Keywords

9.1 Introduction

Efforts to reform science, mathematics, and engineering education toward more equitable access have taken a variety of forms. Since the first call to equity in the form of “Science for all Americans” (Rutherford & Ahlgren, 1991) there has been continued attention and investment toward the re-examination of epistemological and cultural stances defining what it means to think, speak, and act like an expert in these three fields (Lynch, 2001; Mutegi, 2011). It was once thought that treating every student the same and offering equal and standardized measures for all students avoided bias and would rebuff any critiques who drew attention to the predominant bias of rational, positivist engineering perspective. However, a variety of scholars have recently interrogated this stance (Beddoes & Borrego, 2011; Blickenstaff, 2005; Harding, 1998, 2004; Lewis, 2003; McGee, 2016; Rice, 2016; Rodriguez, 2004, 2015). This re-examination of pedagogical, curricular, and cultural practices of the discipline translated into higher education classrooms has been informed by a variety of researchers and voices outside of science, technology, math, and engineering (STEM) education. Historically, there has been an enormous investment of local, state, and federal dollars towards a re-examination of under-representation in STEM. Our aim in this chapter is to provide a deeper examination of the socialization of members into the discipline of engineering to inform future funding efforts and evaluation measures of these efforts.

In a volume dedicated to examining the oversights and implicit biases of funding and opportunities in STEM, our goal is to explicate how even well-funded initiatives can have minimal impact if proper attention is not given to core cultural beliefs and practices. Funding directed at promoting equity, diversity, inclusion, and social justice in the engineering academy typically targets addressing the implicit bias within engineering. What we explicate in this chapter is not a ubiquitous critique on all of STEM in higher education. Each discipline manages unique cultures through their membership selection, discourse norms and practices, and reward systems (Schwab, 1978; Traweek, 1990). As such, we limit our critique to three examples of engineering initiatives that have traversed the initial obstacles of recognition and subsequent initial funding which include: identifying limiting factors for undergraduate student support, identifying socializing forces in funded engineering post-doctoral students, and explicitly identifying the cultural capital needed for success among undergraduate engineering students. Our contribution is meant to more carefully examine contributing factors, which can influence the implementation, evaluation, and resulting efficacy of well-intended engineering education reform. Because agencies tend to rely upon the self-report of recipients’ success stories for validation, our chapter is a vital account, told from within disciplinary boundaries working with well-intended engineering educators and meant to explore more deeply the implementation and ultimate success of investing in equity. We are researchers embedded in the work and committed to the advancement of equity in engineering education reform. Our critique will help readers and co-workers in the advancement of equity within engineering understand the nature and impact of existing culture on their efforts. Our critique may also secondarily provide funding agencies additional perspectives to re-evaluate their strategies to evaluate the success of funded projects.

We begin by introducing the non-engineer to the state of engineering education equity reform and the minimal impact past funded efforts have made toward changing the landscape of engineering students and practicing engineers. We next explore how structured inequity within the discipline and its representation in higher education diminishes efforts for change. Our chapter brings to bear many voices external to engineering literature to frame explanations of past failures to influence meaningful change. Most of these voices are revered scholars of anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies. We have included one voice as an intended composite of students within the engineering programs we have studied as we believe they are the most ignored, yet most important voices of all. After framing our critique, we offer three actual vignettes extracted from case studies we have conducted to examine two common themes (Table 9.1) which traverse all three funded projects: the definition of engineering identities and the work of engineering faculty.

Table 9.1 The manifestation of the two crosscutting themes of engineering identity and the work of engineering faculty across all three engineering education challenges
Full size table

9.2 Engineering Education Equity Reform

9.2.1 What Have We Learned from 30 Years of Equity Research?

The stark contrast between the general United States (U.S.) population and the representative sample population of engineers in the U.S. has endured through 30 years of alleged reform. In 2014, students who identified as Black or African American earned only 4.2% of engineering Bachelor’s degrees, while Latinx students earned only 10.4%. In contrast, Whites and Asians accounted for more than 78% of all U.S. engineering graduates. Women, who hold less than 15% of all engineering positions, also experience vast underrepresentation. Even though research on the dearth of diversity in engineering has revealed large gaps for more than three decades, engineering educators’ lack of agreement on strategies to diversify the ranks of engineers (Grier-Reed & Williams-Wengerd, 2018; Long & Mejia, 2016; Rice et al., 2016; Stage et al., 2013) has complicated this context. While studies demonstrate some efforts to increase STEM major choice by underrepresented populations, barriers to retention and degree completion in STEM remain (Moakler Jr & Kim, 2014).

9.2.2 Structural and Systemic Inequity Continues Through Weeder Courses and a Positivist Worldview

An increased understanding of the infrastructure that continues to produce inequities in engineering education, can better equip stakeholders to expand access to education while validating the lived experiences of racially minoritized students (Henry & Generett, 2005; Huang et al., 2000; McGee, 2015). Systemic racism has disadvantaged students of color from entering and graduating from undergraduate programs, thereby denying the resources necessary for professional success in STEM fields (Fries-Britt & Griffin, 2007; McGee, 2020). Racially minoritized students have varying encounters with racism that can have detrimental psychological, physical, economic, and social consequences. Focusing strictly on the intellectual attainment for these students is insufficient, if we expect students to excel in the meritocracy-based theater of engineering education when they are disadvantaged at entry and excluded upon arrival. Rather, we should ask how might faculty and staff support students of color who exist in a sociopolitical climate with messaging that targets every realm of their existence including social, personal, emotional, and psychological characteristics? For over three decades, strategies to enhance the success of racially minoritized students desiring to major in STEM have focused on strategies such as creating culturally affirming spaces and mentoring (Jackson, 2013; McGee, 2020). However, programs and culturally affirming spaces cannot be effective and efficient until we achieve a more inclusive perspective that critically examines and responds to racist and sexist policies and practices within STEM higher education. Hiring more women and people of color as engineering professors can, in turn, help interrogate the cultural context and assist in producing legitimate academic supports for underrepresented students. However, this is only a partial solution, at best as many scholars are drawing increasing attention to the systemically racist and sexist existing STEM culture faculty are hired into within higher education (Riley, 1999; Riley et al., 2014; Yosso et al., 2009). Efforts to directly address this culture can help members in engineering education environments be more inclusive and develop a sense of belonging for those students traditionally underrepresented in engineering (Armstrong & Jovanovic, 2015; Secules, 2017).

One explanation for the lack of diversity in engineering is the relatively static engineering undergraduate curricula maintained by the majority of research institutions. The engineering disciplines are rooted in a positivist worldview based on the scientific method and focused on facts, laws, and objectivity (Jawitz & Case, 2002). Undergraduates are widely subjected to rigorous “weeder courses” for the first two years (e.g., Calculus 1 and 2, Differential Equations, Physics 1and2, Chemistry 1 and 2) before they are deemed “fit” to engage in real engineering activities. Though many institutions have adopted small “engineering first year” experiences, the vast majority of the curriculum remains unchanged. Students must navigate heavy course loads of highly theoretical, disconnected subject matter isolated from students’ lived experiences and societal concerns (Cumming-Potvin & Currie, 2013). Long ago, researchers in K-12 contexts identified that teachers, who were able to connect social constructivist frameworks with multicultural understanding, enhanced student success (Rodriguez, 1998). The one-size-fits-all model of engineering education practice is largely responsible for the homogeneity in engineering and continues to disadvantage minoritized students. Marginalization of underrepresented undergraduate students transcends efforts to reorganize curricula or tinker with pedagogical approaches. An abundance of evidence demonstrates that White middle-class families provide considerably more support and opportunities in and out of school for navigating abstract classes like calculus and physics and advanced placement courses in preparation for admission to engineering programs. This phenomenon gives already privileged students a leg up in the competitive context of their initial years of engineering (Eastman et al., 2017; Weis et al., 2014). Such disproportionate investment creates an opportunity gap for students without wealthy backgrounds, particularly within urban contexts. Professors often assess students who struggle in their initial years of abstract coursework as unable to be successful in engineering. Framing the issues from a deficit perspective, struggling students are deemed unworthy or unable to continue due to their lack of preparedness from an inequitable K-12 context.

Minoritized underrepresented students who are marginalized, invalidated, and oppressed based on phenotypic characteristics may be more likely than their majority peers to change majors or drop out of school (Miles et al., 2020). The vulnerability of marginalized and oppressed students requires educators to attend to more than their intellect. Racism and its impact on society are documented, yet to provide spaces that validate minoritized students we must provide truth to the lived experiences of these students. For example, students who have contact with their professors both in class and out (e.g., office hours) are more likely to stay connected and to persist during difficult times. Conversely, failing to provide validation can lead to a decrease in academic self-efficacy, which may ultimately lead to dropping out of school or choosing a different major (McGee & Martin, 2011; Rice, 2016; Riley et al., 2014). Drawing on social constructivist principles (Dewey, 1933; von Glasersfeld, 1989; Vygotsky, 1978) and creating educational experiences aligned with the lived experiences of a diverse student body can foster a sense of belonging and empower the voices of underserved students (Rodriguez & Kitchen, 2005; Rodriguez & Morrison, 2019).

9.2.3 Looking in the Mirror: Those Like Us Succeed

The homogeneity of engineering professors and practitioners is anything but accidental. The longstanding White and male culture of engineering has been perpetuated by those who have successfully navigated a system that promotes and rewards orthodoxy and a positivist worldview. Students enter college believing that the teacher’s role is to “know The Truth,” and the student’s role is to absorb that truth and to “repeat it back on assignments and tests” (Felder, 2004; Felder et al., 2011, p. 269). Most engineering education curricula are largely aligned with this rote learning strategy especially in the early years (Cumming-Potvin & Currie, 2013; Jawitz & Case, 2002). In a study of the epistemological beliefs of civil engineering faculty, researchers found an overwhelming commitment to an objective reality that is “meaningful in all contexts” (Montfort et al., 2014). Others have challenged, “faculty members talk at students rather than engaging them in activities that help them to learn and apply core scientific concepts and skills” (Dennin et al., 2017, p. 2). Given this stance, which is counter to honoring individual lived experiences and the tenets of social constructivism, it is no wonder that students who think and act like the faculty member in the front of the room who serves as the knowledge authority are most likely to achieve success in engineering.

In addition to maintaining traditional teaching practices, engineering faculty are rewarded for scholarly accomplishments, including publication in prominent journals as measured by various indices, and by the amount of external funding they can secure. The tenure review process typically defines specific metrics for publication and external funding expectations while leaving teaching expectations much more nebulous. Phrases such as “demonstrate successful teaching,” or “demonstrate competency in the classroom,” set an extremely low bar for teaching expectations and foster a culture that reinforces mediocrity in the classroom. Although researchers have called for more sophisticated evaluation of classroom learning that includes enhanced student engagement, faculty development, and use of teaching observation protocols (Bradforth et al., 2015), most engineering schools rely on student evaluation of teaching (SET) surveys as the primary means of teaching evaluation. Indeed, research have deemed these ubiquitous tools as “essentially useless” and have mocked the legitimacy of using such surveys by arguing that calculating averages for categorical data in teaching evaluations is “analogous to saying that the average of a pen, peach, eraser, and a piece of paper is a book” (Hornstein, 2017, p. 2). The illegitimacy of such tools is so widely accepted that their results prove ineffective in correcting sub-par teaching (Steele & Aronson, 1998). The result of such practices is that teaching quality is not truly measured, thereby eliminating it as an actual expectation. As educators and researchers, we have personally witnessed overreliance on SET in review of faculty performance and a dearth of any other indicators aimed at evaluating and improving teaching and learning.

Despite the espoused commitment to quality teaching by engineering administrators across the country, the true driver of teaching quality is individual faculty commitment. If we are to influence teaching quality, the propagation of inclusive teaching practices, and the success of a diverse student body, it is incumbent upon university leadership to promote and require teaching practices that encourage deep learning to foster the success of all students. We must reach beyond traditional SET and develop structures to evaluate, require, and reward quality teaching.

9.2.4 How We Frame the Problem Matters: Recruiting More Minoritized Students Without Addressing the Existing Engineering Culture Is Destined to Fail

Making necessary changes to increase cultural diversity among engineers has proven to be an enduring challenge. Hundreds of millions of dollars of student recruitment, training, and support have been directed towards the well-documented attrition and resulting lack of diversity in engineering. The stubbornness of this “problem of diversity” has surprised the field as engineers pride themselves on being accomplished problem solvers. In fact, engineers have a strong reputation of social and civil contributions as problem solvers. Unfortunately, all problem solutions are steered by the original conception of the problem and many have demonstrated how the bias of STEM professionals has led to catastrophic error (Petrosky, 1985). If the problem is ill-conceived, even intentional or non-intentional bias will render the solution ineffective and non-consequential.

One such example of an ill-conceived solution is that of addressing a lack of student cultural diversity through recruitment. For decades, engineering programs devoted increasing university resources to increase cultural diversity in undergraduate programs. The thinking behind such movements was well intended and egalitarian by nature. However, the chosen remedy was insufficient and incomplete. The approach of “treating everyone the same,” and offering every student “equality of opportunity for success” has often stemmed from the ill-conceived notion of color blindness (Blickenstaff, 2005; Harper & Patton, 2007). For engineering recruitment, this often translated to bringing more students on campus without removing the student-deficit-oriented solution space, thereby leaving unchecked the engineering culture’s existing biases and beliefs about minitorized students.

Torres (2012) documented the increase in underrepresented student participation in undergraduate engineering but no growth in the number of female science faculty at postsecondary institutions. These trends are not surprisingly reflected in faculty retention as well. In one example, Torres described a decade of hiring White males into science and engineering departments for more than three out of every four faculty positions. Similarly, 16% of women faculty typically resigned after 3 years, while only 4% of men departed during the same timeframe. Following this report the institution still received another National Science Foundation (NSF) funded grant to create a new program with similar outcomes despite having refused, according to Torres (2012), to remove existing systems of capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and the normalization of Whiteness. Torres’ work and the expanding body of related work in the field demonstrate that without changing the structures, curricula, pedagogy, and assessments, little progress occurs. Existing barriers and structures continue to disadvantage students who do not enter with the cultural capital that majority, White, affluent families provide to their male, STEM-oriented children (Weis et al., 2014). In this way, scholars have argued that inequity should not be conceived as a problem to be solved (Henry & Generett, 2005; Reed et al., 2007). Cultural shifts should also be a goal.

9.3 Changing the Mindset of Engineering Educators

9.3.1 How Can We Shift the Focus from a Student Deficit Model to Supportive Infrastructure Focused on Student Success?

In critique of an educational movement to enhance students’ abilities to solve problems, Schön (1983) argued that experts known for their problem solving, in professions such as engineering and the medical field, can rarely identify the sources of their expertise nor are they able to effectively translate to novices how they arrived at their successful conclusion. Schön’s ultimate critique identified that engineers are experts at “problem setting” since no expert is ever given a neatly packed problem to be solved. Rather, Schön (1983) argued that experts do not solve problems, they participate in the organization, distillation, and synthesis of a messy world and propose frameworks through which a proposed solution can be evaluated and implemented.

Through this lens, if we are to examine the problem setting that engineers have applied to the problem of diversity, we see that many of the dispositions and beliefs engineers hold regarding insiders and outsiders to the profession, actually render the problem unsolvable for engineering educators hoping to come along-side to assist engineers interested in changing the culture. Take for example the well-documented belief that color-blindness is a solution to equitable access to engineering for minoritized students (Henry & Generett, 2005). It is widely held that this popular stance among engineers is flawed and continues to propagate inequity in recruitment, support, and ultimate completion of a degree (Harper & Patton, 2007; Taylor, 1998). Yet, the solution of equal treatment persists as a potential solution for inequity, despite the lack of evidence to support this commonsense notion (Blickenstaff, 2005). In treating all students, the same, we fail to acknowledge that students have individual, unique capabilities and arrive with different cultural capital. As engineering educators, if we do nothing to explicate some of the hidden or implicit capital some students wield, the same students (e.g., White, male) will continue to be successful, reinforcing the notion that “I did this myself through my own hard work.” The process of examining the culture of undergraduate engineering and developing an explicit set of expectations and rules of power for all students assures that, regardless of what capital students arrive with, we can introduce clear expectations and appropriate supports, so all students can succeed.

Another way that engineers arrive at solutions that only exacerbates the problem of diversifying the undergraduate engineering student population is to define differences in successful and unsuccessful students in terms of the intellectual deficits of the students themselves. Many engineering education studies that have examined diversity have only considered program completers as a unit of analysis. Such biased studies may not effectively evaluate the solutions the studies propose. By measuring only, the completers of programs, we effectively obfuscate the opportunity to learn from the lived experiences of those students who were not successful. As such, we may become overly reliant on constructs such as “resilience” which may or may not apply to all students. Measures of resilience reinforce the existence of deficits in those who left engineering. Many deficit characterizations of the exodus of students from engineering appear in engineering education research. Researchers have demonstrated several such assumptions to be without any evidential basis (Blickenstaff, 2005; Reed et al., 2007) stemming from engineers’ perceptions of their own identities and preconceived notions of students who can and should complete engineering programs. Unfounded depictions of student deficits are widely accepted including gender differences both biological and cultural, perceived ability, poor family backgrounds, attitudes and early experiences, work ethic, lack of preparation, academic pedigree, and role models (Brainard & Carlin, 1998; Brickhouse, 1994; Carlone & Johnson, 2007). For decades, these false characterizations have concealed the underlying challenges with creating an academic culture that supports the success of all students. Scholars have argued that marginalized students no longer should carry the burden of redefining, resolving, and rectifying the unfair systems that have marginalized them. Rather the system itself should bear more of that burden for resolving systems of inequity (McGee & Martin, 2011; Yosso, 2005).

9.3.2 We Must Listen to and Learn from Those Students Who Have Chosen to Leave Engineering Programs

For nearly a decade, researchers have been exploring the nature of exclusion and structured bias implicit within undergraduate engineering programs at several institutions. Whether examining our own institutions or others who have allowed us to conduct our research, we find proposed many solutions flawed in their characterization of the problem of diversity. Uncritical solutions like targeted recruitment of students allow existing structures to go unexamined and are unlikely to change. Despite decades of research and millions of funding dollars, the graduating seniors look much as they did in the 1960’s (NSF, 2013). We believe this is in part due to the screening, blind spots, exclusion, and homogenization of cultural practices and discourse enacted in academic and professional venues. As representative allegory, we have compiled a short anecdote that represents a composite of some of the unwelcomed messages we documented. We frame this as a letter to the Editor of an academic engineering journal from a student, whose voice would not normally be heard because they are departing the program for another major.

Dear Editor,

I am a student who has recently left the engineering program at my university. Like many before me, I left feeling isolated, unheard, that my presence in class was unrequired, sometimes even invisible as I struggled to keep up. I finally decided for a number of reasons to leave, but I did so with a sense of regret and even a sense that I had failed somehow. Though I am successful in my new major, I am writing you because in my new degree I am studying the mismatch of cultures and what happens when they conflict. Just out of curiosity and alleviating some of my own self-inflicted guilt for the misfit I felt, I searched your journal for some trends, some insights, some answers to why I felt the way I did. What I found after carefully considering the majority of articles published in your journal for the last 10 years, is that the exodus of non-White non-male students is a long-standing precedent. However, most of the articles on this topic seem to focus on issues that I believe prevent researchers from truly understanding the experiences I encountered your contributors to your journal seem to be studying in ways that I believe keep them from the findings I would like to steer them toward. I write you not to criticize their work, only to offer a substantive critique to help direct your fellow researchers to “look outside the box” as they typically think of themselves as problem solvers, and examine carefully some of the assumptions they are making about students like me.

I write you this letter because I have become convinced your readership will never uncover this for themselves. They are too busy measuring their success by examining those who remain and don’t leave engineering school—those who your profession call “resilient”. If you continue to look only to those who survive the induction, socialization, and domestication processes that occur throughout the initial years of engineering programs (which by the way have changed very little nationally in the last three decades (Jamieson & Lohmann, 2012) then you will never truly understand the obstacles students like me face. And what you cannot see, you cannot improve. Several of my friends exited engineering majors before me. Like me, these students left the support of their own communities to come to this engineering school with the hope of achieving success. However, after our arrival, we found that students like us would not be accepted until we conformed to the expectations of our hyper-competitive peers who are continually propped up by the norms of our professors. Those of us who did not fit in, and struggled academically, were informed by our professors “you probably should change majors.” My friends told me no one ever taught them the ropes, followed up when they were struggling, nor even asked them why they left engineering. I imagine no one wants to know my story either. Engineering education research journals offer few accounts of researchers ever going back to ask students who have exited engineering majors why they left. It is too much work to follow up methodologically in a research study and your authors are working in academic departments that lack the infrastructure to track those who have left. It is not that faculty think it does not matter. The reality is that there are few, if any, rewards for engineering faculty to engage educational researchers in the social sciences to assist with adequately studying the problem of student attrition. Studying equity fails to match the job expectations for engineering educators at their institutions. So, I write you, as the voice of a student who is leaving engineering—the voice that will seldom be heard and that engineering education research journals are unlikely to explore. I write to you, as yet another traditionally marginalized student in engineering, labeled as being without the necessary preparation or resilience and unworthy of the field, another voice that after this letter will be completely silent and absent from the field. Though engineering literature proclaims to need my voice to strengthen and diversify through a multitude of perspectives, my success is less important than maintaining the existing beliefs about me.

It is not our expectation that engineering faculty would be predisposed to recognize the biases and barriers integral to the system of producing and socializing engineers. What we would hope from reading such an account is for faculty to ask themselves what they really understand about students who fail their courses and upon what is their understanding based? We would also hope to encourage engineering faculty, along with engineering education journal editors and reviewers to explore how they, themselves, are in part culpable by their beliefs and actions (or inactions) for maintaining a culture that remains impervious to changing the inequity it reflects.

9.4 Reversing Momentum by Addressing Challenges to the Cultural Diversification of Engineering Students

Because of our collective 45 years of experience in engineering education research, we wish to narrow our arguments only to the engineering context of higher education. We are one female and four male STEM education researchers employed at four different institutions who offer undergraduate engineering and who wish to speak to the institutional challenges of making needed changes in higher education. From the perspective of one White and one Indian man engineers, one Black man and one Black woman, both engineering education researchers, and one White male science education researcher, we acknowledge our own biases brought on by our personal experiences, slights, and privileges afforded to us in our individual journeys as higher education professionals. At the same time, we tell our accounts of successfully funded STEM initiatives intended to make substantive improvements that may be influenced by institutional inertia, intentional and unintentional race and gendered bias, and structured inequity in the institutions we have studied as well as the places where we work. We attempt in this chapter to examine three critical incidents aimed at moving the needle through funding equity and social justice efforts in higher education to illuminate to better use spending to accommodate lasting change. We draw from the scholarship of other disciplines (e.g., sociology) to frame our assessment and recommendations. It is our hope that members of the engineering field consider equity voices and scholarship that transcends the normal reading consumption of engineering faculty who teach our undergraduate students but are necessarily driven to technical, discipline-focused research.

In line with the explicitly stated goals for engineering education leadership of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), we seek ways to contribute to the understanding of how and why changes in the culture of engineering have been so slow and how they may be accelerated. We share Jamieson and Lohmann’s (2012) goal to support efforts towards “creating and sustaining an engineering academic culture that encourages and supports educational innovations with impact…” (p. 16). More specifically, we hope to improve engineering education research that informs the culture of engineering education and the context surrounding instruction to “make engineering programs more engaging and relevant, while enhancing efforts on making engineering education more welcoming” (p. 7).

From our research and the countless cases that have confronted us in our own engineering programs, we are convinced more than ever that opportunities exist within the funded efforts we pursue and the departmental budgets we create to capitalize on existing diversity movements and welcome new perspectives to transform engineering culture to be more accepting of diversity. We aim to find new ways to think about how we might promote and sustain the participation of underrepresented undergraduate students in engineering. To this end, we present three challenges through vignettes, drawn from our own data collection while analyzing higher education culture over the last 10 years and unpack crosscutting themes that traverse these vignettes (Table 9.1). We address issues related to faculty dispositions and beliefs, the role of race in exclusion, and the explication of cultural capital. These challenges depicted among these vignettes include creating awareness and rewarding change, reliance on the illusion of support, and making explicit the cultural capital required for success. Through each of these vignettes, we explore potential ways to establish new strategies for conceptualizing success at these different institutions.

9.4.1 Vignette #1: Fighting Against the Status Quo and Rewarding Faculty for Inclusive Pedagogical Strategies

Midwest Technical University (MTU) is nestled in an urban context that experienced significant economic downturn in the 1970s. Since then, manufacturing jobs left and the city has become one of the most impoverished in the country. Along with a failing economy came under-resourced and failing schools, particularly in the urban settings. In the local urban district 15 schools have been categorized as “failing,” with five of those designated a failing for 10 consecutive years. Additionally, in the 2015 Failing Schools Report published by New York State, only 2% of the teachers in this district received “highly effective” ratings, while 41.9% of teachers across the state received that rating. Despite the close proximity between campus and urban school district, many MTU faculty had never deeply considered the stark disparity between the high school experiences of the students enrolled at their university and those students from the urban school district in their own backyard (Eastman et al., 2017).

One approach to funding a change in diversity in engineering is investment in “seed projects” for building institutional capacity. Many institutions seek NSF funding to make a change in the culture or even “revolutionizing” engineering departments (NSF, 2019). The Dean of the College of Applied Science at MTU desired to raise the status of his college, develop a reliable external funding mechanism, and become a leader in STEM education research. To increase the capabilities of his faculty and to build a foundation of education research, the Dean invested in a dozen faculty to enroll in an education research focused PhD program. Approximately a dozen engineering faculty from MTU enrolled in this doctoral program. Within 5 years, six MTU faculty members had completed graduate degrees and had begun to push for meaningful changes related to pedagogy and research at their own university. Though it was not his original intention, this growth of knowledge in his faculty resulted in a collective movement to raise awareness about diversity and to make their institution and STEM programs more equitable. Their experiences in the doctoral program led them to realize that, consistent with most engineering faculty, they had never been properly educated in the theories of teaching and learning, nor had they engaged with the extant education research. After completing their doctoral degrees, these long-time faculty members enthusiastically embraced goals to address inequity at their own institution and make a difference in higher education. It did not take long for these educators to recognize that the barriers of entrenched beliefs and long-held structural practices would be difficult to overcome.

After completing their graduate degrees, this team of engineering educators began to engage in two research pathways including analyzing the local engineering education culture and advocating at their university for inclusive pedagogical strategies, those that address intersection identities and eschew the assumption that there is a normal baseline student. They sought to build a coalition of willing participants by collaborating with those faculty most interested in supporting pedagogical change. Because of their status as recently minted PhDs, MTU regularly provided forums to share their experiences with their colleagues. However, while engaging in those conversations the advocates for student success regularly encountered apathy and in some cases galvanized resistance. While they were able to identify a small number of willing and sympathetic colleagues, they initially found faculty at their home institution had little interest in enhancing diversity or adopting inclusive teaching strategies. In an attempt to advocate for students, these MTU faculty who were recent doctoral graduates argued for more relevant curricula, more engaging pedagogy, and to connect abstract concepts with real world examples to promote student success. Such suggestions often elicited responses from their peers such as “my job isn’t to make it easier for students, my job is to ensure our graduates are prepared for industry,” or “the breakdown is in the urban school system, we can’t help the students they give us.” Although university leadership made money available to support pedagogical changes, some faculty clung to a student-deficit orientation and the traditional excuses of bad parenting, incapable students, and protecting the discipline as a means of retaining the structures that permitted engineering to remain among the most homogeneous of disciplines.

This team of engineering educators took it upon themselves to explore the structures of engineering education culture continue to prevent students from under-resourced urban areas from achieving success in engineering and other STEM disciplines. Their research at MTU found that many STEM faculty had little connection to or understanding of their surrounding urban school district and lacked a widespread commitment to removing barriers to success for minoritized students (Eastman et al., 2017). Eventually, they were able to identify opportunities for building a more culturally inclusive environment within the classrooms of their college. Pockets of faculty at MTU have begun to adopt inclusive pedagogical strategies and have moved away from traditional lectures. The newly appointed Dean of their home college now focuses on student success. He has supported workshops for improving classroom instruction and provided seed money for teams of faculty to redesign courses to support a more diverse spectrum of learners. In one year, faculty in the Applied Science College at MTU modified nine courses to include research-based pedagogical strategies supported by science education research (Rodriguez & Kitchen, 2005). The revision of nine engineering courses is a meaningful start. However, MTU offers over a hundred different engineering-related courses each year, and there is still much work to accomplish in creating a nurturing environment for all students. The MTU faculty who completed graduate degrees in STEM education research continue to advocate for culturally diverse students and understand that changing culture is a painstakingly slow process.

9.4.2 Vignette #2 Focusing on the Long-Term Success of Graduate Candidates

Many research-intensive institutions heavily rely on the labor of doctoral students and postdocs to maintain their research enterprise. Diversity initiatives are often tied to supporting STEM research efforts by recruiting underrepresented postdoctoral researchers. Institutions practice cluster hiring to create a network of colleagues to support one another in diversity practices, increase productivity, provide a micro culture of inclusivity, and increase retention. The hope is to support a diverse faculty pool to minimize the often-observed isolation of faculty of color and increase the intensity of the messages for change through solidarity. Some institutions have adopted this approach for grooming future faculty members of color through “clustering” postdoctoral scholars preparing for their entry into higher education. Such was the case for the principal investigator of the federally funded Engineering Education Diversity Cohort (EEDC) at Southeastern University (pseudonym). Southeastern University’s (SEU) efforts to concentrate resources, training, mentorship, and research behind a cluster of underrepresented engineering education postdocs achieved limited success. The postdocs received mentoring and professional development. However, the fellowship’s objective of assisting the postdocs with securing a tenure track lines did not occur. Despite the powerful mentoring the postdoc cohort received, the strategy failed to increase hire rates of junior faculty of color in STEM. Southeastern University received federal funding for a cohort cluster hire of underrepresented postdocs, hired under the president’s new diversity initiative. These highly qualified and nationally awarded recent doctoral graduates embarked on a three-year postdoc position to be “groomed” specifically for tenure-track positions at the host institution. Despite best practices for ensuring success support such as individual mentoring teams, research and professional development funding, and a cohort structure, this fellowship did not achieve the desired results.

Though the support in this program was robust, the implementation by the faculty varied. The faculty and leadership implementing the fellowship was not properly prepared to provide support for a diverse cadre of postdocs. As an example, one of the post-docs in the diversity cohort was a White male engineer in a wheelchair, who designed many devices prior to coming to the institution. Though capable, knowledgeable, and qualified, he would never actually gain full access to the laboratory, which he was promised. His faculty advisor was unaccustomed to working with non-able-bodied postdocs and attributed the postdoc’s disability to an inability to engage in engineering, which was clearly not the case. After lodging several complaints to the fellowship committee and the academic department, the postdoc felt it was no longer worth the fight required to prove his ability. He was already nationally acclaimed; he cut ties with the university and entered into the workforce. He is now thriving in the role of an entrepreneur in the private sector.

In a different example, the fellowship failed to provide support for a Latino engineering postdoc when he found was trying to gain more teaching experience to build a competitive CV. He attributed the challenges he encountered to his ethnicity, which contrasted the White male student population. He would often share “they [faculty] just don’t know what to do with me.” He endured being excluded and experiencing toxic and racist interactions in the computer engineering department. This postdoc also filed complaints through the appropriate channels. Like those of the White male, his concerns were not taken seriously. Colleagues offered little consolation with statements such as “that is just how [the faculty here] are.” The university had little or no infrastructure to assist faculty with reflection on their relationships and interactions with postdocs.

Postdocs received no institutional protection from the numerous counts of physical and mental abuse they endured at the hands of faculty. The stakes were high for postdocs if the mentoring faculty member or grant principal investigator did not cultivate inclusive environments. For this particular diversity postdoc fellowship program, none of six postdocs received a tenure track position at the host institution, three left the academy, one took a lecturer appointment where teaching and student engagement was more valued, one remained in a laboratory, and one took a tenure track position at a different institution. Of this cohort recruited into these postdoc positions, only 16% landed tenure track positions in higher education. Though all post-docs had nationally competitive CVs, knowledge, experience, and success trajectories, their current relevant experiences in higher education impacted their career choices the most heavily. They were strong, competent, and knowledgeable doctoral candidates of color who were dissuaded from a tenure-track trajectory. This account demonstrates the importance having clear paths of entry into the profession, and responding to the needs of a diverse cohort, in addition to the training faculty and providing professional development to potential mentors for candidates of diversity initiatives.

9.4.3 Vignette #3 Making Explicit the Cultural Capital Required for Success

There are unexamined assumptions that surround the debate over student success. In mathematics, there is a reported prevalence of instructors that believe mathematical abilities are innate. One has them or they do not (Heyder et al., 2020; Schwartz, 1995). Engineers often attribute student success to work ethic (Christman & Yerrick, 2017; Conefrey, 2001). A characterization of the evidence of engineers’ beliefs found in these studies is typified by engineering faculty professing, “If the students would just work harder, they could succeed.” Apple (2020) argued that students’ school success is heavily influenced by the students’ ability to transfer relevant experiences, knowledge, and skills as well as the mannerisms and discourse of their prior culture into one of an academic context. Apple invoked Bourdieu’s (1975) notion of “cultural capital” to describe how an individual’s social status and cultural similarity could advantage majority students over minoritized students and lead to a cultural gap in achievement.

There are examples of institutions taking stock of their students’ incoming attributes and cultural capital and leveraging them for maximum success for all students. North Carolina Agriculture and Technical State University (NCAT) is one such engineering program, which has built upon its legacy of exemplary teaching and scholarship as an Historically Black College and University (HBCU). Currently, NCAT graduates the largest number of African Americans undergraduates in both engineering and agriculture in the nation. They accomplished this by living up to its explicit commitment to recognize, enhance and expand the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of incoming students. From its inception, NCAT set a course for valuing and leveraging the unique attributes of incoming freshman toward their eventual academic success though advising, academic supports, career development, research opportunities and community/professional experiences.

Other institutions also have adopted a stance of recognizing and leveraging the assets freshmen bring with them in order to help acclimate and support them through to their graduation. Western University (WU) is one of those schools. The leadership of the College of Engineering at Western University was in search of ways to increase their retention and graduation of undergraduate engineers among a population of students who were 56% First Generation (FG) students. The additional struggles of FG are well documented and they often have higher dropout rates and student loan defaults than any other university student population independent of majors (Britt et al., 2016). With the additional challenges that highly selective fields like engineering pose to undergraduates, the Dean of the engineering college was in search of solutions which could traverse a variety of student groups who were represented a spectrum of linguistic, gender, and cultural diversities of Central California. After examining the practices of successful graduates, alumni, and local practicing engineers, it became clear that there was a pattern of experiences, practices, and events, which some students of recognized incoming privilege all had in common. These students shared a collection of cultural capital and implicit values exhibited through shared practices. The Dean and his faculty identified more than two dozen common practices including: creating a resume, seeking academic assistance, checking in with advisors, introducing oneself to future employers, attendance at career fairs, application for internships, and other similar landmarks. The general understanding of the faculty was that these common practices were a part of the cultural capital that some students brought with them but others did not. Since most of the students came from a demographic where fewer than 20% of the population achieved a Bachelor’s degree, the challenge was to find a way to share the requisite capital with all students, not just the affluent few. Their first step as a college was to identify these important cultural practices, which were common among successful engineers, and to compile an advising sheet for distribution to all students to guide them. Making these a common practice for all students was a more challenging task as this “one sheet”, as it became affectionately known, needed to be enacted through both their advisors as well as corporate mentors who would eventually offer these students professional internships. In consulting the mentoring literature, the Dean drew upon a model of mentoring that did not cater to just one kind of student demography. His belief was that every student would benefit from a mentoring program and intentionally prescribing these events. The literature on mentoring suggests that mentees experience enhanced self-esteem and exhibit improved professional competencies when professionals in the field mentor fledgling engineers. To provide clear expectations for all, the Dean created a mentoring framework, timeline, and mentoring expectations. The explicit message from instructors and mentors all the way up to the Dean’s office was,

This program is hard. It is not just hard for you, but it is hard for everybody. There is a reason, for you to accomplish difficult things within your degree. Engineering is job that is complex and the profession needs you to be a good engineer, construction manager, or whatever this degree takes you to in your work later in life. There are explicit ways you can cope with this challenge. Mentors will share, with you how they did it as a student and how you can use your academic and professional experiences to succeed in the field. (Internal communication with author)

Within a year, the school of engineering had received commitments from more than 150 mentors who were recent alumni of the college (<10 years). Program leaders matched mentors with mentees, as much as possible, based upon gender and major. The Dean stated, “We began with gender matching as it is so vital in literature and their majors. Mentors were well known by the school but incoming freshmen were known only by their self-disclosed incoming information so there was guesswork required for more cultural or linguistic matches.” More than 400 students were enrolled in the formal mentoring process, where mentors met with their assigned mentees three or more times per semester to review a prepared checklist. Most mentors exceed this meeting frequency and all incoming engineering students.

Some engineering departments had more focused efforts than others had, and prepared recorded messages from Student Services and broadcast encouraging messages from the Chairs and Dean to convey their commitment to the success of all students. Although no faculty in the college of engineering have openly opposed this approach, there exists a minority of engineering faculty who have not fully embraced this mentoring program. When asked, the Dean described these faculty as “representing a more traditional approach, evaluating their own value as faculty from a narrowly constructed identity and limiting themselves by means of external funding to only teaching a few select classes.” He explained, “Because of limited time, they are often so focused on their teaching, research and scholarship or even more narrowly on the constructs of their discipline (e.g., water, transportation, construction) that they defer the responsibility of broader student success to others,” and added “even though they may have great influence in the overall student success.” Unwavering from his commitment, the Dean described future intentions to work more closely with these faculty members to enhance the culture for all students.

Though initial evidence is limited, new conversations about student success are beginning to occur and that momentum continues to build as enthusiastic mentors expand the pool of mentors by recruiting new alumni. Early indicators reveal that first-year retention has increased over prior years and interactions between mentors and mentees has increased student performance. The Dean’s recognition that propagating the behaviors of a small and predictable group of students signaled an opportunity to scaffold support and success for all students has led to measurable results. For first generation students, this mentor program made the rules of power and access to success more predictable as researchers have argued (Delpit, 1988;Ladson-Billings & Tate, 2016) that rules of power are rarely made explicit. Yet through this effort, a much larger percentage of students have the probability to be successful. This Dean is hopeful that mentoring programs will level the playing field by making explicit the cultural capital for all students and that engineering programs can more systemically provide guidance and support for success beyond a privileged few.

9.5 The Problem of Change Within Engineering

Our experience has been, when left to work alone to increase cultural diversity among their students, engineering faculty often resolve the problem of diversity by finding ways to frame a solution around the perceived deficits of students. Rather than placing the solution outside of engineering faculty members’ sphere of influence, we offer another lens. We believe the past framing of the problem places engineering faculty in falsely objective positions on the periphery, outside the problem. We posit that this is likely the reason there has been minimal progress in enhancing the cultural diversity among engineers. We believe it necessary to change in the culture of engineering in higher education. We align ourselves with Jawitz and Case (2002) who argued that “instead of the traditional activities which try to persuade [outsiders] that they should try engineering and then help them fit into the culture ... we need to create a new engineering culture” (p. 390).

There is no question about the demonstrated dearth of Black and Brown faculty, staff, and students in engineering colleges across the country and that this lack makes it difficult for prospective faculty members to see these institutions as a welcoming new home. We see in each of these above examples a resistance to change and evidence of a dominant culture that is not ready to fully receive and support new ways of thinking. Universities spending money to recruit students and faculty of color does not directly translate to vibrant, productive, and diverse communities. The recruitment, selection, and hiring practices of minoritized faculty are just three filters which demonstrate the need for cultural change in higher education. Most Primarily White Institutions (PWIs) have stated missions for inclusion and some have documented plans to increase underrepresented students, faculty, and staff on their websites. Diversity training, aimed at eliminating bias and creating fair hiring practices, is often required of most faculty and staff search committees. Universities have created positions such as chief diversity officers and leaders to increase faculty and staff diversity and recruitment and some universities have created programs to build relationships with newly minted, underrepresented doctoral candidates (Baker, 2010; McGee & Martin, 2011). Despite these efforts, barriers to diversifying PWIs still prove challenging to overcome. Search committees, despite best intentions, retain their cultural biases and those from the dominant culture continue to bubble to the top.

9.6 Learning from Our Experiences: Understanding the Resilient Cultural Norms of Engineering Education

Having described above the culture of engineering and some of the challenges facing these three unique engineering programs who desire to enhance cultural diversity on their campuses, we want to now speak to some crosscutting themes revealed in the vignettes, which we believe dampen or hinder the best efforts to fund change in the culture of engineering.

9.6.1 Crosscutting Theme #1: Engineers’ Identities Are Developed Within Insular Environments That Limit Engineers’ Propensity to Reflect Upon Their Own Biased Views of the World

Engineering students are an elite group. Extant research has demonstrated that this group is socialized in highly competitive learning environments, which have been found to favor the success of men over women. In contrast, several have argued for more collaborative learning environments to reverse the trend of attrition among minoritized students (McGee, 2016). Researchers have identified competition as a likely reason for attrition from this college major (Eisenhart et al., 1996; Seymour & Hewitt, 1997; Tobias, 1990) Enacted within college STEM classrooms Tobias (1990) posits, “[STEM instructors] continue to expect the next generation of science workers to rise, as they have, like cream to the top. This is why introductory college courses remain unapologetically competitive, selective and intimidating” (p. 9).

The argument of maintaining high standards through high attrition rates allows engineering faculty to rely on their own beliefs, which are reinforced within their own experiences and shape their collective and individual identities. Because of their self-reinforcing belief systems, Blickenstaff (2005) argued engineers are able to deflect and maintain externally focused explanations for the lack of diversity of engineers including biological differences, poor student attitudes, and absence of role models. Each of these explanations have been debunked and shown baseless from available evidence yet are accepted as common knowledge among many practicing engineering faculty (Blickenstaff, 2005). In Vignette 1, the MTU Dean intentionally created context and provided fiscal and other resources for changing the cultural climate of the engineering school. Though it took several years, many of his faculty examined their beliefs, isolation, and privilege and took steps to examine the cultural climate towards underrepresented students. They evaluated funding opportunities for local underrepresented students to attend MTU, and set goals to revise the pedagogical approaches to instruction to be more responsive to a broader representation of MTU students (Eastman et al., 2017, 2019). Yet the investment in a relatively small group of faculty, without fully engaging the remaining faculty, was met with cultural inertia, which stifled progress. In a similar way, SEU faculty exhibited in Vignette 2 were unable to see beyond their own values for what was a desirable and acceptable experience for engineering post-docs. The instantiation of “Ableism bias” impaired the access of students and beliefs about what counted as valuable experiences in the profession steered another student away from their passion toward excellent teaching and toward their internal bias of objective research. In similar ways and over many years, WU exhibited engineer belief bias in consistently fostering a culture that supported the success of only a certain type of student. It was the recognition of the outcomes and the interrogation of the context that led to explicating the goals that could help all students succeed. Most faculty were willing to follow the efforts of the Dean to look outside of the higher education context, and beyond the internal focus of existing engineering faculty to solicit advice from practicing engineers and alumni who understood the program from an outsider’s perspective. Although a small cadre of faculty still maintained traditional norms and did not fully embrace the mentoring program, most faculty were able to accept the critique of outsiders and agree to support incoming engineering students in new ways. This acceptance was instrumental in for the success of 54% First Generation students.

The theme of addressing engineering insular identities and expanding beyond unexamined biases and identity can be a useful tool for examining teaching, funded programs, and retention. This theme could also be helpful in identifying more clearly the source of attrition in the pipeline of engineers. If we could engage engineers in a discussion of latent beliefs and assumptions about cultural diversity, there would be fewer instances of blaming incoming students or the K-12 instruction, which preceded their application to universities. Instead, we would recognize that heavy student attrition occurs in the first 18 months of undergraduate engineering exposure. For example, the general U.S. public was alarmed by this disparity, public schools responded through curricular and pedagogical innovation to close the “opportunity gap” created within the context of schooling rather than trying to “fix” the population (Baker, 2010). Data reveals that over the last four decades, girls have consistently made gains to close the gap in K-12 math and science achievement (Scafidi & Bui, 2010). Girls are now graduating from high school having taken equal numbers of math and science credits and earning higher grades in those subjects than their male classmates. Additionally, girls have shown comparable success in Advanced Placement courses, have as strong of a grade point average, and are equally likely to select a STEM field of study in undergraduate education (Baker, 2010; Kahle, 2004). Despite such gains, within three semesters of undergraduate engineering prerequisites and courses students within engineering majors remain more than 85% White and male. If science education research can impact K-12 education to increase female students’ success in AP science classes, GPA, and STEM major selection, there should be no reason this progress cannot also impact higher education trends.

9.6.2 Crosscutting Theme 2: Changing Engineering Faculty’s Definitions of Work Implies Rewards and Consequences

We pose the question, “What is the nature of the work of engineering faculty in higher education?” We wish to answer beyond the clichés of common wisdom like “expanding students’ minds” or “preparing the problem solvers of tomorrow”. Instead, we look to the rewards and existing practices to observe the enacted definitions of work. Universities promote three pillars of faculty engagement and responsibility: teaching, research, and service, which are the main staples of faculty expectations and annual evaluations. The competitive landscape posits university faculty rewards primarily for research, acquisition of external funding, and publications. Individual universities extract millions of dollars every year from government entities such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Health (NIH), in addition to securing funds through private organizations to promote specific research projects. Securing funds and generating publications brings accolades to universities, provides fodder for annual reports and glossy marketing materials. To evaluate faculty research, universities generally establish prescriptive practices that enable them to quantify accomplishments in terms of external funding dollars, number of publications, and value indices such as the H-Index or other forms of measuring the value of faculty publications (see https://researchguides.uic.edu/if/yourimpact).

The evaluation of teaching, however, is typically much less rigorous and does not generally follow “best practices in the literature” (Pitterson et al., 2016, p. 5). Although unintentional, these rewards distract undergraduate faculty from focusing on quality classroom instruction. Literature is replete with accusations that student evaluations of teaching (SET) are an insufficient means of understanding teaching quality (Hornstein, 2017). While nearly all universities use SET to measure faculty’s instructional practices, they avoid regular, holistic approaches to teaching evaluation that would enable a complete assessment of teaching because they are time consuming and require a deep understanding of teaching and learning that is simply not ubiquitous across the landscape of higher education.

Few engineering faculty have enrolled in pedagogical courses offered by their own colleges of education. Few, if any, engineers claim to be pedagogical experts and the vast majority report that they “teach the way they have been taught.” Pedagogical re-orientation and re-imagining requires serious investment–particularly when bias, inequity and challenges to equity and objectivity are at stake. Rather than take on the additional work and the burden of rethinking instructional design, approaches to dealing with struggling students include remediating, counseling students out of the major, or simply advising them to work harder. Scholars have critiqued these responses as not fully considering other contributing factors (Bastalich et al., 2007; Jawitz & Case, 2002; Martorell & McFarlin, 2011; Riley et al., 2009; Tobias, 1990). Such orientation presumes that if students work harder, they will be successful; a perspective often held by professors who resiliently resist alternative educational frameworks (Jawitz & Case, 2002). We argue that engineering administrators should consider pedagogical excellence a central engineering faculty expectation. This is particularly relevant in a context where student deficits are blamed for low retention rates. Pointing to role models as a solution does not solve the problem according to Bastalich et al. (2007). Rather, they redefined these diversity issues as,

a problem with engineering…workplace culture [which] polices a narrow set of masculine norms and is intolerant of diversity...[members] who fail to conform to strict codes of [White] masculine conduct, are cast as an ‘outsiders’ or ‘foreigners’...There is a need to find a new kind of engineering image, one in which professional values, ethics and sensitivity to the effects of engineering outcomes in the world at large are emphasized (p. 397).

We interpret Bastalich and colleagues to be saying that masculine and positivist and other biased norms do not constitute the whole of what should be counted as the work of engineers. Beddoes and Borrego (2011) have made a very clear case for the usefulness of alternative frameworks through which to view eingineering education contributions.

We see in Vignette 1 the example of MTU having success that shifting the implicit bias of engineering instructors is possible, at least for a collective few. Faculty at MTU continue to explore their instruction and the beliefs that drive pedagogical change identified by recent education reform initiatives. However, Vignette 1 also illuminates that working against entrenched cultural norms is a slow and often frustrating process. The new Dean at MTU provided faculty a level of encouragement and support that led to a modest transition of teaching and learning strategies demonstrated to support a diverse student body. Many questions remain about how to influence broad and meaningful change in the teaching and learning culture of engineering.

We observed in Vignette 2 that SEU leaders promoted supports for diversity and included benchmarks for increasing diversity, graduation rates, and student achievement in their strategic plans. If these stated measures remain only rhetorical and not translated directly into faculty actions, it may fail to override the unquenchable thirst for external funding and research dollars at the sake of creating an actual increase in the number of faculty of color hired into tenure track engineering education positions. Several scholars are pointing toward “grow-your- own models” which are claimed to be effective for preparing individuals to be successful faculty members within higher education. While the cohort postdoctoral models are very beneficial for the institution and the individual, clearer plans and deeper commitment are necessary to raise up these individuals beyond their present status. As managers can be supplied specific knowledge to rise through the ranks, so can post-doctoral candidates. This will concretely lead to individuals who can contribute to their fields in ways that address issues of equity and diversity.

Meaningful change in teaching engineering requires not only explicit support structures such as the mentoring program demonstrated in Vignette 3, but WU faculty also needed to adopt a stance recognizing student individual needs. Decades ago, the kinds of equality and color-blindness solutions that were a “one-size fits all / treat everyone the same” were acceptable. The strongest survived and those survivors were sufficient for advancing the engineering needs of the United States. Walls (2015) argued such practices of addressing diversity in higher education only rendered race to be neutral under such a colorblind ideology (Harper & Patton, 2007; Taylor, 1998) which in turn helps preserve the homogeneity of the discipline. To mitigate the influences of higher education’s current search practices, we must recognize the value of diversity and actually count that diversity in our search process. Until we do so, we will continue to perpetuate the systems of exclusion and oppression that created the homogenous culture of engineering education. Today, a colonial approach to education cannot survive because we need more, and more diverse, engineering minds to solve the unique and mounting challenges that confront our global society. WU faculty are becoming more aware of their students’ strengths, attributes, and needs, and faculty are becoming more engaged with the students as a result of paying close attention to specific professional competencies as well that the mentors are supporting. However, there has been no real change to the evaluation of instruction at WU. There are no real measures of growth in place to gather necessary evidence to examine clearly any causation versus correlation for invoked changes and subsequent outcomes.

9.7 Providing Hope and Believing That Change Is Possible

It is time for us, as engineering faculty, to see our students as individuals with unique needs. We must move beyond only support structures designed to enhance intellectual prowess so that minoritized students can succeed in traditional engineering classrooms. Focusing solely on increasing undergraduate engineering students’ aptitudes has yielded little progress. Moreover, we must move toward holistic educational strategies intended to nurture students, to build their confidence, and to help them understand what they do not. To accomplish this, we must first examine the culture and enacted beliefs of our own profession. Only then can we know the lived experiences of our students and learn who they are, and connect with them personally and intellectually.

The work ahead of us is neither simple nor comfortable. Many engineers prefer the traditional, disconnected culture of engineering education that permits faculty to profess and requires students to meet rigid and antiquated expectations, which do not necessarily demonstrate comprehension, or leave the academy. We as faculty in higher education cannot continue to prioritize research and external funding over undergraduate teaching and learning if we want to influence broad change. We cannot continue to promote teaching strategies that focus on silos of information delivered in a detached, non-contextual manner, which rely on a body of homogenously-prepared recipients who are ready to listen and regurgitate information. To bring about a new culture in engineering education that places a primacy on students as individuals and requires willing and capable faculty and administrators. We must also ask ourselves difficult questions related to institutional priorities and how we choose to measure our own success.

To shift the traditional engineering culture to an environment truly focused on the success of a diverse body of learners and to promote inclusive teaching practices in higher education, we must first educate our faculty in quality teaching and inclusive teaching practices and we must continue to reinforce expectations for quality teaching. We must systematize inclusive teaching practices across engineering departments and put in place new to requirements to measure the fidelity of such changes in curriculum and instruction. This includes adopting strategic and measured intentional interactions between faculty and students promoting a shared understanding of the undergraduate engineering context for both students and faculty. Universities should require teaching-focused professional development in the on-boarding process, during the pre-tenure stage, and throughout the careers of all faculty who teach students.

The burden of welcoming minoritized faculty and students does not only fall on the shoulders of engineering faculty. In order to change the expectations of the profession, we need administrators willing to take risks and ready to challenge the status quo of academia. Administration often describe the need to gain faculty “buy-in” and this is true. However, we also need to look at how faculty engage in the process of adopting inclusive practices and understanding their role and advocacy in the process. Administrators should consider expectations, rewards, and consequences to persuade faculty to act otherwise. There exists a wide spectrum of types of faculty, and effective administrators must understand how to motivate them all toward equity goals.

The ample extant research explicates that traditional engineering instruction is in desperate need of change. Literature is replete with examples of research-driven pedagogical changes resulting in a variety of desirable academic outcomes, accompanied by the stemming of the hegemonic practices and severe student attrition associated with the traditional culture of engineering. Thoughtful solutions are available. Change is necessary. What is required is a committed and reflective faculty workforce in engineering education who wish to enact the practices engineering education reforms demand.