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Developing Inclusive Leadership Training for Undergraduate Engineering Teaching Assistants

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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

First-Year Programs Division (FYP) - Technical Session 6: Mentors & Teams

Tagged Division

First-Year Programs Division (FYP)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

14

DOI

10.18260/1-2--44652

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/44652

Download Count

334

Paper Authors

biography

Ingrid Paredes New York University Tandon School of Engineering Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-8246-5239

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Dr. Ingrid J. Paredes is an Industry Assistant Professor in the First-Year Engineering Program at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. She studied chemical engineering and received her B.S. and M.S. at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and her Ph.D. at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Her interests include diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education and sustainability education for engineers.

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Kaz Burns

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Jack Bringardner New York University Tandon School of Engineering Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-5980-384X

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Jack Bringardner is the Assistant Dean for Academic and Curricular Affairs at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. He is an Industry Associate Professor and Director of the General Engineering Program. He teaches the first-year engineering course Introduction to Engineering and Design. He is also the Director of the Vertically Integrated Projects Program at NYU. His Vertically Integrated Projects course is on the future of engineering education. His primary focus is developing curriculum, mentoring students, and engineering education research, particularly for project-based curriculum, first-year engineering, and student success. He is active in the American Society for Engineering Education and is the NYU ASEE Campus Representative. He serves on the First-Year Programs Division Executive Board as well as the Webmaster for the ASEE First-Year Programs Division and the First-Year Engineering Experience Conference. He is affiliated with the NYU Civil and Urban Engineering Department and advisor for NYU student chapter of the Institute for Transportation Engineers.

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Rui Li New York University Tandon School of Engineering

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Dr. Li earned his master's degree in Chemical Engineering in 2009 from the Imperial College of London and his doctoral degree in 2020 from the University of Georgia, College of Engineering. He has strong interests in first year engineering education, educational robotics, inclusive learning, team-based learning and student motivation.

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Ameya Palav

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Elena Rose Hume

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Victoria Bill New York University Tandon School of Engineering

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Victoria Bill is the Director of the MakerSpace Lab and an Adjunct Professor in the First-Year Engineering Program at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. She studied electrical engineering and received her B.S. from the Ohio State University and her M.S. from the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Engineering Education from the Ohio State University.

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Chris Woods NYU

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Abstract

This complete experience-based practice paper describes the continued development of a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training for undergraduate engineering teaching assistants in a first-year, team project-based design course. At a large private university, undergraduate teaching assistants play a key role in first-year student success and mentorship of their cornerstone design project. As the first points of reference for students, they assist with content delivery, guide students through hands-on labs and projects, and deliver regular feedback on assignments. Effective teaching assistants are leaders and peer mentors and their training as educators is essential to our first-year students’ success. Each semester, the undergraduate teaching assistant community for introductory engineering organizes peer-facilitated training on course content, technical skills, and best teaching practices. The training is grounded in global inclusion, diversity, belonging, equity, and access (GIDBEA) to foster a sense of belonging among the community of teaching assistants, students, and faculty. To this effort, we are piloting a series of workshops on inclusive leadership to be delivered ahead of each semester.

We seek to build our teaching assistants’ sense of agency in the classroom by cultivating a positive self-concept, developing their understanding of sociopolitical environments, and providing resources for action. Co-created with faculty, teaching assistants, and DEI experts at the institution, the workshop series provides teaching assistants with the ability to recognize and confront bias among individuals and within teams, helps them develop an understanding of power, privilege, and oppression, and equips them with the tools to employ their knowledge professionally. The workshops feature individual reflection activities and small group discussions, culminating in a community-wide discussion on lessons learned and actionable items to build an inclusive community within our first-year program.

To understand the value that this training provides the teaching assistants, a survey was conducted of participants before and after participation in the workshops. The survey aims to capture the practicality of the training and the teaching assistants’ assessment of the climate within the first-year engineering experience. In this complete experience-based practice paper, findings from the second year of piloting our workshops are described. In this second iteration of training, new teaching assistants participated in our foundational training in GIDBEA, and returning TAs built on their introductory knowledge to learn about social justice and principles of inclusive leadership. The data shows that all teaching assistants overall found the workshop content and activities were relevant to them as peer educators. Several teaching assistants shared inclusive leadership strategies that they planned to implement in the coming semester. The goal of this study is to inform plans for implementing solutions into training that address deficiencies identified through the survey and provide a set of inclusion best practices and learning objectives for inclusivity training for undergraduate teaching assistants.

Paredes, I., & Burns, K., & Bringardner, J., & Li, R., & Palav, A., & Hume, E. R., & Bill, V., & Woods, C. (2023, June), Developing Inclusive Leadership Training for Undergraduate Engineering Teaching Assistants Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--44652

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2023 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015