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Understanding the Importance of Diversity Climate and Workplace Inclusion for Engineering Faculty

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Conference

2023 Collaborative Network for Computing and Engineering Diversity (CoNECD)

Location

New Orleans , Louisiana

Publication Date

February 26, 2023

Start Date

February 26, 2023

End Date

February 28, 2023

Conference Session

Session 7 - Track 3: Understanding the Importance of Diversity Climate and Workplace Inclusion for Engineering Faculty

Tagged Topics

Diversity and CoNECD Paper Sessions

Page Count

25

DOI

10.18260/1-2--44812

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/44812

Download Count

87

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Paper Authors

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Henry Tran University of South Carolina

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Henry Tran is an Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policies who studies issues related to education human resources (HR). He has published extensively on the topic, and holds two national HR certifications. He is also the co-lead editor of the book How did we get here?: The decay of the teaching profession, co-lead editor of the book Leadership in turbulent times: Cultivating diversity and inclusion in the P-12 Education Workplace, co-editor of the book Leadership in turbulent times: Cultivating diversity and inclusion in the Higher Education Workplace, editor of the Journal of Education Human Resources, and the Director of the Talent Centered Education Leadership Initiative. Prior to his professorship, Tran served as an HR practitioner in both the private sector and in public education. He draws from both experiences in his research and teaching.

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Maria L Espino M.A Iowa State University of Science and Technology Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-6217-9304

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Maria Luz Espino, M.A. is a doctoral candidate in the Higher Education Administration program at Iowa State University. She holds a Masters degree in Educational Policy and Leadership from Marquette University and a Bachelors degree in Community and Nonprofit Leadership and Gender and Women Studies from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. She investigates issues of college access and retention of first-generation low-income students, especially within Community colleges and four-year institutions, through the college students' intersections of gender, race, and sexuality.

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Brian Le UCLA

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Brian Le (he/him/his) is currently a Ph.D. student in the Higher Education and Organizational Change (HEOC) program at UCLA. Brian holds a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology & health from Iowa State University and a master’s degree in student affairs in higher education from Marquette University. Prior to attending UCLA, Brian worked at Iowa State University for 4 years as a student’s program coordinator for the Science Bound program, a pre-college through college program focused on working with scholars from underrepresented backgrounds to pursue a degree in STEM. He has been a research affiliate on multiple NSF-funded projects surrounding equity in STEM. Brian’s research interests are college access, retention, marginalized students, community colleges, first-generation, STEM education, STEM identity development and engineering education.

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Spencer Platt University of South carolina

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Ruiqin Gao University of South Carolina

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Ruiqin Gao is a doctoral candidate in the program of Educational Psychology and Research in the College of Education at the University of South Carolina. Her research interests include structural equation modeling with survey data, investigations of universal screening for social-emotional/behavioral risk, and classroom assessment.

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Jungsun Go University of South Carolina

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Jungsun Go is a doctoral student in Educational Research and Measurement at the University of South Carolina (UofSC). She received a bachelor's degree in Elementary Education from Gwangju National University of Education in South Korea and a master's degree in Educational Research and Measurement at UofSC. She is interested in structural equation modeling, survey design, and advanced statistical models and applying those methods to explore K-12 school-related issues.

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Abstract

Black and Hispanic faculty are not only underrepresented at selective public universities but especially so in the areas of science and math (Li; Koedel, 2017). Departments of engineering have often found slim or even zero numbers of underrepresented minority faculty members (Nelson &; Brammer, 2010). While some of these problems can be attributed to the challenges of the recruitment of faculty of color, scholars have increasingly pointed to faculty attrition as a core problem (Whitaker, Montgomery, &; Acosta, 2015). The current mixed-method study has two objectives. The first is to examine the relationship between engineering faculty’s perception of their institution’s diversity climate and their turnover intentions at R1 universities, and the second is to understand how engineering demographic characteristics are associated with those perceptions of Black and Hispanic engineering faculty (BHEF). On the quantitative side, a national cross-sectional survey of 1,161 engineering faculty was analyzed to address the first objective. On the qualitative side, we interviewed 14 BHEF members to better understand our quantitative findings for BHEF to address the second objective. Our quantitative results suggest the dual role of faculty’s perceptions of how their employers institutionally valued diversity in influencing turnover intentions and mediating the relationships between faculty’s perceptions of diversity climate in their institutions and their turnover intentions. Specifically, Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine how the four latent variables underlying Diversity Climate Survey were associated with engineering faculty’s turnover intentions and their perception of employees’ value of diversity in their working institutions. The faculty who had a higher perception of institutions’ fairness (b = -0.52, p &; .001) and inclusion (b = -0.15, p &; .001) practices tended to tend to have lower turnover intention. However, faculty with a stronger personal value of diversity had a lower perception of how their employer institutionally valued diversity (b =-0.13, p < .01. Sub-analysis results for BHEF will also be reported.

From the qualitative data, we highlight three themes 1) Challenges of the Tenure and Promotion process, 2) Service Overload, and 3) Racial Battle Fatigue.

Tenure Process. Participants spoke in detail about the worries they had about the process. Some of the areas of concern are highlighted by a few select quotes. These quotes highlight the external funding expectations of 1) Engineering faculty, 2) the lack of clear guidelines, and 3) research bias.

Service Overload. The “Service Overload” theme refers to how BHEF often feels obligated to provide service work even though the institution undervalues it despite its centrality to the mission.

Racial Battle Fatigue. In this section, participants detailed how various racial and professional pressures tax and overwhelm BHEF. In one of the highlighted instances, the racial climate was known to be hostile. In the second example, the environment was thought to be inclusive until the participant was able to gain more experience.

Finally, we conclude by integrating our results to interpret the quantitative and qualitative findings together.

Tran, H., & Espino, M. L., & Le, B., & Platt, S., & Gao, R., & Go, J. (2023, February), Understanding the Importance of Diversity Climate and Workplace Inclusion for Engineering Faculty Paper presented at 2023 Collaborative Network for Computing and Engineering Diversity (CoNECD), New Orleans , Louisiana. 10.18260/1-2--44812

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