Initiating and sustaining international ethnic engineering education scholarly communities in the United States

Siqing Wei; Moses Olayemi

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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: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: Graduate Studies Division (GSD) Technical Session 8: International Perspectives in Graduate Education
Tagged Division: Graduate Studies Division (GSD)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Permanent URL: https://strategy.asee.org/47626

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Paper Authors

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Siqing Wei Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE) orcid.org/0000-0002-7086-5953

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Siqing Wei received B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering and is a Ph.D. Candidate and Bilsland Dissertation Fellow in the Engineering Education program at Purdue University. His research interests span on three major research topics, which are teamwork, cultural diversity, and international student experiences. As a research assistant, he investigates how the cultural diversity of team members impacts the team dynamics and outcomes, particularly for international students. He aims to help students improve intercultural competency and teamwork competency by interventions, counseling, pedagogy, and tool selection to promote DEI. In addition, he also works on many research-to-practice projects to enhance educational technology usage in engineering classrooms and educational research. Siqing also works as the technical development and support manager at the CATME research group. He served as the ASEE Purdue Student Chapter President from 2022-2023, the Program Chair of ASEE Student Division, and Purdue ENE Graduate Committee Junior Chair.

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Moses Olayemi University of Oklahoma orcid.org/0000-0003-1396-280X

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Moses Olayemi is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Pathways at the University of Oklahoma. He is a graduate of Chemical Engineering from the University of Lagos. He was awarded the 2022/2023 Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship by Purdue's School of Engineering Education and he has a Ph.D. in Engineering Education from the same university.

For his dissertation, he employed an embedded sequential explanatory mixed methods design to understand culturally relevant engineering education in multiple settings, focusing on the Federal Republic of Nigeria as the Case Study. For his work, his paper, "Telling half a story: A mixed methods approach to understanding culturally relevant engineering education in Nigeria" was awarded the best DEI paper in the International Division of ASEE at the 2023 Conference.

He is the Founding President of the African Engineering Education Fellows in the Diaspora, a non-governmental organization that leverages the experiences of African scholars in engineering education to inform and support engineering education policy, practice, and pedagogies in Africa.

His research revolves around the professional development of STEM educators and researchers in low-resource contexts for which he employs culturally relevant pedagogy and the contextualization and validation of measurement instruments with a keen interest in sub-Saharan Africa.

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Abstract

This paper shares and compares the experiences of initiating and sustaining two graduate student-led international ethnic engineering education scholarly communities for Chinese and African groups. Our goal is to reflect on our lived experiences and inspire future students and academics to cultivate such communities to broaden participation and enhance research capability. We adopt the Community of Practice (CoP) as the theoretical framework and opt for comparative ethnographic narrative analysis as the method in this paper. Specifically, we focused on the following dimensions of two communities led by the two authors: (1) the origin and purpose; (2) the characteristics; and (3) practices. Our findings suggest that the reasons behind and the processes of forming these two communities were alike. Interestingly, both communities differed in terms of their leadership structures and the ongoing activities. In this paper, we highlight how both communities value providing and sustaining a safe space for their members to explore and develop their professional interests and intersectional identities. Thus, we call for the emergence of similar communities that could help ethnic engineering education communities not just survive the rigors of their domains of inquiry, but thrive throughout their entire doctoral or professional careers. We adopt the Community of Practice (CoP) as the theoretical framework and opt for comparative ethnographic narrative analysis as the method in this paper. The method lends us an opportunity to narrate and compare our respective lived experiences in starting and sustaining communities of practice peculiar to our international ethnic communities. Our method involves periodic meetings to discuss the mainstays of both the African Engineering Education Fellows (AEEF) in the Diaspora group and the Chinese Engineering Education Club (CEEC). These conversations are tracked with notes taken during our meetings as we discuss the differences and similarities of the groups. Specifically, we focused on the following dimensions of two communities led by the two authors, including (1) the origin and purpose; (2) the characteristics; (3) and practices. How and why the two communities were initiated are alike. Yet the major difference occurs in the leadership structure and the ongoing activities. The findings suggest that both communities were formed around the same time, with similar purposes of serving as safe spaces and resources to boost the professional development of their members. Likewise, the diversity and the membership structure for both communities are similar in terms of the geographical locations of members, work and study experiences, and volunteerism. Conversely, the differences of both communities emerged from their different leadership and organizational structures. Due to the different sizes of members, sustaining the communities took place in various forms. For the Chinese community, the spontaneous Q&A and information sharing and the informal gathering at the major conferences help the community members to continuously maintain their intersectional identities as Chinese identities and the engineering education research scholar identity. For the African Diaspora community, the growth model relies on informal but regular gatherings, recentering and decolonizing our experiences, expanding the representation of member African countries within the group, and tackling projects in Africa by interfacing with other existing external bodies. However, both communities value the virtue of providing and sustaining a safe space for its members to explore and develop their professional interests and intersectional identities. Thus, we call for more similar communities that could emerge for meaningful groups of individuals to survive and thrive in their domain of inquiry and stay encouraged and supported to experience their entire doctoral or professional careers.

Citation
Format

Wei, S., & Olayemi, M. (2024, June), Initiating and sustaining international ethnic engineering education scholarly communities in the United States Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://strategy.asee.org/47626

TY - CPAPER
AB - This paper shares and compares the experiences of initiating and sustaining two graduate student-led international ethnic engineering education scholarly communities for Chinese and African groups. Our goal is to reflect on our lived experiences and inspire future students and academics to cultivate such communities to broaden participation and enhance research capability. We adopt the Community of Practice (CoP) as the theoretical framework and opt for comparative ethnographic narrative analysis as the method in this paper. Specifically, we focused on the following dimensions of two communities led by the two authors: (1) the origin and purpose; (2) the characteristics; and (3) practices. Our findings suggest that the reasons behind and the processes of forming these two communities were alike. Interestingly, both communities differed in terms of their leadership structures and the ongoing activities. In this paper, we highlight how both communities value providing and sustaining a safe space for their members to explore and develop their professional interests and intersectional identities. Thus, we call for the emergence of similar communities that could help ethnic engineering education communities not just survive the rigors of their domains of inquiry, but thrive throughout their entire doctoral or professional careers. We adopt the Community of Practice (CoP) as the theoretical framework and opt for comparative ethnographic narrative analysis as the method in this paper. The method lends us an opportunity to narrate and compare our respective lived experiences in starting and sustaining communities of practice peculiar to our international ethnic communities. Our method involves periodic meetings to discuss the mainstays of both the African Engineering Education Fellows (AEEF) in the Diaspora group and the Chinese Engineering Education Club (CEEC). These conversations are tracked with notes taken during our meetings as we discuss the differences and similarities of the groups. Specifically, we focused on the following dimensions of two communities led by the two authors, including (1) the origin and purpose; (2) the characteristics; (3) and practices. How and why the two communities were initiated are alike. Yet the major difference occurs in the leadership structure and the ongoing activities.
The findings suggest that both communities were formed around the same time, with similar purposes of serving as safe spaces and resources to boost the professional development of their members. Likewise, the diversity and the membership structure for both communities are similar in terms of the geographical locations of members, work and study experiences, and volunteerism. Conversely, the differences of both communities emerged from their different leadership and organizational structures. Due to the different sizes of members, sustaining the communities took place in various forms. For the Chinese community, the spontaneous Q&amp;amp;A and information sharing and the informal gathering at the major conferences help the community members to continuously maintain their intersectional identities as Chinese identities and the engineering education research scholar identity. For the African Diaspora community, the growth model relies on informal but regular gatherings, recentering and decolonizing our experiences, expanding the representation of member African countries within the group, and tackling projects in Africa by interfacing with other existing external bodies. However, both communities value the virtue of providing and sustaining a safe space for its members to explore and develop their professional interests and intersectional identities. Thus, we call for more similar communities that could emerge for meaningful groups of individuals to survive and thrive in their domain of inquiry and stay encouraged and supported to experience their entire doctoral or professional careers.

AU - Siqing Wei
AU - Moses Olayemi
CY - Portland, Oregon
DA - 2024/06/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Initiating and sustaining international ethnic engineering education scholarly communities in the United States
UR - https://strategy.asee.org/47626
ER -