Track 3: Increasing Minority Presence within Academia through Continuous Training at Scale (IMPACTS)

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Despite concerted efforts to diversify engineering academia, the engineering professoriate remains primarily White and male. In order to counter the disproportionate representation of engineering faculty who are members of underrepresented groups (URGs; i.e., women and STEM-underrepresented minority populations), an Inclusive Mentoring (IM) Hub will be established. The IM Hub will be designed to aid in the preparation, persistence, and promotion of URG engineering faculty through the creation of a mentorship network of technically similar and otherwise strategic emeriti faculty mentors (primarily White males) and demographically similar senior faculty mentors. The two sets of mentors will be expected to cross-pollinate and assist one another to become more effective mentors from their unique vantage points as engineering academic leaders. For example, the senior URG faculty will counsel the emeriti faculty (who are expected to primarily be of non-URG populations due to the demographic realities of the engineering professoriate) regarding the distinct differences one encounters in engineering academia as a woman and/or person of color. Increasing Minority Presence within Academia through Continuous Training (IMPACT) at Scale (IMPACTS) will leverage the seed successes and lessons garnered during the development of IMPACT as a National Science Foundation (NSF) Broadening Participation in Engineering (BPE) Project (Awards 15-42728 and 15-42524) and an INCLUDES Design, Development and Launch Pilot (DDLP) (Award 17-44500). The IM Hub will target 25-30 engineering faculty mentees per year. The intended outcome, wherein retired and senior engineering faculty mentor, support, and advocate for the next generation of URG engineering faculty, has the potential to significantly impact the engineering faculty ecosystem. The implicit benefit of IMPACTS will involve a stronger and more diversified STEM professoriate and workforce, given that larger numbers of student talent would be taught and trained by a more empowered diversity of faculty. Additionally, the project will advance knowledge on the value of an IM Hub designed as a mentorship network, which has the capacity to broaden participation, inclusivity, and equity in engineering academia. The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) will provide the core means of soliciting participation in IMPACTS across U.S. engineering academia, as well as using prior constructs to implement and monitor the IM Hub. In order to advance knowledge on the IMPACTS participants’ experience and factors related to sustained participation and perpetuation of such mentorship, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs will implement a multi-phased phenomenological mixed-methods study. The research primarily will target the hypothesized effectiveness of engaging emeriti faculty, in tandem with senior URG faculty, in the mentorship of URG faculty mentees. The use of professional goals progression, interviews, and surveys will be key in documenting success. Finally, Georgia Tech will provide overarching project leadership and will aid implementation and expansion. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.