McCall, C., & Shew, A., & Paretti, M., & Simmons, D., & McNair, L. (2022, August), Redefining and Reconceptualizing Disability Identity in Civil Engineering  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--42078

\bibitem{asee_peer_42078}
  McCall, C., \& Shew, A., \& Paretti, M., \& Simmons, D., \& McNair, L. (2022, August), \emph{Redefining and Reconceptualizing Disability Identity in Civil Engineering}
  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN.
  10.18260/1-2--42078

Cassandra McCall, Ashley Shew, Marie Paretti, Denise Simmons, and Lisa McNair.  "Redefining and Reconceptualizing Disability Identity in Civil Engineering".  2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August.  ASEE Conferences, 2022.  https://peer.asee.org/42078 Internet.  12 Dec, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_42078}
  Cassandra McCall, Ashley Shew, Marie Paretti, Denise Simmons, and Lisa McNair.
  "Redefining and Reconceptualizing Disability Identity in Civil Engineering".
  \emph{2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2022.
  https://peer.asee.org/42078 Internet.  12 Dec, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_42078
author = "Cassandra McCall, Ashley Shew, Marie Paretti, Denise Simmons, and Lisa McNair"
title = "Redefining and Reconceptualizing Disability Identity in Civil Engineering"
booktitle = "2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2022"
month = "August"
address = "Minneapolis, MN"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/42078}
number = {10.18260/1-2--42078}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Disabled people continue to be significantly underrepresented and marginalized in engineering. Current reports indicate that approximately 26 percent of US adults have some form of disability. Yet, only 6 percent of undergraduate students enrolled in engineering programs belong to this group. Several barriers have been identified that discourage and even prohibit people with disabilities from participating in engineering, including arduous accommodations processes, lack of institutional support, and negative faculty, peer, and staff attitudes. These barriers are perpetuated and reinforced by a variety of ableist sociocultural norms and definitions that rely on popularized tropes and medicalized models of disability that influence the ways this group experiences school  to become engineers. 

In this paper, we seek to contribute to conversations that shape disability identity and the ways it is conceptualized in engineering programs. We revisit interview data from an ongoing grounded theory exploration of professional identity formation of undergraduate civil engineering students who identify as having one or more disabilities. Through our qualitative analysis, we identified overarching themes that contribute to our understanding of how participants define and integrate disability identity to form professional identities and the ways they reshape and contribute to the civil engineering field through this lens. Emergent themes include experiencing/considering disability identity as a fluid experience, as a characteristic that ‘sets you apart’, and as a medicalized symptom or condition. Findings from this work can be used by engineering educators and administrators to inform more effective academic and personal support structures to destigmatize disability in our social structures and promote the participation and inclusion of students and colleagues with disabilities in engineering – and in our academic and professional communities.

AU  - Cassandra McCall
AU  - Ashley Shew
AU  - Marie Paretti
AU  - Denise Simmons
AU  - Lisa McNair
CY  - Minneapolis, MN
DA  - 2022/08/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Redefining and Reconceptualizing Disability Identity in Civil Engineering
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/42078
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--42078
ER  -