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

   https://doi.org/strategy.asee.org/41518  

   Redmond, K.; Panther, G; Asadollahipajouh, M.; Evans, R.; Kulesza, S.; 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 persistently low. In doing so, while we have gained better understanding of the challenges and barriers that women encountered and factors that contribute to such negative experiences, it also, as some scholars have pointed out, has cast a deficit frame on 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 a 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 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 to 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 by “doing” something and creating a product is key to the women’s finding joy in engineering and associating themself with the field/profession. It is important to note that the second interviews, which focus on the educational journey of the participants in relation to engineering identity development and project team experiences, are underway. 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. This framework will recognize the variations in institutional type, resource availability, and structural and cultural characteristics and traditions in teams. It will also use 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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2. 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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3. Intersectionality Between Race and Gender in LSAMP-NSF STEM Program Mentorship

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--43984  

   Ackerman, Jennifer; Soto-Arzat, América (June 2023, 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Undergraduate research experiences are important for students to gain better insight into what they want. Students are paired with mentors and this can lead to both positive and negative experiences. In engineering, especially, this is a chilly climate where if you are not an abled cis white male, it is almost inevitable that you will not be part of the majority in the field. This can lead to stress, anxiety, and feelings of isolation and hopelessness in a person’s academic and career pursuits. Race and gender disparities do exist in the field, where the intersectionality between women and students of color promotes the greatest achievement gap. These students, as well as faculty, are represented least in the field. Social, as well as institutional barriers, inhibit success, and our goal is to explore how we can reduce race and gender imbalance in the field of engineering. A solution is to see the intersectionality between race and gender in these women of color in STEM. “[R]esearch must focus on illuminating women of color as political subjects and the gender, racial, class, and sexual politics that impact their lives” (Crenshaw, 1991), and focus on illuminating women of color and their experiences. We have to take seriously the insights of women of color, effectively situating their work on intersectionality as subjugated knowledge (Leslie McCall, 2005). This qualitative research is based on 33 interviews of mentors and minorities protegés within the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) across four different universities within a statewide university system, in the United States of America. 

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4. What Role do Civil Engineering Students See for their Profession in the COVID-19 Response?

   LaPatin, M. L.; Poleacovschi, C.; Padgett Walsh, K.; Feinstein, S. G.; Rutherford, C.; Nguyen, L. M.; Faust, K. M.; Verses, L. (July 2021, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access)

   Engineering education typically focuses on technical knowledge rather than ethical development. When ethics are incorporated into curriculum, the focus is usually on microethics concerning issues that arise in particular contexts and interactions between individuals, rather than macroethics that address broad societal concerns. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a unique opportunity to assess macroethical understanding because unjust social, economic, and environmental systems have been brought to the forefront of the response. In this study, we aim to understand students’ awareness of unjust systems and the ethical responsibilities of engineers. At the beginning of the pandemic in the United States, in April 2020, we deployed a survey to undergraduate engineering students at two universities. We asked students to explain what they perceived to be the role of the engineering profession in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. This paper focuses on the responses of undergraduate civil engineering students, totaling a sample size of 84 students across two universities. We used qualitative analyses (deductive and inductive coding) to categorize responses between “macroethics is present” and “macroethics is not present”, and we used quantitative analysis to test the two categories with sociodemographic factors for association. We show that there are statistically significant differences across student responses given certain sociodemographic factors. Responses from women focused more on macroethics as compared to responses from men. There was also a difference in responses between the universities surveyed, showing that institutional differences may impact students’ macroethical development. Potential implications from this study include recommendations on curricular content and identifying which student demographic groups would benefit most from intentional macroethical content in coursework. Additionally, increasing diversity and representation of women in engineering may impact the engineering industry’s focus on macroethics. 

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5. 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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