| NSF Org: |
EEC Division of Engineering Education and Centers |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | February 14, 2014 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | February 16, 2016 |
| Award Number: | 1361025 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Julie Martin
EEC Division of Engineering Education and Centers ENG Directorate for Engineering |
| Start Date: | March 1, 2014 |
| End Date: | February 28, 2018 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $299,953.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $349,918.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2016 = $49,965.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
110 21ST AVE S NASHVILLE TN US 37203-2416 (615)322-2631 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
1400 18th Avenue South Nashville TN US 37212-2809 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
EngEd-Engineering Education, EDA-Eng Diversity Activities |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001617DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.041 |
ABSTRACT
A diverse engineering university faculty and workforce are necessary to achieve and maintain a country that is prosperous, secure, and attentive to the technological and social well-being of all individuals. Thus, this research study investigates one of the challenges to a diverse engineering faculty and workforce by exploring the causes behind why African Americans remain one of the most underrepresented racial groups in engineering faculty positions, remaining steady at 2.5% for the past five years, despite intervention programs that aim to broaden the participation of minorities in engineering. This three-year study explores the barriers and opportunities facing a cohort of (1) African American engineering PhD students/candidates/postdocs pursuing engineering faculty careers and (2) current and former African American engineering faculty members. The proposed study examines factors that impact the production of African American PhDs in engineering, as well as those factors that affect the pathway to tenured faculty positions in engineering. This research includes an assessment of the current engineering faculty climate through surveying and interviewing African Americans in engineering, from PhD candidates and postdoctoral students through full professors, including a subset of former African American engineering faculty. This study analyzes the faculty-engineering climate by including the implementation of a national survey for Black PhD engineering students, Black engineering faculty, and a subset of former Black engineering faculty. The PIs will also interview a subset of each of these groups. The methodological and analytical structure of this study is guided by the literature on racial/gender stereotypes and Social Cognitive Career Theory. The intellectual merit of this work should lead to a better understanding of the career trajectories African American PhDs in engineering and the technical, societal, and cultural influences that impact their career decision making. Although this study focuses on African American faculty, overall faculty diversity creates a more effective learning environment. Schools with greater racial diversity tend to have better retention, satisfaction, and intellectual development. The broader impact of this study has the potential to change the model of how engineering candidates of color are mentored and primed for engineering faculty positions.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
THE ENGINEERING AND COMPUTING DOCTORAL EXPERIENCES SURVEY (ECDES)
The Engineering and Computing Doctoral Experiences Survey (ECDES), funded by the National Science Foundation, is a study of doctoral students and postdoctoral scholars of all races and genders in the fields of engineering and computer science. The ECDES is one research element of the research group, EDEFI (pronounced “edify”), which investigates the institutional, technical, social, and cultural factors that affect decision-making, career choices, and career satisfaction for engineering and computing doctoral students, candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty who have been marginalized by race and/or gender. EDEFI also looks at ways those factors contribute to the current under-representation of these marginalized groups in engineering and computing faculty positions, and pays special attention to increasing the numbers of Black faculty in these positions.
The ECDES is designed to examine several key factors, including: career trajectories, the role of mentoring in advising, teaching, and research experiences, mental health and well-being, and sentiments about becoming or not becoming a faculty member. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: (1) to highlight the importance of a survey that measures racial disparities and the impact on underrepresented people of color in these academic disciplines, and (2) to describe the design and construction of our survey and the methodology followed to collect the data.
The goal of the ECDES is to examine the factors in the career decision-making of engineering PhD students, candidates, and postdoctoral researchers, with a special emphasis on understanding the racialized and race-gender experiences of underrepresented groups of color. Further, we seek to explore the role of institutional characteristics, professional development experiences, and health status in participants’ decisions about pursuing a career in the professoriate.
The findings from the Diversity Stalled project have made a great impact on the knowledge base of research on broadening participation in STEM, and in engineering to be more specific. To our knowledge, the survey dataset that we have collected and analyzed is one of the largest datasets of engineering and computing doctoral students, with an oversampling of Black participants. Thus far these data have been useful in terms of helping us to understand why doctoral students become dissuaded from and attracted to academic careers. Houston et al. (under review) examined how 1) structural factors of students’ schools and departments (e.g., institution type, funding sources available), 2) their personal capital (e.g., number of mentors, perceived support, nonclassroom interactions), and 3) their academic capital or the achievements that students amassed that can later be exchanged for higher social positioning (e.g., publications, external grant rewards) predicted changes in students’ desire for an academic career over time. Here we will describe some key findings that add to the body of literature. While existing research showed that more publications predicted interest in an academic career (Sauermann & Roach, 2012), this study showed that this is only the case for participants who were initially not interested in an academic career (i.e., publishing more resulted in greater interest in the academy). Furthermore, amongst participants who were initially uninterested in academia, having a mentor with similar characteristics (race and gender) predicted “warming up,” conceivably because it allowed the participants to envision themselves in a faculty position. A somewhat paradoxical finding was that teaching experience predicted remaining interested in academia over time, whereas being funded primarily through a teaching assistantship predicted increased likelihood of “cooling out.” We theorized that the former gives students more agency in designing a course allowed the students to envision themselves as professors, whereas a teaching assistantship provides limited exposure to faculty experiences.
Last Modified: 06/01/2018
Modified by: Ebony O Mcgee
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