Linking Engineering Students’ Professional Identity Development to Diversity and Working Inclusively in Technical Courses

Abstract

Despite growing efforts, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives have yet to address long-standing engineering participation disparities. Often, diversity and inclusion issues, along with other societal challenges, are perceived as unrelated to engineering. Conversely, engineering as currently practiced and taught is embedded in dominant culture norms that are frequently invisible to the majority of the students and faculty. One strategy to shift this erroneous “neutral” perspective is to integrate diversity and inclusion into engineering curricula. Using inclusive professional identities as a theoretical lens, we developed an activity that incorporates diversity and inclusion into the technical content of Engineering Mechanics: Statics. Using thematic analysis, we found that students’ responses to prompts about their identities, engineering as a profession, and their perceived learning revealed two primary themes: teamwork and engineering/math-related skills/experiences. Although diversity and inclusion were included in responses, students did not connect diversity and inclusion to engineering as a profession. Therefore, students might need more support to make this connection. Although singular activities cannot explicitly overcome racism, sexism, or other deeply entrenched biases in our society, the activity type we describe might help students develop a more holistic perspective of engineering and understand the importance of addressing biases in their future engineering careers.