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1. Nevertheless, she persisted:” Women thrive when they experience the joy of doing engineering in a climate for inclusion

   Evans R., Liang J. ( December 2021 , Research in Engineering Education Symposium & Australian Association for)

   CONTEXT For the last 40 years, the aggregate number of women receiving bachelor’s degrees in engineering in the US has remained stuck at approximately 20%. Research into this “disappointing state of affairs” has established that “the [educational] institutions in which women sought inclusion are themselves gendered, raced and classed” (Borrego, 2011; Riley et al., 2015; Tonso, 2007). PURPOSE Our focus is women students who thrive in undergraduate engineering student project teams. We need to learn more about how they describe becoming an engineer, about how women come to think of themselves as engineers and about how they perform their engineering selves, and how others come to identify them as engineers (Tonso, 2006). METHODS We are guided by a feminist, activist, and interpretive lens. Our multi-case study method, i.e., three semi-structured interviews and photovoice, offers two advantages: 1) the knowledge generated by case studies is concrete and context dependent (Case and Light, 2011); 2) case studies are useful in the heuristic identification of new variables and potential hypotheses (George and Bennett, 2005). ACTUAL OUTCOMES Our preliminary results suggest these women find joy in their experience of developing and applying engineering expertise to real, tangible, and challenging problems. They find knowing-about and knowing-how exciting, self-rewarding and self-defining. Further, these women work to transform the culture or ways of participating in project teams. This transforming not only facilitates knowing-about and knowing-how; but also it creates an environment in which women can claim their expertise, their identity as engineers, and have those expertise and identities affirmed by others. CONCLUSIONS If we aim to transform our gendered, raced, classed institutions, we need to learn more about women who thrive within those institutions. We need to learn more about the joy of doing engineering that these women experience. We also need to learn more about how they create an “integration-and-learning perspective” for themselves (Ely and Thomas, 2001) and a “climate for inclusion” within those project teams (Nishii, 2012), a perspective and climate that fosters the joy of doing engineering. 

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2. Women Thriving in Engineering: Listening to and learning from women who flourish in undergraduate engineering project teams

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE49875.2021.9637468  

   Evans R., Liang J.G. ( December 2021 , 2021 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE))

   Our work-in-progress research offers a distinctive focus and methodology. We focus is on women who are thriving in undergraduate engineering student project teams. Our methodology adopts a feminist, activist, interpretivist perspective using a multi-case study, critical sampling approach that attends to small numbers in order to learn from small numbers. Our early results suggest that these women are thriving because they experience joy in developing and applying engineering expertise, in knowing what and knowing how in response to real, tangible and challenging problems. They report that the experience is exciting, self-rewarding and self-defining. Such research can potentially change the negative discourse regarding women and engineering education with a discourse that is more welcoming and inclusive. 

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3. The Centrality of Black Identity for Black Students in Engineering

   Mobley, Catherine ; Brawner, Catherine E. ; Brent, Rebecca ; Orr, Marisa K. ( January 2021 , Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity (CoNECD) Conference)

   Introduction and Theoretical Frameworks Our study draws upon several theoretical foundations to investigate and explain the educational experiences of Black students majoring in ME, CpE, and EE: intersectionality, critical race theory, and community cultural wealth theory. Intersectionality explains how gender operates together with race, not independently, to produce multiple, overlapping forms of discrimination and social inequality (Crenshaw, 1989; Collins, 2013). Critical race theory recognizes the unique experiences of marginalized groups and strives to identify the micro- and macro-institutional sources of discrimination and prejudice (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). Community cultural wealth integrates an asset-based perspective to our analysis of engineering education to assist in the identification of factors that contribute to the success of engineering students (Yosso, 2005). These three theoretical frameworks are buttressed by our use of Racial Identity Theory, which expands understanding about the significance and meaning associated with students’ sense of group membership. Sellers and colleagues (1997) introduced the Multidimensional Model of Racial Identity (MMRI), in which they indicated that racial identity refers to the “significance and meaning that African Americans place on race in defining themselves” (p. 19). The development of this model was based on the reality that individuals vary greatly in the extent to which they attach meaning to being a member of the Black racial group. Sellers et al. (1997) posited that there are four components of racial identity: 1. Racial salience: “the extent to which one’s race is a relevant part of one’s self-concept at a particular moment or in a particular situation” (p. 24). 2. Racial centrality: “the extent to which a person normatively defines himself or herself with regard to race” (p. 25). 3. Racial regard: “a person’s affective or evaluative judgment of his or her race in terms of positive-negative valence” (p. 26). This element consists of public regard and private regard. 4. Racial ideology: “composed of the individual’s beliefs, opinions and attitudes with respect to the way he or she feels that the members of the race should act” (p. 27). The resulting 56-item inventory, the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (MIBI), provides a robust measure of Black identity that can be used across multiple contexts. Research Questions Our 3-year, mixed-method study of Black students in computer (CpE), electrical (EE) and mechanical engineering (ME) aims to identify institutional policies and practices that contribute to the retention and attrition of Black students in electrical, computer, and mechanical engineering. Our four study institutions include historically Black institutions as well as predominantly white institutions, all of which are in the top 15 nationally in the number of Black engineering graduates. We are using a transformative mixed-methods design to answer the following overarching research questions: 1. Why do Black men and women choose and persist in, or leave, EE, CpE, and ME? 2. What are the academic trajectories of Black men and women in EE, CpE, and ME? 3. In what way do these pathways vary by gender or institution? 4. What institutional policies and practices promote greater retention of Black engineering students? Methods This study of Black students in CpE, EE, and ME reports initial results from in-depth interviews at one HBCU and one PWI. We asked students about a variety of topics, including their sense of belonging on campus and in the major, experiences with discrimination, the impact of race on their experiences, and experiences with microaggressions. For this paper, we draw on two methodological approaches that allowed us to move beyond a traditional, linear approach to in-depth interviews, allowing for more diverse experiences and narratives to emerge. First, we used an identity circle to gain a better understanding of the relative importance to the participants of racial identity, as compared to other identities. The identity circle is a series of three concentric circles, surrounding an “inner core” representing one’s “core self.” Participants were asked to place various identities from a provided list that included demographic, family-related, and school-related identities on the identity circle to reflect the relative importance of the different identities to participants’ current engineering education experiences. Second, participants were asked to complete an 8-item survey which measured the “centrality” of racial identity as defined by Sellers et al. (1997). Following Enders’ (2018) reflection on the MMRI and Nigrescence Theory, we chose to use the measure of racial centrality as it is generally more stable across situations and best “describes the place race holds in the hierarchy of identities an individual possesses and answers the question ‘How important is race to me in my life?’” (p. 518). Participants completed the MIBI items at the end of the interview to allow us to learn more about the participants’ identification with their racial group, to avoid biasing their responses to the Identity Circle, and to avoid potentially creating a stereotype threat at the beginning of the interview. This paper focuses on the results of the MIBI survey and the identity circles to investigate whether these measures were correlated. Recognizing that Blackness (race) is not monolithic, we were interested in knowing the extent to which the participants considered their Black identity as central to their engineering education experiences. Combined with discussion about the identity circles, this approach allowed us to learn more about how other elements of identity may shape the participants’ educational experiences and outcomes and revealed possible differences in how participants may enact various points of their identity. Findings For this paper, we focus on the results for five HBCU students and 27 PWI students who completed the MIBI and identity circle. The overall MIBI average for HBCU students was 43 (out of a possible 56) and the overall MIBI scores ranged from 36-51; the overall MIBI average for the PWI students was 40; the overall MIBI scores for the PWI students ranged from 24-51. Twenty-one students placed race in the inner circle, indicating that race was central to their identity. Five placed race on the second, middle circle; three placed race on the third, outer circle. Three students did not place race on their identity circle. For our cross-case qualitative analysis, we will choose cases across the two institutions that represent low, medium and high MIBI scores and different ranges of centrality of race to identity, as expressed in the identity circles. Our final analysis will include descriptive quotes from these in-depth interviews to further elucidate the significance of race to the participants’ identities and engineering education experiences. The results will provide context for our larger study of a total of 60 Black students in engineering at our four study institutions. Theoretically, our study represents a new application of Racial Identity Theory and will provide a unique opportunity to apply the theories of intersectionality, critical race theory, and community cultural wealth theory. Methodologically, our findings provide insights into the utility of combining our two qualitative research tools, the MIBI centrality scale and the identity circle, to better understand the influence of race on the education experiences of Black students in engineering. 

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4. We Are Thriving: Increasing the Number of Women in Engineering

   Redmond, K. ; Panther, G. ; Asadollahipajouh M. ; Evans R., Kulesza S. ; and Liang G. ( August 2022 , 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   An ongoing focus of engineering education research is on increasing the number of women in engineering. Previous studies have primarily focused on examining why the number of women enrolled in engineering colleges remains persistent low. In doing so, while we have gained better understanding of the challenges and barriers women encountered and factors that contribute to such negative experiences, it also, as some scholars have pointed out, has cast a deficit frame to such matters. In this study, we take on a positive stand where we focus on women undergraduate students who not only “stay” but also succeed in engineering programs (that is, our definition of thriving) as a way to locate the personal and institutional factors that facilitate such positive outcomes. Our initial pilot study involved two female engineering undergraduate students at an R1 university. Each student was interviewed three times. While each of the interviews in the sequence had slightly different focus, the overall goal was to understand the women’s autobiographic and educational experiences leading to their paths to engineering and participation in the engineering project teams. The inductive thematic analysis revealed several primary findings which subsequently played a major role in developing a codebook for the current study. Building upon what is learned from the pilot study, the current study uses a layered multi-case study design involving three institutions: a public/private Ivy League and statutory land-grand research university in the Northeast, a public land-grant research university in the Midwest, and a public land-grant research university in the Southwest which is also designated as MSI/HSI. In addition to the interview method, data collection also contains documents and artifacts. For the purpose of this paper, we zone in onto the data collected in the first interviews, known as the “life history” where we mainly learn about the women undergraduate participants’ personal-familial contexts that contribute their entry to majoring in engineering as identified by the women themselves. Preliminary findings indicate that: (1) our participants tend to have supportive families; (2) while all experienced gender biases, not everyone has formed a critical consciousness of sexism; and (3) being able to actually engage “doing” something and creating a product is key to the women’s finding joy in engineering and associating self with the field/profession. It is important to note that the second interviews are underway which focuses on the educational journey of the participants in relation to engineering identity development and project team experiences. The ultimate goal for the study is to develop a theoretical framework speaking to a multifaceted model of forces (micro as autobiographic, macro as institutional, and in-between or middle-level as team-based) in shaping women’s entry and advance in engineering programs – one that recognizes the variations in institutional type, resource availability, and structural and cultural characteristics and traditions in teams, but uses such differences to show possibilities of more versatile ways for diversifying pathways for women and other minoritized groups to thrive in engineering. 

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5. New Engineers' First Three Months: A Study of the Transition from Capstone Design Courses to Workplaces

   Gewirtz, Chris ; Kotys-Schwartz, Daria ; Knight, Daniel ; Paretti, Marie ; Arunkumar, Sidharth ; Ford, Julie Dyke ; Howe, Susannah ; Rosenbauer, Laura Mae ; Alvarez, Nicholas Emory ; Deters, Jessica ; et al ( June 2018 , 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exhibition)

   In preparing engineering students for the workplace, capstone classes provide unique opportunities for students to develop their professional identities and learn critical skills such as engineering design, teamwork, and self-directed learning (Lutz & Paretti). But while existing research explores what and how students learn within these courses, we know much less about how capstone courses affect students’ transitions into the workplace. To address this gap, we are following 62 new graduates across 4 institutions during the participants’ first 12 weeks of work. Participants were drawn from 3 mechanical engineering programs and one general engineering program. Women were intentionally oversampled in the study, with 29 participants identifying as female. Weekly surveys were used to collect quantitative data on what types of workplace activities participants engaged in (e.g., team meetings, project budgeting, CAD modeling, engineering calculations) and qualitative data on what challenges they experience in their early work experience. In this paper, we present a descriptive analysis of the data to identify patterns across participants. Preliminary analysis of the quantitative data suggests that the most common activities for our participants were team meetings and project planning (mentioned by >70% of participants) compared to formal presentations and project budgeting (mentioned by <30% of participants). Preliminary analysis of the qualitative data suggests that participants’ most challenging experiences clustered into two dominant groups: 1) self-directed learning, and 2) teamwork and communication. The results are intended to inform both capstone faculty and industry to identify areas of strength within current practices and areas for improvement in course design and structure and/or in industry onboarding practices. 

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