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This poster displays results from a project supported by an NSF grant to enhance interdisciplinary collaboration in civil and environmental engineering education. In its second year, part of the project focused on improving team science competencies within the core research group. Key activities included workshops on collaborative writing and grant writing best practices. The team attended a Science of Team Science (SciTS) workshop to refine collaboration skills and responded to the Teaming Readiness Survey, which revealed strengths in valuing expertise but identified areas for improvement, such as role clarity and effective communication. In addition, the team responded to a Social Network Analysis Survey that showcased a growing network of research ties, indicating a robust collaborative environment, particularly among Principal Investigators. The preliminary results highlight a development in the team’s effectiveness and psychological safety ratings, fostering trust and collaboration. The social network evolved from professional to social connections, with new members gradually integrating into the team. The research team concludes that focusing on collaborative skills and effective communication strengthens interdisciplinary collaboration in the changing scientific landscape. 

The Center for Infrastructure Transformation and Education (CIT-E) is a community of faculty members who share a passion for infrastructure education. Their goal is to transform the way civil and environmental engineering (CEE) topics are taught. In 2021, the co-authors of this poster received an NSF IUSE grant to build the capacity of a faculty community of practice (CoP), positioning it to transform the approach to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) in CEE education. By incorporating DEIJ into their teaching, research, and service commitments, CEE faculty members can be the catalysts responsible for transitioning our nation’s inequitable infrastructure into equitable infrastructure. This poster highlights three key assessment objectives, including a review of the literature on re-contextualizing infrastructure education, a SWOT analysis, and team science professional development. 

A national faculty Community of Practice (CoP) has created a model course for undergraduate infrastructure education as a part of its shared agenda. This CoP has collectively defined the domain of knowledge for undergraduate introductory infrastructure education; co-created and peer-reviewed more than 40 complete lessons for an introductory infrastructure course; shared best practices and resources among members; and provided mentorship to newer members adopting or adapting the materials. The Center for Infrastructure Transformation and Education (CIT-E) considers infrastructure as a system rather than a collection of unrelated structural/environmental/transportation components; even more importantly, this system is conceived of as a social-technical system that must be designed with equity and justice factors prioritized to include the diversity of users’ lived experiences. To that end, CoP members have recently produced learning materials on Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ) in infrastructure provision. The operationalizing of CoP as a theory of change by CIT-E has emerged beyond the initial National Science Foundation (NSF) funding a decade ago, employing various change strategies. Example strategies include expanding membership and creating alternative educational practices to support change and transformation. Recent NSF funding and new membership have created opportunities for the CoP to lead change at a much broader level across civil and environmental engineering education in the U.S. As part of this work, we conducted semi-structured interviews with seven change leaders in engineering education and DEIJ. We asked their perspectives on community of practice as a theory of change and whether it is appropriate for this work. Their responses were coded, revealing 169 codes, some of which advisors agreed upon, and many representing alternative perspectives. Processes such as considering, accepting, asking, and acknowledging are easy to overlook while executing change through mentoring, funding, and doing. The results of this work are helpful for civil and environmental engineering (CEE) faculty members interested in operationalizing change in their classroom and on their campus to meet ABET’s relatively recent DEI criteria, and the process in this study is transferrable to other fields that are also mobilizing transformative practices for integrating DEIJ principles into their curricula.