Planning: IUPUI Plan for Center for Equity in Engineering

Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Abstract

The Center for Equity in Engineering (CEE) planning project at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) will develop a plan to establish an NSF-supported CEE to broaden participation of students, faculty, and staff of diverse backgrounds in the Purdue School of Engineering & Technology (PSET). The CEE will be planned with the input of internal and external stakeholders to innovatively transform PSET by growing the enrollment of underrepresented (UR) students, including women, ethnic minorities, veterans, and students with disabilities, as well as by promoting their retention, timely graduation, and future success. The proposed CEE will strongly magnify the enrollment, graduation and career success of UR students in Indiana, the Midwest, and nationwide, particularly by expanding PSET’s ongoing sharing of best practices with other urban-serving engineering schools. CEE planning will strengthen engagement with local high-schools and organizations that serve UR populations. A successful CEE will have enormous impact on UR participation in STEM-based careers and may provide Midwest industries in particular with a much more diversified and broader talent base. Improved learning pedagogies and the organizational, cultural, and structural changes driven by the CEE will benefit students of all backgrounds in their engineering careers. The CEE will widely share knowledge about best practices in broadening participation in engineering through PSET’s existing and new partnerships with other engineering schools nationally, as well as through other dissemination outlets. PSET is on an innovative urban campus in a city that has rapidly diversified its population, supporting a highly industrialized State economy increasingly in need of a trained engineering workforce. IUPUI has been nationally recognized for assessment and learning innovations, first-year experiences and learning communities, and commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). IUPUI has vigorous Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)-focused efforts that are yielding positive outcomes. PSET at IUPUI offers numerous accredited programs as pathways to engineering-related careers and has notable DEI accomplishments in recent years, including strongly increasing its enrollment of women and students of color. CEE planning activities will leverage PSET’s newly published 2021 DEI Plan, which is aligned around four diversity indicators: I) Viability and Vitality; II) Education and Scholarship; III) Climate and Intergroup Relations; and IV) Access and Success. PSET has strived to adopt and subsequently apply these four diversity indicators, as defined by Dr. Daryl Smith’s book: Diversity’s Promise for Higher Education: Making it Work, as an organizational framework for PSET’s DEI strategic plan and a substrate for CEE planning activities. PSET will utilize four existing task forces aligned with each of these diversity indicators, which include students, faculty, staff, alumni, corporate partners, and additional community representatives and friends. Moreover, IUPUI’s framework to support the UN SDGs, as well as other institutional structures and programs and external relationships, will be incorporated into the CEE planning process. An improved first-year curriculum could feature the SDGs as a motivating force for diverse students to study and succeed in engineering. The CEE ultimately aims to strengthen students’ engineering identity, self-efficacy, and social capital, while building community to dispel explicit or implicit biases. 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.