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What Are Crucial Barriers and Opportunities to Bringing Our Whole Selves to Engineering Education? Moving Watermelons Together

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Conference

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual Conference

Publication Date

July 26, 2021

Start Date

July 26, 2021

End Date

July 19, 2022

Conference Session

What Are Crucial Barriers and Opportunities to Bring Our Whole Selves to Engineering Education? Moving Watermelons Together

Tagged Division

Community Engagement Division

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

27

DOI

10.18260/1-2--38039

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/38039

Download Count

474

Paper Authors

biography

Angela R. Bielefeldt University of Colorado Boulder

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Angela Bielefeldt is a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering (CEAE) and Director for the Engineering Plus program. She has served as the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Education in the CEAE Department, as well as the ABET assessment coordinator. Professor Bielefeldt was also the faculty director of the Sustainable By Design Residential Academic Program, a living-learning community where students learned about and practice sustainability. Bielefeldt is also a licensed P.E. Professor Bielefeldt's research interests in engineering education include service-learning, sustainable engineering, social responsibility, ethics, and diversity.

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biography

Jon A. Leydens Colorado School of Mines

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Jon A. Leydens is Professor of Engineering Education Research in the Division of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the Colorado School of Mines, USA. Dr. Leydens’ research and teaching interests are in engineering education, communication, and social justice. Dr. Leydens is author or co-author of 40 peer-reviewed papers, co-author of Engineering and Sustainable Community Development (Morgan and Claypool, 2010), and editor of Sociotechnical Communication in Engineering (Routledge, 2014). In 2016, Dr. Leydens won the Exemplar in Engineering Ethics Education Award from the National Academy of Engineering, along with CSM colleagues Juan C. Lucena and Kathryn Johnson, for a cross-disciplinary suite of courses that enact macroethics by making social justice visible in engineering education. In 2017, he and two co-authors won the Best Paper Award in the Minorities in Engineering Division at the American Society for Engineering Education annual conference. Dr. Leydens’ recent research, with co-author Juan C. Lucena, focused on rendering visible the social justice dimensions inherent in three components of the engineering curriculum—in engineering sciences, engineering design, and humanities and social science courses; that work resulted in Engineering Justice: Transforming Engineering Education and Practice (Wiley-IEEE Press, 2018). His current research grant project explores how to foster and assess sociotechnical thinking in engineering science and design courses.

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biography

Ann D. Christy P.E. The Ohio State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-9172-0609

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Ann D. Christy, PE, is a professor of Food, Agricultural, and Biological Engineering and a professor of Engineering Education at the Ohio State University (OSU). She earned both her B.S. in agricultural engineering and M.S. in biomedical engineering at OSU, and her Ph.D. in environmental engineering at Clemson University. She worked for an engineering consulting firm before entering academia and continues to collaborate with the consulting industry. She has taught courses in bioenergy, biological engineering, capstone design, HVAC, thermodynamics, waste management, professional development, and engineering teaching. Her research interests include energy, the environment, and engineering education. She is assistant dean for teaching and learning in the College of Engineering. She is a second-generation woman engineer.

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biography

Marybeth Lima P.E. Louisiana State University and A&M College

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Marybeth is Cliff & Nancy Spanier Alumni Professor and Chair of the Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering. She co-authored the textbook Service-Learning: Engineering in Your Community (Oxford University Press) with Bill Oakes and is the author of Building Playgrounds Engaging Communities: Creating Safe and Happy Places for Children (LSU Press).

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Malini Natarajarathinam Texas A&M University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-1684-6476

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Dr. Malini Natarajarathinam joined the faculty of Industrial Distribution Program at Texas A&M University in 2007. Natarajarathinam received her Ph.D. in Supply Chain Management from The University of Alabama. She received her Bachelor of Engineering (Major: Industrial and Systems Engineering) from Anna University [Tamilnadu, India], her MS in Industrial Engineering from Auburn University, her MA in Management Science and MS in Applied Statistics from The University of Alabama. She has experience working with many industries such as automotive, chemical distribution etc. on transportation and operations management projects. She works extensively with food banks and food pantries on supply chain management and logistics focused initiatives. Her graduate and undergraduate students are integral part of her service-learning based logistics classes.

She teaches courses in strategic relationships among industrial distributors and distribution logistics. Her recent research focuses on engineering education and learning sciences with a focus on how to engage students better to prepare their minds for the future. Her other research interests include empirical studies to assess impact of good supply chain practices such as coordinated decision making in stochastic supply chains, handling supply chains during times of crisis and optimizing global supply chains on the financial health of a company. She has published her research in Journal of Business Logistics, International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management and peer-reviewed proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education.

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Julia D. Thompson University of San Francisco

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r. Julia Thompson is an Assistant Professor at University of San Francisco. She has a passion for integrating the soul’s work into the engineering design process and technology. She is driven to help students, and people in general, look at technology as a pathway toward healing of earth and unjust social structure. Julia did her undergrad in chemical engineering at UC Berkeley and her PhD in engineering education at Purdue. Her research interests focus on how engineering design practices impact the relationships that engineering programs create with the community.

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Abstract

Under ideal circumstances, engineering cultures in academia and industry bring out the best in people; e.g., faculty, students, and administrators in academia, and employees, clients, and public stakeholders in industry. Bringing out our best performances increases career satisfaction and productivity. Yet we also recognize that the engineering education and industry cultures we inhabit often fall (far) short of that ideal.

Many of us in engineering education are working towards the transformation and healing of the engineering profession and engineering education cultures – while individually striving to be more authentically ourselves. We recognize that our inner work is directly linked to our outer community. This panel represents the collective thinking of a group of engineering educators in different paths and stages in our careers. We come together to discuss how we--with your help--might move engineering education and the engineering profession in a more humanitarian, soul-fulfilling direction. We recognize the task in front of us is massive. Think of it as moving a pile of watermelons a few kilometers. The movement towards transformation requires all of us to stand up and take a share. However, we must also recognize our personal limitations – we cannot hold too many watermelons and expect to move forward. We need to come together and balance the load. This panel session will begin with panelists briefly describing how in their own journey they encountered barriers and/or opportunities to bringing their whole self to engineering education. The panel will then move into what we hope is a lively discussion among participants around the following queries:

-What are the barriers to bringing your whole self to your work? -What opportunities can help you bring your whole self to your work? -If you are able to bring your whole self to your work, what does that look like for you? -What principles of inclusion and healing might facilitate a cultural transformation in engineering education and the engineering profession? 
 -What could be possible?

Bielefeldt, A. R., & Leydens, J. A., & Christy, A. D., & Lima, M., & Natarajarathinam, M., & Thompson, J. D. (2021, July), What Are Crucial Barriers and Opportunities to Bringing Our Whole Selves to Engineering Education? Moving Watermelons Together Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--38039

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