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Purpose: Identifying the inequities underrepresented groups face in undergraduate engineering education and addressing these inequities is commonly in the hands of faculty and staff rather than the students who experience them firsthand. Seeking to shift away from this dynamic and empower students to name and challenge the oppression they face, we launched the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Ambassador Program at a large Hispanic-Serving Institution in the Southeastern United States. JEDI is a co-curricular program that employs undergraduate engineering students to engage in justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion projects with the guidance of a graduate student or university support staff mentor. In this paper, we investigate the impact and limitations of this attempt at liberatory pedagogy through analyzing exit interviews with the alumni from the first two years of the program. Framework: This study is informed by liberative pedagogy, which facilitates critical consciousness and supports students in bringing their whole selves to a learning space to expand their critical capacities. One of the primary goals in creating JEDI was to provide engineering students space to realize and name the oppression they face and support them in designing their own projects that seek to challenge oppression. This paper investigates our attempt at operationalizing liberatory pedagogy through JEDI. Methods: The first author conducted 80–150-minute semi-structured interviews with program alumni. The interview protocol was informed by constructs from liberative pedagogy, focusing on participants' experiences in the program. The first author utilized thematic coding to identify salient themes across the interviews. Results: The analysis of the interview data revealed several successes and shortcomings related to operationalizing liberative pedagogy. One theme related to the successes was that participants expressed that JEDI offered a safe, welcoming environment in which they could embrace their marginalized identities and freely express their ideas. This finding, along with other themes that will be discussed in the paper, speak to the positive impact of the program. However, one theme related to shortcomings was that participants spoke extensively about the positive impact JEDI had on them as individuals, but they did not express that they saw their projects as having a significant external impact. We see this as a limitation regarding the program engaging the students in liberatory praxis within their local communities. Significance: Findings from this study provide insight into the impact liberative pedagogy has on engineering students and the challenges of operationalizing liberative pedagogy in a formal university context. These results could aid the engineering education community as we continue to search for ways to support and empower students.
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EmPOWERing a Sustainable Energy Future through Interconnected Curricular and Co-Curricular Pedagogies
In 2019, a National Research Traineeship (NRT) grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation seeded the establishment of a new model for graduate education at Ohio State University – a large, public, land-grant R-1 university in the U.S. Midwest. This grant application involved faculty from eight different colleges within this university (education; engineering; public affairs; arts and sciences; food, agriculture, and environmental sciences; business; law). The Ohio State EmPOWERment Program in convergent graduate training for a sustainable energy future enrolls Ph.D. students studying any aspect of energy from degree programs any college in Ohio State and engages them in several curricular and co-curricular elements that are designed to dovetail with their Ph.D. degree program requirements in ways that do not extend their time to graduate. The Ohio State EmPOWERment Program established at Ohio State an energy Student Community of Practice and Engagement (SCOPE), a Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization (GIS), and an undergraduate Research in Sustainable Energy (RISE) summer research experience. Over time a JOULE energy seminar series (JOULE) was added to elevate intellectual engagement in for trainees in The Ohio State EmPOWERment Program and broaden their engagement with researchers across this university. This paper investigates the development and accentuation of innovation capacities of Ph.D. trainees in The Ohio State EmPOWERment Program relative to other Ph.D. students who enrolled in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines at Ohio State and did not participate in the Ohio State EmPOWERment Program. This work considers three different constructs for each of three scales (i.e., Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Cognitive). Of the nine different constructs, six pass assumption tests and pre-test scores for innovation self-concept, proactivity, social networking, risk-taking or tolerance, creative capacity, and intention to innovate are significant predictors of post-test capacities. Overall, participating in The Ohio State EmPOWERment Program appears to be beneficial and may increase innovation self-concept, proactivity, creative, and intention to innovate capacities.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1922666
- PAR ID:
- 10542091
- Publisher / Repository:
- Proceedings of the 2024 Annual American Society of Engineering Education Research and Exposition Conference
- Date Published:
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- #42682
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- https://peer.asee.org/empowering-a-sustainable-energy-future-through-interconnected-curricular-and-co-curricular-pedagogies
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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