More than Recruitment and Outreach: Diversity and Inclusion in Engineering Education Curricula and Classrooms

Final Paper pdf 184KB

In engineering education, diversity and inclusion may be buzzwords, but the overall focus tends to be diversity and integration, placing the burden of change and knowledge-building on underrepresented individuals and groups. The result is the “leaky pipeline,” where an increase in majors from underrepresented groups does not cause an increase in engineering workplace diversity or impact engineering workplace culture. If engineering education makes diversity and inclusion an explicit pillar in our curricula and classrooms, there is the potential to patch the leaky pipeline by improving engineering culture for not just underrepresented groups but everyone and increase the overall diversity and strength of engineering disciplines. In particular this work-in-progress explores how an engineering education course, Engineering Technical Communications, addresses and teaches issues of diversity and inclusion and provides an exploration of how D/I can be central to engineering education curricula.

Author(s):

Deborah Kuzawa    
Engineering Education
The Ohio State University
United States