be made more accessible and actionable through social science research on how change-making teams engage and empower stakeholders to collaborate on their projects.
Sharing vision can amplify success, increase participation, and erode the divide between project leaders and constituents. While desiring stakeholder cooperation, change agents often focus on acquiring “buy-in” from stakeholders, but this concept is quite limiting for change projects, especially those focused on DEI. The very language of buy-in predisposes change leaders to favor informational communication in order to get stakeholders excited about decisions, rather than formational communication that involves them in decision-making.
Based on our experience working with university change agents funded through the NSF RED (Revolutionizing Engineering Departments) Program, this workshop shares strategies for developing and sustaining shared vision. As the RED projects progressed, teams adjusted to meet challenges and expanded to include more stakeholders; the teams have learned from their experiences and adopted new strategies targeted at improving inclusion and empowerment to solve specific problems they did not identify at the outset of their projects. We find that teams establish shared vision with stakeholders through appealing to a range of motivations, honoring what has come before them, engaging stakeholders via strategies of co-orientation and integration, and sharing the labor of change. This workshop will help attendees understand their own contexts and develop actionable plans to build shared vision into their projects.
As a result of this session, attendees will: • Understand the concept of shared vision, and how it differs from buy-in; • Assess the current practices on their campuses/departments/organizations that support the development of shared vision around DEI; • Apply and adapt effective shared vision practices to their own contexts; • Develop a plan of action for cultivating shared vision to improve DEI on their campuses.
Brief overview of activities that will take place during the session: We will begin by introducing attendees to the concept of shared vision and why it is useful for DEI change projects. We will then facilitate a number of exercises, grounded in our research findings, that will help attendees understand their own professional contexts and to what degree they are currently cultivating shared vision for DEI activities. As participants inventory their own practices, we will provide examples of campus practices that we have collected from the RED projects. These examples can be revised and adapted to the attendees’ contexts.
Opening, Land Acknowledgement, and, visioning exercise (5 minutes)
What does shared vision look like? (5 minutes) a. Briefly present research findings b. Share a sample shared vision document
Whom do change agents engage? (10 minutes) c. Briefly present research findings d. Activity on brainstorming potential stakeholders, network connections e. Group share-out
Why should stakeholders participate in shared vision? (15 minutes) f. Briefly present research findings g. Activity on brainstorming what motivates your potential stakeholders, and how this impacts how you will engage with them h. Group discussion
What strategies encourage shared vision? (15 minutes) i. Briefly present research findings j. Activity on identifying short-term wins k. Group share-out
Group discussion and Q and A (10 minutes)
Litzler, E., & Williams, J. M., & Margherio, C., & Doten-Snitker, K., & Mohan, S., & Andrijcic, E. (2021, January), Building Shared Vision to Advance Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Systemic Change in Engineering Education Paper presented at 2021 CoNECD, Virtual - 1pm to 5pm Eastern Time Each Day . 10.18260/1-2--36073
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