1. CAREER:
Learning
from
Small
Numbers:
Using
personal
narratives
by
underrepresented
undergraduate
This
material
is
based
upon
work
supported
by
students
to
promote
institutional
change
in
engineering
the
National
Science
Foundation
under
Grant
Alice
L.
Pawley,
School
of
Engineering
Education,
Purdue
University.
No.
EEC-­‐1055900. apawley@purdue.edu;
1300
Neil
Armstrong
Hall
of
Engineering,
701
W.
Stadium
Dr,
West
Lafayette
IN
47907
Project
rationale
In
recent
decades,
hundreds
of
educational
interventions,
thousands
of
• spanned
the
space
of
gender,
race,
and
engineering
by
exploring
• rely
on
statistical
methods
to
claim
generalizability,
even
though
the
• Rather
than
use
methods
for
studying
large
numbers
of
people
where
we
do
research
programs,
and
millions
of
dollars
of
federal
funding,
have
addressed
underrepresented
people's
relationships
as
young
students
with
peers,
numbers
of
white
women
and
people
of
color
in
the
study
populations
are
not
have
large
numbers,
it
uses
methods
that
allow
researchers
to
“learn
the
underrepresentation
of
white
women
and
people
of
color
at
all
career
teachers
and
parents,
as
young
ethnically
diverse
women
and
men
with
usually
too
small
to
justify
powerful
signiCicance
claims.
The
number
of
from
small
numbers.”
levels
and
across
all
disciplines
of
engineering
[e.g.,
1].
Researchers
seeking
to
media,
role
models,
and
career
visions,
as
undergraduate
and
graduate
people
of
color
speciCically
is
usually
so
small
that
researchers
lump
all
• Rather
than
completing
group-­‐level
analyses
to
tell
individuals
how
to
understand
white
women
and
people
of
color’s
underrepresentation
have students
with
teams,
mentors,
and
technical
material,
and
as
professionals
ethnicities
of
color
together
to
contrast
with
white
populations,
or
say
that
better
Cit
into
existing
institutions,
it
examines
a
small
number
of
individual
•
explored
gender
and
race
differences
in
psychological
constructs,
cognitive
with
colleagues,
peer-­‐reviewers,
and
institutional
leaders. no
claims
can
be
made
about
race
altogether; narratives
in
great
depth
to
examine
institutional
structure
as
the
unit
of
skills,
affective
measures,
and
social
behaviors
considered
relevant
to
While
these
studies
have
helped
the
engineering
education
enterprise
make
• provide
solutions
that
continue
to
rely
on
moulding
individuals
to
better
Oit
analysis.
students’
engineering
educational
success.
modest
improvements
in
the
numbers
of
white
women
and
people
of
color
in
into
existing
institutional
structures,
despite
collective
calls
to
“Cix
the
• Rather
than
primarily
studying
engineering
educational
institutions
that
are
• striven
to
understand
the
impact
of
implicit
bias,
chilly
climate,
and
micro-­‐ engineering
undergraduate
programs,
these
improvements
seem
to
have
system,
not
the
student;”
relatively
not
successful
at
educating
white
women
and
people
of
color,
it
inequities
on
white
women’s
and
people
of
color's
continued
low
rates
of
plateaued
[2].
The
numbers
of
white
women
and
people
of
color
in
engineering
• focus
on
primarily
white
institutions
(PWIs)
and
neglect
those
institutions
focuses
on
institutions
that
are
successful,
such
as
women’s
colleges
and
entry
into
and
comparatively
high
rates
of
exit
from
the
engineering
have
not
increased
proportionately
to
the
effort
expended
by
the
community.
which
successfully
educate
relatively
large
numbers
of
white
women
and
MSIs.
educational
and
professional
“pipeline”
compared
to
their
white
male
This
project
argues
that
an
explanation
for
this
persistent
state
can
be
found
people
of
color
in
engineering:
women’s
colleges
and
minority
serving
In
this
project,
we
use
personal
narratives
of
people
considered
marginalized
colleagues.
in
methodological
and
theoretical
limitations
of
these
studies,
which,
to
a
institutions
(MSIs). in
engineering
education
undergraduate
programs
in
the
US
to
map
out
the
large
extent: This
project
addresses
these
limitations
by
importing
powerful
theoretical
and
gendered
and
raced
structure
of
the
broader
institution
of
engineering
methodological
tools
designed
to
understand
gender
and
race
in
institutional
education.
context.
Research
study Educational
plan
Research study
Goal:
To
identify
institutional-­‐level
characteristics
RQ1.
How
do
underrepresented
undergraduate
Main
audience:
People
in
positions
of
leadership
who
ofCicially
construct
the
policy
texts
which
govern
the
lives
of
present
in
post-­‐secondary
engineering
educational
engineering
students
describe
their
interactions
engineering undergraduates undergraduate
engineering
students,
people
who
may
have
less
daily
contact
with
undergraduate
students
than
they
used
structures
that
strongly
support
or
challenge
the
with
educational
institutions
through
personal
Personal
to
or
that
they
would
like,
and
who,
as
situated
at
primarily
white
institutions
(PWIs),
may
not
have
had
the
opportunity
to
academic
success
of
underrepresented
undergraduate
narratives? narratives: learn
in
depth
about
the
lived
educational
experiences
of
(some
or
different)
underrepresented
undergraduate
students
students.
To
accomplish
this
goal,
I
will
collect
and
RQ2.
What
institutional
factors
do
these
narratives
“Tell me how you before.
In
particular,
we
will
target
deans,
department
heads,
and
chairs
of
undergraduate
curriculum
committees.
analyze
personal
narratives
contributed
by
under-­‐ reveal
that
affect
the
educational
persistence
and
represented
students
situated
at
institutions
that
have
create came to be where you Workshop
content:
We
will
develop
narratives
(from
the
research
study)
into
detailed
personas,
which
will
form
the
success
of
white
women
and
students
of
color
in
histories
of
successfully
recruiting,
retaining,
and
undergraduate
engineering
educational
instit-­‐ are now.” main
content
of
a
four-­‐hour
workshop
for
engineering
education
leadership,
structured
around
the
provocative
question:
graduating
white
women
and
students
of
color.
“What
would
engineering
education
[at
this
institution,
at
others]
designed
around
the
lives
of
white
women
and
people
of
utions?
color
look
like?”
The
narratives
collected
through
the
research
component
will
be
processed
into
these
individual
or
composite
personas
⇣.
Depending
on
the
interview
data⇠
collected,
personas
may
be
based
on
individuals’
interviews,
or
narratives created
as
composites
of
several
individuals.
Personas
will
be
compiled
into
a
workbook,
and
three
will
be
selected
for
Theoretical
framework inclusion
in
the
formal
curriculum
of
the
workshop
based
on
the
demographic
and
institutional
makeup
of
the
workshop
Intersectionality:
A
theory
Cirst
articulated
by
black
feminist
scholars
such
as
Kimberlé
Crenshaw,
bell
hooks
and
to make visible Design participants.
Personas
will
be
interspersed
between
mini-­‐lectures
where
participants
learn
how
to
“learn
from
small
Patricia
Hill
Collins
that
holds
as
its
key
contribution
the
notion
that
race
and
gender
can
not
be
understood
separately
numbers”
from
both
the
research
Cindings
and
personas.
The
participants
will
receive
a
copy
of
the
persona
workbook
to
from
one
another,
nor
separately
from
other
critical
social
categories
such
as
class,
nationality,
age,
ability,
sexuality,
and
challenge: refer
to
during
a
design
challenge,
the
outcome
of
which
will
be
demonstrated
to
the
rest
of
the
group
through
an
other
social
dimensions.
Research
informed
by
intersectionality
argues
the
relationship
between
social
categories
is
not
additive,
but
is
perhaps
complexly
multiplicative.
“What would informance
⇣
designed
through
a
design
challenge⇠.
engineering engineering Workshop
implementation
and
dissemination:
4
workshops
to
be
held
(two
at
Purdue,
one
at
ASEE
and
FIE
each).
Ruling
relations:
Dorothy
Smith
deCines
ruling
relations
as
“that
internally
coordinated
complex
of
administrative,
Workshop
will
be
drafted
into
a
guidebook
and
posted
at
the
Collaboratory
for
Engineering
Education
Research
educational institutions as education designed (CLEERhub.org),
Engineering
Pathway
(engineeringpathway.org),
and
the
CIRTL
Network
(cirtl.net).
managerial,
professional,
and
discursive
organization
that
regulates,
organizes,
governs,
and
otherwise
controls
our
societies.
It
is
not
yet
monolithic,
but
it
is
pervasive
and
pervasively
interconnected”
[p.
49,
28].
It
is
these
ruling
gendered, raced around the lives of
relations
that
people
both
experience
and
reproduce
to
organize,
for
example,
academic
institutions
to
value
certain
forms
of
knowledge
and
knowing,
certain
ways
of
investigating
the
world,
and
certain
modes
of
collecting
and
analyzing
women and people Design
research
tools
data.
Smith
argues
that
policies
construct
the
ruling
relations
of
institutions,
thereby
constructing
the
institutions
of color look like?” Personas:
Wrom
narratives
⇠,
wanalytical
strategies
ethods
that
preserve
the
narrative
“voice”
of
pnformation
about
institutions
f
hile
we
use
various
e
also
need
other
m
to
concentrate,
aggregate,
and
communicate
i
articipants.
Design
themselves.
She
argues
that
mapping
the
relationships
between
people’s
experiences
of
the
policies
and
the
policies
researchers
working
at
design
Cirms
such
as
IDEO,
Cheskin,
or
Interval
Research
have
developed
an
innovative
method
themselves
will
help
us
understand
the
social
geography
of
institutions,
as
well
as
different
institutional
aspects
of
the
that
can
facilitate
this
transformation:
the
creation
of
personas,
or
short
proCiles
of
Cictionalized
individuals
who
may
gendered
and
raced
structure
of
academic
work. to understand represent
aggregated
data
about
design
populations
in
a
narrative
and
speciCic
way.
By
leveraging
this
respected
approach
Legend to
design,
the
narratives
⇠
collected
through
the
research
component
will
be
processed
into
these
individual
or
composite
Participants,
interviews Second
pass:
40
engineering
undergraduates
at
4
personas informance personas,
which
often
include
a
name,
representative
image
or
photograph,
demographic
characteristics,
behavioral
additional
institutions
that
have
a
higher
representation
characteristics,
barriers
or
challenges,
and
speciCic
goals
or
needs.
First
pass:
60
undergraduate
students
from
MSIs
and
RQs
of
women
or
students
of
color
as
engineering
PWIs
attending
national
conferences
for: uses Informance:
while
reading
the
personas⇡
may
be
themselves
critical
learning
experiences,
design
researchers
have
also
Educational
undergraduates
than
the
national
average
OR
who
have
a
• American
Indian
Science
and
Engineering
Society
higher
number
of
women
or
people
of
color
participants
developed
methods
by
which
they
embody
(even
bodily)
the
daily
experiences
of
their
design
population
who
are
often
(AISES) socially,
economically,
or
demographically
far
removed
from
the
designers
themselves.
Brenda
Laurel,
Eric
Dishman,
and
overall.
• National
Society
of
Black
Engineers
(NSBE) Interviews:
90
minute
open
interviews
around
the
engineering education participants Bonnie
Johnson
have
introduced
informance—a
concept
that
combines
the
words
"information"
and
"performance"
—as
• Society
of
Hispanic
Professional
Engineers
or
Society
one
of
these
learning
tools.
for
Advancement
of
Chicanos
and
Native
Americans
in
question,
“Tell
me
how
you
came
to
be
where
you
are
leadership
now.”
Transcripts
shared
and
pseudonymized
according
By
combining
personas
and
informance,
the
educational
component
of
this
project
represents
a
transformative
approach
plan
Science
(SACNAS) tools
to
participant’s
wishes. to
moving
research
into
practice—an
approach
drawn
from
the
design
activities
at
the
heart
of
engineering
itself.
• Society
of
Women
Engineers
(SWE) Analysis:
inductive
and
deductive
coding,
to
answer
RQs
pending
support
and
approval
granted
by
governing
about
institutional
structure
impact,
and
construct
councils
of
elders
and
other
leadership.
narratives
for
personas
⇢
in
educational
plan.
About
the
RIFE
Group
Educational
plan
“Take
[this]
story,
for
instance.
It’s
yours.
Do
with
it
We
are
the
Research
in
Feminist
Engineering
Group
(RIFE).
We
are
a
diverse
set
of
researchers
in
the
School
of
Engineering
Education
at
Our
Vision
Our
job
is
to
think
creatively
about
gender
and
engineering
education,
and
to
References
Research
study
Dishman,
E.,
Designing
for
the
New
Old:
Asking,
Observing
and
Performing
Future
Elders,
in
Design
Research:
Methods
and
what
you
will.
Tell
it
to
friends.
Turn
it
into
a
Purdue
University.
We
blend
feminist
theory
and
methods
with
engineering
educational
research
questions.
think
about,
write,
and
teach
in
ways
that
will
result
in
a
change
in
how
engineering
education
is
done.
To
that
end,
we
ask
big
questions,
undertake
Crenshaw,
K.,
Demarginalizing
the
Intersection
of
Race
and
Sex:
A
Black
Feminist
Critique
of
Antidiscrimination
Doctrine,
Feminist
Theory,
and
Perspectives,
B.
Laurel,
Editor.
2003,
MIT
Press:
Cambridge,
MA.
p.
television
movie.
Forget
it.
But
don’t
say
in
the
years
We
try
to
do
things
a
little
differently
than
a
conventional
research
model.
We
want
to
empower
people
in
our
diverse
community.
From
developing
action-­‐
ambitious
projects,
and
employ
appropriate
rigorous
research
methods.
Antiracist
Politics.
University
of
Chicago
Legal
Forum,
1989. 41-­‐48.
to
come
that
you
would
have
lived
your
life
differently
Dina
Banerjee,
Ph.D Jordana
Hoegh,
M.S.
Don,
A.
and
J.
Petrick,
User
Requirements:
By
Any
Means
Necessary,
in
research
collaborations
with
professors,
to
looking
for
projects
to
beneCit
our
Sociology Sociology
hooks,
b.,
Feminist
theory:
from
margin
to
center.
2000,
Cambridge,
MA:
local
community,
we
want
to
try
to
involve
as
many
different
people
as
PhD
student
Design
Research:
Methods
and
Perspectives,
B.
Laurel,
Editor.
2003,
Postdoc
on
ADVANCE
South
End
Press.
Collins,
P.H.,
Black
Feminist
Thought.
2009,
New
York:
Routledge. MIT
Press:
Cambridge,
MA.
p.
70-­‐80. if
only
you
had
heard
this
story.
You’ve
heard
it
now.” possible.
RIFE
2009-­‐present RA
on
ADVANCE
RIFE
2008-­‐present
Johnson,
B.M.,
The
Paradox
of
Design
Research:
The
Role
of
Informance,
Smith,
D.E.,
The
Everyday
World
As
Problematic:
A
Feminist
Sociology.
Northeastern
Series
in
Feminist
Theory,
ed.
E.F.
Keller.
1987,
Boston:
in
Design
Research:
Methods
and
Perspectives,
B.
Laurel,
Editor.
2003,
—
Thomas
King,
Lindsey
Nelson
Engineering
Marisol
Mercado
Santiago
Katie
Morley
Aero/Astro
Engineering
Canek
Phillips,
M.S.
Engineering
Education
Ranjani
Rao,
M.S.
Communication
MIT
Press:
Cambridge,
MA.
p.
39-­‐40. Education Engineering
Education
The
Truth
About
Stories:
A
Native
Narrative
Northeastern
University. Undergraduate RA
on
CAREER PhD
student
PhD
student PhD
student URA
on
What
is RA
on
IEECI-­‐ASK
Smith,
D.E.,
Institutional
Ethnography:
A
Sociology
for
People.
Gender
Laurel,
B.,
Design
improvisation:
Ethnography
meets
theatre,
in
Design
At
University
of
RA
on
ADVANCE
To
join
RIFE
Fall
2011
Engineering
to
you? RIFE
2010-­‐pres.
Lens.
2005,
Lanham,
MD:
Altamira
Press. Research:
Methods
and
perspectives,
B.
Laurel,
Editor.
2003,
MIT
Press:
Sussex
2010-­‐11 RIFE
2010-­‐present RIFE
2008-­‐present
Cambridge,
MA.
p.
49-­‐54.