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Introduction

Calls to increase diversity in engineering in the United States have been sounded for decades and continue unabated today (Brooks 2020; NAE 2002; Wulf 1998). Yet individuals from some populations¹ remain minoritized and marginalized in the very disciplines that are key to the continued prosperity of the United States (Anderson et al. 2018; Thursby 2014; Triantis 2015). For example, in 2015 women accounted for 21 percent and American Indian or Native Alaskan individuals, Black individuals, and Latine individuals² made up only 16 percent of the undergraduate engineering student body. The lack of racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in engineering education is not only, as workshop planning committee chair Darryll Pines put it in his opening remarks, of concern for national “economic competitiveness but it is a social justice imperative to give individuals of all backgrounds access to the benefits of an engineering degree, including high salaries and job satisfaction.”

This is not to say, however, that US institutions of higher education have been lax in terms of developing programs that promote diversity in engineering. To recognize a sampling of those institutions that are effectively diversifying undergraduate engineering education using admission policies and practices and to provide guidance to institutions that are striving to advance diversity in their engineering programs, the National Science Foundation (NSF) provided funding to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) to conduct an activity that would share exemplary admissions practices that promote diversity in engineering. The first phase of the project occurred in late 2019 when the NAE released a call for nominations, from US colleges of engineering, of admissions programs or policies that have increased diversity among engineering students. The nominations were reviewed by an ad hoc workshop planning committee (Darryll Pines [Chair], Beth Holloway, Theresa Maldonado, Beth Myers, and Andrew

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¹ These populations include all women, Black or African American individuals, Hispanic or Latino/a/x/e individuals, American Indian or Native Alaskan individuals, individuals with disabilities, first-generation college students, LGBTQI individuals, and students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds, among other populations. Terms describing race (e.g., Black or African American) and ethnicity (e.g., Hispanic or Latino/a/x/e) are not always interchangeable; except in direct quotes, these proceedings will use “Black individuals” to be more inclusive of all nationalities and ethnicities and will use the gender-neutral “Latine” to include individuals with ancestry from Latin America, including non-Spanish-speaking areas.

² In the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, these individuals have historically been called “underrepresented minorities” in federal datasets and much of the literature (e.g., Fleming and McPhail 2019; NAE 2018), although some researchers and practitioners have suggested other terms to describe this population (e.g., Walden et al. 2018). As the language used to describe these individuals continues to evolve, these proceedings will use the term “historically minoritized and marginalized populations” except in direct quotes.

Williams)³ and judged based on improvements in diversity of incoming cohorts, metrics of their success once enrolled, and research-based and creative features of the program. Eight programs were chosen as exemplary.⁴

The second phase of the activity was a virtual workshop held May 24–26, 2021, which also sought to define directions for future research on (i) best practices, metrics, and policies that promote diversity in engineering and (ii) how they fit into the larger system of recruiting and retaining engineering students from all backgrounds. Representatives from the selected programs were invited to speak in workshop panels on policy, best practices, and research. In addition, workshop discussions examined the system of higher education admissions, transfer and 3+2 programs, research on admissions, and the advantages of and concerns with using artificial intelligence and data science tools in recruiting, admissions, and retention. The ultimate goal of the project is to share effective, evidence-based practices that will improve how engineering schools evaluate applicants from all backgrounds.

CONDUCT OF THE WORKSHOP

The three-day workshop (see appendix A for the agenda) was organized by the planning committee in accordance with the procedures of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies). The event was broadcast live using the ePosterBoards online platform, and all workshop presentations were subsequently posted to the NAE website along with links to the videos of the talks.⁵

This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions that occurred throughout the workshop. In accordance with National Academies policies, the workshop did not attempt to establish any conclusions or recommendations about needs and future directions, focusing instead on issues described by individual speakers and attendees. This summary was drafted by rapporteur Joe Alper in collaboration with NAE staff members Elizabeth Cady and Cameron Fletcher as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop; statements presented in these pages are not endorsed or verified by the National Academies.

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³ The planning committee’s role was limited to planning the workshop, and this summary is presented by the workshop rapporteurs as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop. Statements, recommendations, and opinions expressed are those of individual presenters and participants; they are not necessarily endorsed or verified by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and they should not be construed as reflecting any group consensus.

⁴ The press release announcing the programs is available at https://www.nae.edu/228060/NAE-Committee-Chooses-Exemplar-Programs-that-are-Increasing-Diversity-in-Engineering-at-US-Colleges-and-Universities-

⁵ Available at https://www.nae.edu/224753/Agenda#tabs

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

In his introduction to the workshop, Darryll Pines (University of Maryland)⁶ reminded attendees that calls to increase diversity in engineering have occurred for decades, but that “the field still lacks the diversity that would ensure inclusive excellence going forward.” He went on to observe that “not only is it a social justice imperative to give individuals from all backgrounds access to the benefits of an engineering degree, including high salaries and job satisfaction, it is critical to US competitiveness to broaden the potential talent pool to include all students. Because creative and innovative solutions to societal problems arise from the background and life experiences of engineers, a lack of diversity causes an ‘opportunity cost—in products not built, designs not considered, constraints not understood, and processes not invented.’⁷ Diversity, equity, and inclusion are needed across the system,” Pines continued, “including in recruiting, admitting, enrolling, retaining, and graduating engineering students.” This workshop, he added, focuses on admission as one of the bottlenecks in the system that hampers efforts to include all students from all backgrounds in engineering education and professions.

Pines noted that because equity is such an important issue, the American Society of Engineering Education’s (ASEE’s) board of directors declared that 2021–22 would be the Year of Impact on Racial Equity, starting with the ASEE annual meeting in July 2021. The Year of Impact will focus on making organizational change in engineering student organizations, colleges of engineering, ASEE constituent groups, and organizers of precollege outreach efforts. Specifically, ASEE will focus on empowering student engineering organizations, implementing equitable policies and practices, and opening up access for all students to engineering education.

In his opening remarks to the workshop, NAE president John L. Anderson said that one aspect of the mission of NAE is to promote the engineering profession, which includes recruiting individuals into engineering. He also stressed that equity and inclusion are more than just creating opportunity. To help make that point he told about being a young child when his parents, neither of whom had graduated from high school, moved the family to an apartment that was a half-mile inside the border of the best school district in the state—a district that abutted a much poorer and less-resourced school district. He worked hard and was a motivated student—but he also knows that luck was on his side. “I am convinced that I would not be where I am today had I lived in that neighboring school district,” Anderson said. “I think about that every day. Opportunity is a function of personal history and discrimination, so luck plays a role. Our goal is to reduce the importance of luck as we strive to realize equity.”

He noted that reevaluating and reenvisioning admissions processes provides one opportunity to mitigate the luck factor. Increasing access to engineering also includes effective mentoring (NASEM 2019), addressing gaps in education, and considering the context of socioeconomic situations that can limit a young person’s choices after graduating from high school. Anderson also said that potential talent and the promise of success in any field cannot be captured in a single metric such as grades or test scores, which he believes could be reduced in influence or eliminated from college ratings systems. Other factors, such as leadership skills and motivation, also contribute to success. He noted that many of the top performers he taught as a

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⁶ Speakers’ biographical sketches are available in appendix B. Two planning committee members (Myers and Williams) moved to different institutions after the workshop; the proceedings text reflects their affiliations at the time of the workshop.

⁷ This quote is from a 1998 article by former NAE president Wm. A. Wulf, which is available here: https://www.nae.edu/7488/DiversityinEngineering.

professor of chemical engineering were not stars in high school. Some were transfers from community colleges, and his experiences led him to believe that engineering colleges should recruit more students from community colleges.

Concluding his remarks, Anderson hoped that as admissions officers think about these and related issues they will consider the lessons this workshop is intended to highlight. He also noted that in 2020 the NAE formed a committee to address challenges to racial justice and equity in engineering with several goals, among them to suggest ways to make NAE members and the general engineering community more aware of racial injustice and inequity in the profession and to propose initiatives designed to increase the percentage of engineering degrees in higher education achieved by groups currently underrepresented in the profession.⁸ As one of its earliest activities this committee invited John Brooks Slaughter, NSF’s first Black director (1980–82) and currently professor of engineering at the University of Southern California, to give a special lecture on racial justice and equity, titled We Must Let Opportunity Meet Talent, at the NAE’s 2020 annual meeting.⁹

Christine Grant (NSF program director) provided a brief description of some of the programs administered by NSF’s engineering directorate, specifically in the Engineering Education and Centers Division, which has four “intertwined and interdependent clusters”: Centers and Networks, Engineering Education, Workforce Development, and Broadening Participation. In Engineering Education, the program on Improving Undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education has two tracks. The Engaged Student Learning effort focuses on designing, developing, and implementing research on STEM learning models, approaches, and tools, and the Institutional and Community Transformation track focuses on the propagation of highly effective methods of STEM teaching and learning.

The program Grant runs, Broadening Participation, seeks to strengthen the future of the US engineering workforce, focusing on individuals from groups that are traditionally underrepresented and underserved in engineering. It aims to understand and address barriers to increasing access to engineering, innovate to positively affect student recruitment and retention, aggressively recruit and retain tenure track faculty from underrepresented groups, and transform engineering cultures to be more inclusive and equitable. She cited a number of projects aimed at increasing the participation of underrepresented groups at all stages of education and employment.

Grant also highlighted an NSF-funded project in which the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities produced a status report on diversity in engineering education (Anderson et al. 2018). This report discusses where engineering students come from and where they get their engineering education. One finding was that most racially minoritized and marginalized students who go on to doctoral programs get their undergraduate degrees at minority serving institutions (MSIs) rather than predominantly White institutions (PWIs). An effort currently funded by NSF aims to disrupt the status quo of who “gets to be” an engineer, which Grant found exciting because it shows there are faculty dedicating their research to broadening participation in engineering.

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⁸ More information about the NAE Racial Justice & Equity committee is here: https://www.nae.edu/238548/NAE-Presidents-Racial-Justice-and-Equity-Committee.

⁹ A recording of the lecture is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcy6WwPxjGE and the complete text is available at https://www.nae.edu/File.aspx?id=243628

As a final comment, Grant noted that all of the institutions that presented exemplary programs and practices at the workshop also have ongoing NSF-funded efforts to increase diversity, inclusion, and equity in their engineering programs and in engineering as a profession. She encouraged the workshop attendees to reach out and connect with each other so they do not become siloed in their activities.

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