CAREER: Innovation for Inclusion: Transforming Engineering through Scalable Accessibility

Utah State University, Logan UT

Investigators

Abstract

The need to diversify the engineering workforce has received significant attention over the past several years. Many of these conversations have focused on the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of diversification; that a skilled, creative, and diverse STEM workforce is essential for driving the scientific and technological innovation necessary for addressing the growing and changing demands of society. Due to the ways they must alter everyday products, systems, and spaces to access the world, people with disabilities possess these skills but continue to be underrepresented in the STEM fields. While it is estimated that approximately 25 percent of US adults have a disability, only eight percent of employed scientists and engineers belong to this group. Prior research has identified systems of education as perpetuators of the access barriers experienced by students with disabilities. However, much of this work has utilized approaches that focus on ways to accommodate students based on a particular disability type. Such approaches have resulted in the identification of context-specific causes and reactionary practices that temporarily address access barriers at an individual level. Due to the inconsistent and temporary nature of supporting students with disabilities, current accommodation practices require additional education and management on behalf of the student or fall short of meeting students’ needs altogether. This project aligns with the goal of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Broadening Participation in Engineering (BPE) program to develop a STEM workforce that reflects the nation’s population by focusing on ‘how’ to encourage and promote the recruitment and participation of people with disabilities in these fields. This project will transform the ways students with disabilities are supported in engineering by gathering the perspectives of engineering students with disabilities, faculty, and administrators to identify access issues, their impacts across university campuses, and ways to address them. In this project, engineering higher education is reconceptualized as an ecosystem that is both a source and an outcome of inequities located at different institutional levels. This concept repositions the attitudes, behaviors, and practices of individual actors not as discrete events and objects, but as a network of collective opportunity toward improved support. The integrated research and education plan is guided by four objectives: (1) Explore and identity systemic access for engineering undergraduates with disabilities across university levels; (2) quantify and characterize systemic access across universities; (3) develop an engineering community of practice toward anti-ableist praxis; and (4) build capacity for sustainable systemic accessibility and inclusion in STEM. To meet these objectives, this project will employ an explanatory mixed method design to form the Innovation for Inclusion (I2) framework, a scalable institutional framework that integrates advocacy and policy to guide engineering faculty, departments, and colleges toward a system of sustained universal accessibility and inclusion. Qualitative methods will include a content analysis and interviews with 60 engineering students with disabilities, faculty, and administrators to provide foundational insights into the ways systemic access is experienced, managed, and enacted in engineering education. Quantitative survey methods will shed light on the prevalent influencers of systemic access. Mixed methods findings will be used to identify and prioritize viable avenues for system improvement and to create resources that guide engineering students with disabilities, faculty, and administrators toward forming, implementing, and sustaining anti-ableist practices and policies to ensure that all individuals have equitable access to career opportunities in STEM fields. 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.