Asee peer logo

Work in Progress: The Power of Cross-Institutional “Speed” Mentoring and Networking Program in Advancement of Women, URM, and Foreign Born/Trained Engineering Faculty

Download Paper |

Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Women in Engineering Division (WIED) Technical Session 6

Tagged Division

Women in Engineering Division (WIED)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

13

DOI

10.18260/1-2--44369

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/44369

Download Count

107

Request a correction

Paper Authors

author page

Arezoo Sadrinezhad

biography

Lalita G. Oka California State University, Fresno Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-0161-4453

visit author page

Dr. Lalita Oka is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Geomatics Engineering at the California State University, Fresno. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Geotechnical Engineering. Her research interests include experimental geotechnics, numerical modeling, liquefaction assessments, and dam safety. She is also interested in issues related to women in engineering and has published numerous articles in ASEE conferences.

visit author page

biography

Kimberly Stillmaker, P.E. California State University, Fresno Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0009-0004-9549-9904

visit author page

Dr. Stillmaker is an Assistant Professor in the Civil Engineering Department at CSU, Fresno. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in structural engineering. She attained her PhD in Civil Engineering at UC Davis. Her research interests include

visit author page

biography

Lizabeth L. Thompson California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

visit author page

Lizabeth is a professor at Cal Poly, SLO in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. She has been teaching for 22 years and has continued to develop innovative pedagogy such as project based, flipped classroom and competency grading. Through the SUSTAIN

visit author page

author page

Catalina Eleonora Cardenas Arriaga

author page

Feruza Amirkulova

author page

Maryam Nazari

author page

Kira Abercromby

biography

Sue Rosser San Francisco State University

visit author page

Sue Rosser has been the Provost Emerita at San Francisco State University since 2020. From 1999 - 2009, she served as Dean of Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech. She has published 14 books and more than 150 journal articles on the theoretical and applied aspects of gender, science, and technology.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

Mentoring interventions, particularly mentoring that incorporates networking, have been effective at meeting the professional needs of women and under-represented minority (URM) faculty. However, women, especially URM women, in STEM careers report feeling left out of networks and thus face decreased social and administrative support. The isolation of women, especially URM women, in engineering in the California State University (CSU) System is apparent in the fact that many CSU engineering departments have only a few women faculty and no more than a single URM woman faculty. Thus, despite current mentoring programs at each CSU campus, there is only a few (if any) other women within their engineering department with whom they may discuss shared experiences. As part of the NSF funded ADVANCE Partnership grant, “Kindling Inter-university Networks for Diverse (KIND) Engineering Faculty Advancement in the California State University System”, in order to address this isolation and to provide mentoring and networking opportunities for women engineering faculty in the CSU system, particularly woman who identify as URM, a series of virtual (to enable cross-campus mentoring), small group setting (to incorporate networking) mentoring events was organized. Another aspect of this initiative emphasizes foreign-born (FB) or foreign-trained (FT) women, a unique focus. Although the speed mentoring events are open to all engineering faculty in the CSU system, there is specific emphasis on those who are normally excluded from formal mentoring. In this paper, the post-event survey results which include the demographics of the participants are reported and the importance and impact of these events are discussed.

Sadrinezhad, A., & Oka, L. G., & Stillmaker,, K., & Thompson, L. L., & Cardenas Arriaga, C. E., & Amirkulova, F., & Nazari, M., & Abercromby, K., & Rosser, S. (2023, June), Work in Progress: The Power of Cross-Institutional “Speed” Mentoring and Networking Program in Advancement of Women, URM, and Foreign Born/Trained Engineering Faculty Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--44369

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2023 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015