Lessons learned: faculty watch parties are a powerful approach to foster diversity and inclusivity discussions
- Conference
- Location
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Minneapolis, MN
- Publication Date
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August 23, 2022
- Start Date
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June 26, 2022
- End Date
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June 29, 2022
- Conference Session
- Page Count
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8
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--41596
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/41596
- Download Count
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320
Paper Authors
Malini Natarajarathinam Texas A&M University
Dr. Malini Natarajarathinam received her Ph.D. in Operations Management from The University of Alabama in 2007. Dr. Natarajarathinam joined the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution at Texas A&M University as an Assistant Professor in 2007. Dr. Natarajarathinam teaches undergraduate and graduate capstone courses. She also teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in logistics, distribution, purchasing, supplier, and customer relationship management. She developed the distribution customer experience course for the graduate program and she has made significant curriculum changes to several courses in the department. Dr. Natarajarathinam’s research focuses on engineering education including service-learning and workforce skills development. She has received over $3.6 million in external research funding from several companies, governmental agencies, and National Science Foundation. Dr. Natarajarathinam has written 22 peer-reviewed journal articles, a business case with a teaching note, 63 peer-reviewed conference proceedings, and was the keynote speaker at the food banks Conference. She works with the Texas Education Agency (TEA) in developing innovative Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses in logistics and distribution. Dr. Natarajarathinam has chaired 91 graduate capstone projects, and several undergraduate capstone projects, and has served on two master’s committees. Dr. Natarajarathinam was chosen as of the “40 under 40” faculty by the American Society of Engineering Educations, Prism Magazine in 2018.
Michael Johnson Texas A&M University
Dr. Michael D. Johnson is a professor in the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution at Texas A&M University. He also serves as the Associate Dean for Inclusion and Faculty Success in the College of Engineering. Prior to joining the faculty at Texas A&M, he was a senior product development engineer at the 3M Corporate Research Laboratory in St. Paul, Minnesota. He received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from Michigan State University. Dr. Johnson received his S.M. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Johnson’s research focuses on engineering education, production economics, and design tools. Dr. Johnson has over 80 peer reviewed publications and several patents. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and industry.
Dr. Johnson is a member of the American Society for Engineering Education, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, SME, and a senior member of IEEE. He served as the president of the Tau Alpha Pi Engineering Technology Honor Society national board from 2014-2018. He is past chair of the Mechanical Engineering Technology Leadership Committee. He is also a member of the Engineering Technology Accreditation Commission of ABET. Dr. Johnson has won several departmental and college-level awards for teaching, research, and service. He is also an ASEE National Engineering Technology Teaching Award and Fredrick J. Berger Award winner.
Lance White Texas A&M University
Lance White is a Ph.D. student at Texas A&M University in the Multidisciplinary Engineering Department focusing on Engineering Education research. His areas of expertise include qualitative and quantitative research in engineering education, but a stronger focus has been in qualitative methods and analysis. He is working as a graduate research assistant at the Institute for Engineering Education and Innovation at the Texas Engineering Experiment Station at Texas A&M University under director Dr. Tracy Hammond. Dr. Karan Watson and Dr. Pavel Tsvetkov are his co-chairs. He completed his M.S. in Nuclear Engineering at Texas A&M University under Dr. Yassin Hassan working on experimental thermal hydraulics, and completed his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at West Texas A&M University.
Sara Amani Texas A&M University
Sara Amani is a Graduate Research Assistant at Texas A&M University. She graduated as a chemical engineer from Texas A&M University at Qatar and is currently a PhD student of the Multidisciplinary Engineering focusing on engineering education. She also works at the Institute for Engineering Education and Innovation (IEEI) at Texas A&M. Her research interests include women in engineering, mental health / well-being of engineering students, accessibility in engineering, and humanitarian engineering.
Samantha Ray Texas A&M University
Samantha Ray is a Ph.D. student in the Sketch Recognition Lab at Texas A&M University. She received a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2018. Her research focuses on human-centered AI, developing systems that understand human behavior. She has worked on projects in human activity recognition to recognize activities of daily living (ADLs), intelligent tutoring systems to teach perspective sketching, and cognition-aware computing to measure people's mental workload on spatial visualization tasks.
Larry Powell Texas A&M University
Tracy Hammond Texas A&M University
Shawna Thomas Texas A&M University
Robert Lightfoot Texas A&M University
Rachelle Pedersen Texas A&M University
Rachelle Pedersen is a Ph.D. student at Texas A&M studying Curriculum & Instruction (Engineering Education). She has a B.S. in Engineering Science (Technology Education) from Colorado State and a M.S. in Curriculum & Instruction from Texas A&M University. Prior to being a full-time graduate student, she taught high school technology education (Robotics/Engineering, AP Computer Science, and Video Production) for 5 years in Connecticut. Her research focuses on motivational factors and social influences of undergraduate students in STEM.
John Moore Texas A&M University
Dr. Michael Moore is an instructional assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University. Michael teaches C++ programming, Human Computer Interaction, and a course he developed on Accessible Computing. Michael worked as a certified sign language interpreter while pursuing his graduate degrees. Those experiences working with the Deaf community have motivated his interest in equity for people with disabilities. He now works to be an ally, advocates that diversity includes disability, and encourages that the technology and software that we develop be accessible for all.
Abstract
This “lessons learned” paper discusses the use of virtual watch parties to facilitate discussions and foster diversity and inclusivity among faculty. Over several sessions, faculty from multiple disciplines, including a majority from engineering, across Texas A&M University watched and discussed the documentary “Picture a Scientist.” These watch sessions were hosted by the Institute for Engineering Education and Innovation within Texas A&M University with the purpose of building a community that considers and discusses diversity and inclusivity, both among its members and in their classrooms. While it has been encouraged for faculty to see films like “Picture a Scientist,” this was the first time a targeted series of watch parties were organized with intentional time for discussion.
As a group, faculty watched and discussed “Picture a Scientist” together over three one-hour-long sessions. Each session was split into two parts: 20 to view a portion of the documentary and 40 minutes for discussion. While the film could have been viewed in fewer sessions, it was deliberately split this way to provide more time for discussion among faculty about diversity and inclusion issues raised by the film. Session discussions were facilitated by long-standing members of this faculty group who represent the diverse population at Texas A&M University.
These sessions created an intentional time and space among participating faculty to expose themselves to, explore, and learn about a broad range of social topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. They also had the time and space to consider how those topics directly impact their classrooms, their students, and their places of work. During these discussions, faculty felt compelled to share stories, experiences, information, and ideas about social issues affecting their work, each other, and their larger community as they pertained to the content discussed in “Picture a Scientist” for that session.
The three sessions were audio-recorded and transcribed via the virtual meeting client Zoom. The final draft of the paper will include results from the analysis of these transcripts. We believe that these watch parties are a unique mechanism to develop engagement and promote diversity, equity, and inclusivity-focused mindsets among engineering educators in a safe space where participants can freely discuss these social issues as they pertain to the academic and professional aspects of their lives. The results will be presented as a “lightning talk”.
Natarajarathinam, M., & Johnson, M., & White, L., & Amani, S., & Ray, S., & Powell, L., & Hammond, T., & Thomas, S., & Lightfoot, R., & Pedersen, R., & Moore, J. (2022, August), Lessons learned: faculty watch parties are a powerful approach to foster diversity and inclusivity discussions Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41596
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