Toward a Theoretical Model of a Successful Women and Minority Engineering Program (work in progress)

Laura J. Bottomley

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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: Women in Engineering Division (WIED) Technical Session 7 - Multi-URM Perspectives
Tagged Division: Women in Engineering Division (WIED)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Permanent URL: https://strategy.asee.org/48160

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Paper Authors

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Laura J. Bottomley North Carolina State University orcid.org/0000-0001-5636-3909

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Dr. Laura Bottomley is the Director of Engineering Education and Senior Advisor to WMEP at NC State University. She has been working in the field of engineering education for more than 30 years, having taught every grade level from kindergarten to engineering graduate school. She started the Women in Engineering Program and the K-12 Outreach Program (The Engineering Place) at NC State University. She is now starting the Engineering Education Program, designing it to institutionalize the lessons learned as a diversity practitioner and engineering professor. She is a Fellow of the IEEE and ASEE and has been recognized with the PAESMEM award.

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Abstract

With the emergence of engineering education programs, there is at last a structure and approach to train engineering professors for the university and college levels. But engineering diversity administrators generally learn their job as they do it. The first women in engineering program was founded at Purdue in 1969, and programs for minority engineers or multicultural engineering in the 1970’s. The leaders of these programs come from a variety of backgrounds, including disciplinary engineering and higher education. But, to date, there is no program specifically designed to train engineering diversity program directors. As a result, new program directors typically learn from reading what others have done in the literature, participating in groups like the National Association of Multicultural Engineering Program Advocates (NAMEPA) and Women in Engineering Pro-Active Network (WEPAN), and engaging in conferences like Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity Conference (CONECD) and the American Society of Engineering Education annual conference (ASEE). In some instances, a new director may have the opportunity to learn from a previous director, or they may have been the product of such a program. In neither case, however, is it possible for new directors to understand and learn every aspect of planning and strategy. Even if the previous director desires to impart all that they know, it is possible that there is knowledge or meta-knowledge that they, themselves, are unaware they possess. Another challenge is the lack of widespread understanding of the state of the art in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging from a practitioner standpoint. The community exists in a state of functional dichotomy between those designated as researchers and practitioners. In addition, there are many members of the academic community who are not aware of either the current state of practice OR research. This disconnect frequently results in exhortations that reflect the past and ignore the progress that has been made to date. This paper comprises a case study of a successful and long-standing Women and Minority Engineering Program from the perspective of the program director. It will discuss a theoretical framework for the components of a complete program and how the various pieces of the framework map to practice.

Citation
Format

Bottomley, L. J. (2024, June), Toward a Theoretical Model of a Successful Women and Minority Engineering Program (work in progress) Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://strategy.asee.org/48160

TY - CPAPER
AB - With the emergence of engineering education programs, there is at last a structure and approach to train engineering professors for the university and college levels. But engineering diversity administrators generally learn their job as they do it. The first women in engineering program was founded at Purdue in 1969, and programs for minority engineers or multicultural engineering in the 1970’s. The leaders of these programs come from a variety of backgrounds, including disciplinary engineering and higher education. But, to date, there is no program specifically designed to train engineering diversity program directors.
As a result, new program directors typically learn from reading what others have done in the literature, participating in groups like the National Association of Multicultural Engineering Program Advocates (NAMEPA) and Women in Engineering Pro-Active Network (WEPAN), and engaging in conferences like Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity Conference (CONECD) and the American Society of Engineering Education annual conference (ASEE). In some instances, a new director may have the opportunity to learn from a previous director, or they may have been the product of such a program. In neither case, however, is it possible for new directors to understand and learn every aspect of planning and strategy. Even if the previous director desires to impart all that they know, it is possible that there is knowledge or meta-knowledge that they, themselves, are unaware they possess.
Another challenge is the lack of widespread understanding of the state of the art in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging from a practitioner standpoint. The community exists in a state of functional dichotomy between those designated as researchers and practitioners. In addition, there are many members of the academic community who are not aware of either the current state of practice OR research. This disconnect frequently results in exhortations that reflect the past and ignore the progress that has been made to date.
This paper comprises a case study of a successful and long-standing Women and Minority Engineering Program from the perspective of the program director. It will discuss a theoretical framework for the components of a complete program and how the various pieces of the framework map to practice.

AU - Laura J. Bottomley
CY - Portland, Oregon
DA - 2024/06/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Toward a Theoretical Model of a Successful Women and Minority Engineering Program (work in progress)
UR - https://strategy.asee.org/48160
ER -