Keywords: diversity, statements, educators, teaching, graduate students
Using Diversity Statements to Promote Engagement with Diversity and Teaching
For many engineering educators, the often controversial topic of diversity can be frustrating and difficult.
Even for those who acknowledge that diversity is an important issue for the engineering education community,
translating understanding into tangible actions that support diverse students can be problematic. This paper provides
results from a program using written diversity statements to encourage thinking and dialogue about the topic of
diversity among graduate students interested in a faculty career.
Implications of Findings
Based on the success of the diversity statement exercise, the team is encouraged to believe this activity has potential
to generate dialogue that can advance the cause of diversity. Moreover, through the research we gained insight into
the ideas that graduate students are able to bring to the table when asked to discuss diversity and teaching.
The hope is that these two elements – the idea of a diversity statement and the insight that graduate students are
prepared to discuss diversity and teaching – will help others as they grapple with the challenge of addressing
diversity in engineering education.
Method and Background
Although percentages of underrepresented students in engineering have increased over the past 20 years, the current
numbers of minorities and women in student populations are still well below parity with the distribution in the US
population. Current and projected demographic changes and the economic realities of the global economy have resulted
in mounting pressures to meet future demands for a workforce that includes engineers more representative of the diversity
present in the US population.
| Writing and sharing diversity statements in a supportive environment has the potential
to generate dialogue that can advance the cause of diversity.
|
Some engineering faculty find it difficult to relate the broad subject of diversity to their specific courses and
teaching practices. The team believes this occurs because the connection between teaching and diversity is not obvious
or well-defined and open forums for discussing how to address diversity in the classroom are lacking.
Writing and sharing individual diversity statements is one strategy for empowering educators in their efforts to
address diversity in their teaching. The results discussed below focus on a subset of the data collected during the
first implementation of the new Engineering Teaching Portfolio Program (ETPP) during the summer of 2003. The diversity
statement exercise is only one of the topics explored by ETPP participants in the eight-week program. Two research
questions about the diversity statement exercise guided the analyses: 1) does the diversity statement exercise show
promise as a means of enabling participants to engage with diversity issues in engineering education, and 2) how
prepared are engineering graduate students to grapple with issues of diversity and teaching?
The peer-led and peer-focused ETPP provides engineering graduate students with the opportunity to examine, reflect,
and revise their beliefs and goals as teachers through a series of eight portfolio development exercises, weekly
meetings, and peer review. The diversity statement exercise provides participants the opportunity to explicitly
connect abstract concepts of diversity with the routine instructional actions taken by engineering educators.
The diversity statement exercise took place over two meetings. In week 6, the exercise was introduced, and a common
starting point was established from which discussion could proceed. Participants also discussed format and feedback
issues to guide their writing. Additional resources were made available through a Web site, but participants were not
required to access these materials. Participants prepared the diversity statement on their own prior to the week 7 session.
At the week 7 session, participants shared challenges experienced while writing the diversity statement, identified
the types of feedback most useful during peer review, and proceeded to review each other’s statements.
Data were collected from field notes from observation of weekly group meetings, a group interview, individual participant
interviews, and individual surveys. This research brief reports results based only on the field notes from the
conversation surrounding the diversity statement exercise for one of the two peer groups established at the start of
the program.
What We Found
Analysis of the discourse surrounding the diversity statements suggests that there is reason to be encouraged about
the usefulness of such an exercise in enabling participants to engage with diversity issues in engineering education
(research question 1). The data reflect a conversation with a continuous interplay of three topics (diversity, teaching,
and task), and concerns about the purpose of the diversity statement were restricted to the early part of the
conversation. All participants were involved in the conversation and had similar overall contributions that continued
throughout session 7 and included all three primary themes (diversity, teaching, and task). The conversation covered
a variety of challenges associated with thinking about diversity and teaching, but also included concrete strategies
for integrating diversity issues into teaching, including both in-class actions and outside of class activities.
Analysis of the data also indicates that the participants were capable of discussing, writing, and thinking about
diversity in engineering education (the focus of research question 2). Participants’ perspectives on teaching went
well beyond traditional lecturing, and they had sufficient awareness of diversity issues to begin and sustain the
conversation. Participants engaged in this complex discourse without any external authority figures managing the
discussion or providing additional information. We conclude that the graduate students in this study were prepared
to discuss issues of diversity and teaching on engineering.
Author: Jennifer Turns, Angela Linse, Tammy VanDeGrift, Matt Eliot, Jana Jones, and Steve Lappenbusch
Source: Proceedings of the 2006 American Society for Engineering Education Conference
The full paper, including references, is available via ASEE proceedings search.
For a printable pdf of this research brief, click here.
Brief created August 2007
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