Understanding the Connection Between Faculty Experiences and Cultural Climates of Emotional Well-Being

Kyle Shanachilubwa; Olivia I Bell; Julianna R Beehn; Chelsei Lasha Arnold; James L. Huff

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Conference: 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Publication Date: June 22, 2025
Start Date: June 22, 2025
End Date: August 15, 2025
Conference Session: ERM Technical Session: A Focus on Faculty Experiences & Perceptions
Tagged Division: Educational Research and Methods Division (ERM)
Page Count: 5
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/57743

Julianna Beehn is a student majoring in Cognitive Neuroscience at Harding University. She is on track to graduate from the Honors College with distinction in 2025.

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Chelsei Lasha Arnold Harding University

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James L. Huff University of Georgia orcid.org/0000-0002-6693-5808

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Dr. James Huff is an Associate Professor within the Engineering Education Transformations Institute and School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He also serves as Deputy Editor with the Journal of Engineering Education and Chair of the Education Research and Methods Division in the American Society for Engineering Education. He earned his Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Purdue University, his M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue, and his B.S. in Computer Engineering from Harding.

Dr. Huff is a qualitative researcher whose work lies at the interdisciplinary nexus of engineering education research and applied personality and social psychology. An NSF CAREER Awardee, he is committed to fostering care as a central mindset of engineering and other professions through his in-depth examinations of personal lived experiences of identity and emotion, facets often hidden within professional domains. As Principal Investigator of the Beyond Professional Identity lab, Dr. Huff has mentored undergraduates, doctoral students, and professionals from over fifteen disciplines in conducting their qualitative investigations on psychological phenomena relevant to equity and well-being in workplaces and degree programs.

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Abstract

In this work-in-progress research paper, we demonstrate early insights of our constructivist grounded theory investigation into the emotional experiences of engineering faculty and their surrounding academic cultures of well-being. We situate this paper in a broader series of studies in which we aim to advance well-being by understanding the professional shame experiences of engineering faculty. We refer to professional shame as a painful emotion that occurs when someone fails to meet cultural expectations in a professional setting. We understand professional shame to be both an emotion internalized by faculty and a cultural experience that they help contribute to in their behavior by constructing expectations in engineering. While prior literature has often left implications for faculty behaviors, it has rarely sought to understand their emotional needs. In this study, we aim to characterize the link between faculty’s emotional experience and their surrounding academic cultures of well-being. Specifically, we aim to understand the role that professional shame has on faculty and how this impacts their academic culture.

Accordingly, the research questions of this paper are: (1) How do faculty experience professional shame? (2) How do faculty behave in ways that might affect the shame experiences of students? (3) How do cultures of well-being in engineering education relate to faculty’s shame experiences?

To answer our research questions, we used mixed qualitative research methods. Specifically, we conducted interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) on ten interview transcripts to generate insights into individual lived experiences of professional shame in engineering faculty. In the present study, we focus on the connection between study participants’ lived emotional experiences within the surrounding cultural engineering context using constructivist grounded theory (CGT). We are analyzing twenty interviews with faculty members from three universities to elicit their lived experiences as engineering faculty. Thus, we are attentive to the individual experiences reflected in the interviews and shared accounts of three institutional cultures. We have completed in-depth initial coding of each interview and will use constant comparison to create a relevant abstraction of the interview data. We then use our initial codes as a basis to conduct focused coding, which, alongside the IPA study, will allow us to develop a coherent focus on theoretical patterns from the data. Through our grounded theory analysis, we will produce a theoretical model that defines the connection between the emotional regulation of engineering faculty and the academic cultures that embed them.

In the ASEE presentation, we will share preliminary insights based on our initial codes of the interview data that give insights into the connection between faculty emotions and the cultures around them. With the theoretical model, we aim to make visible how faculty participate in constructing dominant narratives in engineering education concerning their emotion regulation. Further, the CGT model will highlight the power of positively improving strategies for improving emotion regulation in faculty. Lastly, we will use the study's outcomes to provide academic leadership with guidelines to enhance well-being in engineering education by caring for faculty members who influence the system.

Citation
Format

Shanachilubwa, K., & Bell, O. I., & Beehn, J. R., & Arnold, C. L., & Huff, J. L. (2025, June), Understanding the Connection Between Faculty Experiences and Cultural Climates of Emotional Well-Being Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . https://peer.asee.org/57743

TY - CPAPER
AB - In this work-in-progress research paper, we demonstrate early insights of our constructivist grounded theory investigation into the emotional experiences of engineering faculty and their surrounding academic cultures of well-being. We situate this paper in a broader series of studies in which we aim to advance well-being by understanding the professional shame experiences of engineering faculty. We refer to professional shame as a painful emotion that occurs when someone fails to meet cultural expectations in a professional setting. We understand professional shame to be both an emotion internalized by faculty and a cultural experience that they help contribute to in their behavior by constructing expectations in engineering. While prior literature has often left implications for faculty behaviors, it has rarely sought to understand their emotional needs. In this study, we aim to characterize the link between faculty’s emotional experience and their surrounding academic cultures of well-being. Specifically, we aim to understand the role that professional shame has on faculty and how this impacts their academic culture.

Accordingly, the research questions of this paper are: (1) How do faculty experience professional shame? (2) How do faculty behave in ways that might affect the shame experiences of students? (3) How do cultures of well-being in engineering education relate to faculty’s shame experiences?

To answer our research questions, we used mixed qualitative research methods. Specifically, we conducted interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) on ten interview transcripts to generate insights into individual lived experiences of professional shame in engineering faculty. In the present study, we focus on the connection between study participants’ lived emotional experiences within the surrounding cultural engineering context using constructivist grounded theory (CGT). We are analyzing twenty interviews with faculty members from three universities to elicit their lived experiences as engineering faculty. Thus, we are attentive to the individual experiences reflected in the interviews and shared accounts of three institutional cultures. We have completed in-depth initial coding of each interview and will use constant comparison to create a relevant abstraction of the interview data. We then use our initial codes as a basis to conduct focused coding, which, alongside the IPA study, will allow us to develop a coherent focus on theoretical patterns from the data. Through our grounded theory analysis, we will produce a theoretical model that defines the connection between the emotional regulation of engineering faculty and the academic cultures that embed them.

In the ASEE presentation, we will share preliminary insights based on our initial codes of the interview data that give insights into the connection between faculty emotions and the cultures around them. With the theoretical model, we aim to make visible how faculty participate in constructing dominant narratives in engineering education concerning their emotion regulation. Further, the CGT model will highlight the power of positively improving strategies for improving emotion regulation in faculty. Lastly, we will use the study&#39;s outcomes to provide academic leadership with guidelines to enhance well-being in engineering education by caring for faculty members who influence the system.
AU - Kyle Shanachilubwa
AU - Olivia I Bell
AU - Julianna R Beehn
AU - Chelsei Lasha Arnold
AU - James L. Huff
CY - Montreal, Quebec, Canada
DA - 2025/06/22
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Understanding the Connection Between Faculty Experiences and Cultural Climates of Emotional Well-Being
UR - https://peer.asee.org/57743
ER -