Workshop for the Advancement and Retention of Underrepresented and Minority Engineering Educators

Ohio State University Research Foundation -Do Not Use, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

Proposal No.#0129530 PI: Hastings, Mardi This project supports a workshop that is designed to encourage retention and advancement of qualified women and underrepresented minority-engineering educators in pursuit of scientific and engineering challenges. The workshop will bring together a select group of 80 of the nation's outstanding engineering educators who predominately have been in tenure track positions for less than five years or are in jthelast year of their Ph.D. program and actively pursuing tenure track academic positions. The participants will be employed in teaching and/or research positions and actively developing their own unique research programs. Specific workshop goals are to: I) foster technical and intellectual exchange among Ph.D. level, underrepresented and minority engineers who are or desire to be engineering educators; II) instill in its participants the sense of a technical community in which they can thrive and to which they can contribute; and III) increase participant awareness of research and funding opportunities. The workshop will consist of ten formal sessions spread over a three-day period emphasize the integration of research and education presentations on funding opportunities from agencies such as NSF, ARO, AFOSR, ONR, DARPA, and NASA. A panel of university deans will discuss their perspectives on reasonable career expectations and demands, include the discussion of issues related to tenure, teaching, research, publications, funding, outreach and a rewarding personal life along the career path of an engineering educator. The workshop proceeding will summarize the recommendations from the working session discussions, provide a workshop outcomes ass4esment and recommendations statement, and include a two page abstract from each participant that describes their research interest. The envisioned significance and benefits of the workshop are the increased retention of women and underrepresented minority engineers as active researchers and educators and development of infrastructures of colleagues is the same field that is a rich diversity.