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On Faculty Responsibility for Increasing Students’ Sense of Support in the Classroom: Lessons from I-MATTER about Black and Brown Students

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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

Equity, Culture & Social Justice in Education Division (EQUITY) Technical Session 4

Tagged Divisions

Equity and Culture & Social Justice in Education Division (EQUITY)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

21

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43758

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/43758

Download Count

363

Paper Authors

biography

Stephanie Masta Purdue University, West Lafayette Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-2413-3903

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Member of the Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and educational researcher focused on issues of equity in Black and Brown education in the United States.

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Janelle Grant University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-7225-075X

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Janelle Grant is a PhD Student in Curriculum Studies at Purdue University, Indiana, USA. Her research interests lie in the area of Black women's experiences of discipline in education. Prior to attending Purdue University, she assisted various research in

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biography

Cara Margherio University of Washington

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Cara Margherio is the Manager of Qualitative Research at the SEIU 775 Benefits Group.

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Darryl Dickerson Florida International University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-5935-4124

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Dr. Darryl A. Dickerson is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Florida International University (FIU). Dr. Dickerson’s research focuses on transforming multiscale mechanobiological insights into biomanufacturing processes enabling the creation of personalized, fully functional engineered tissues. His research group, the Inclusive Complex Tissue Regeneration Lab (InCTRL), does this through multiscale characterization of complex tissues, fundamental studies on biophysical control of induced pluripotent stem cells, biomaterial development for complex tissue regeneration, and intentionally building inclusion into research design and execution. This connects to his broader vision to make engineering spaces more diverse, more equitable, and more inclusive. He has held administrative positions in programs to broaden the participation of historically excluded students in engineering. Dr. Dickerson’s work in expanding participation in engineering has yielded significant programmatic interventions, institutional change activities, and national strategic initiatives. He also serves as the Director of Engineering Workforce and Education for the CELL-MET ERC. Dr. Dickerson manages the K-12 outreach and research experiences for high school students, teachers, and undergraduates in this role.

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Matthew W. Ohland Purdue University, West Lafayette Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-4052-1452

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Matthew W. Ohland is the Dale and Suzi Gallagher Professor and Associate Head of Engineering Education at Purdue University. He has degrees from Swarthmore College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Florida. His research on the longitudinal study of engineering students and forming and managing teams has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Sloan Foundation and his team received for the best paper published in the Journal of Engineering Education in 2008, 2011, and 2019 and from the IEEE Transactions on Education in 2011 and 2015. Dr. Ohland is an ABET Program Evaluator for ASEE. He was the 2002–2006 President of Tau Beta Pi and is a Fellow of the ASEE, IEEE, and AAAS.

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Alice L. Pawley Purdue University, West Lafayette Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-9117-4855

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Alice Pawley (she/hers) is a Professor in the School of Engineering Education and an affiliate faculty member in Environmental and Ecological Engineering and the Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Purdue University, situated on the ancestral homelands of the Wea, Peoria, Potawatomi and Miami people, and built using resources taken from numerous other indigenous tribes and communities across the country as part of the Morrill Act. She is the winner of numerous awards, including best paper awards, leadership awards, teaching and mentoring awards, and a PECASE in 2012. She is strongly involved in Purdue’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors. Her research group’s diverse projects and group members are described at pawleyresearch.org. Email: apawley@purdue.edu

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Abstract

Teaching engineering students how to work in teams is necessary, important, and hard to do well. Minoritized students experience forms of marginalization from their teammates routinely, which affects their access to safe learning environments. Team evaluation tools like CATME can help instructors see where teaming problems are, but are often normed in ways that obscure the subtle if pervasive harassment of minoritized teammates. Instructors, particularly of large courses, need better ways to identify teams that are marginalizing minoritized team members. This paper introduces theory on microaggressions, selective incivility theory, and coded language to interpret data collected from a complex study site during the COVID-19 pandemic. The team collected data from classroom observations (moved virtual during COVID), interviews with instructors, interviews with students, interpretations of historical data collected through an online team evaluation tool called CATME, and a diary study where students documented their reflections on their marginalization by teammates. While data collection and analysis did not, of course, go as the research team had planned, it yielded insights into how frequently minoritized teammates experience marginalization, instructors’ sense of their responsibility and skill for addressing such, marginalization, and students’ sense of defeat in hoping for more equitable and supportive learning environments. The paper describes our data collection processes, analysis, and some choice insights drawn from this multi-year study at a large, research-extensive white university.

Masta, S., & Grant, J., & Margherio, C., & Dickerson, D., & Ohland, M. W., & Pawley, A. L. (2023, June), On Faculty Responsibility for Increasing Students’ Sense of Support in the Classroom: Lessons from I-MATTER about Black and Brown Students Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43758

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