Disabled people continue to be significantly underrepresented and marginalized in engineering. Current reports indicate that approximately 26 percent of US adults have some form of disability. Yet only 6 percent of undergraduate students enrolled in engineering programs belong to this group. Several barriers have been identified that discourage and even prohibit people with disabilities from participating in engineering including arduous accommodations processes, lack of institutional support, and negative peer, staff, and faculty attitudes. These barriers are perpetuated and reinforced by a variety of ableist sociocultural norms and definitions that rely on popularized tropes and medicalized models that influence the ways this group experiences school to become engineers.
In this paper, we seek to contribute to conversations that shape understanding of disability identity and the ways it is conceptualized in engineering programs. We revisit interview data from an ongoing grounded theory exploration of professional identity formation of undergraduate civil engineering students who identify as having one or more disabilities. Through our qualitative analysis, we identified overarching themes that contribute to understanding of how participants define and integrate disability identity to form professional identities and the ways they reshape and contribute to the civil engineering field through this lens. Emergent themes include experiencing/considering disability identity as a fluid experience, as a characteristic that ‘sets you apart’, and as a medicalized symptom or condition. Findings from this work can be used by engineering educators and administrators to inform more effective academic and personal support structures to destigmatize disability and promote the participation and inclusion of students and colleagues with disabilities in engineering and in our academic and professional communities.
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Navigating a Sea of Obstacles: Ocean Science for People with Disabilities
The geoscience community discussion on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) most often focuses on increasing the participation of underrepresented groups based on race, ethnicity, and gender. Disability status is often overlooked, even though people with disabilities are underrepresented in the US STEM workforce by a factor of 3 compared to factors of 1.5 and 1.3 for women and underrepresented minorities, respectively (NCSES, 2023). The unemployment rate (the proportion of the workforce population that is unemployed but actively seeking work) is twice as high for people with disabilities as it is for those without a disability, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/disabl.pdf).
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 2231647
- PAR ID:
- 10544038
- Publisher / Repository:
- The Oceanography Society
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Oceanography
- Volume:
- 36
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 1042-8275
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2024.106
