I chose to focus on gender and racial diversity in American engineering and why it crucial to increase diversity within the field. White males are becoming a minority; however, the field of engineering does not represent this. American engineering has diverged from ideals of apprenticeship and creativity to a profitable industry that comes with status, money and power. My point is, not only is engineering lacking diversity but it is also lacking aspects of creativity as well.
The lack of diversity and creativity within the field of engineering is affecting the quality of engineers and the products they produce because we are in need of various/diverse perspectives in order to create the most fair and ethically/environmentally responsible products.
Wikipedia defines engineering as,
“Engineering is the discipline, art, and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize solutions to the needs of society.”
However, are Cal Poly engineers really utilizing the artistic and social knowledge that could be applied to engineering? Or are Cal Poly engineers solely using the science and math in their engineering? Could increasing diversity in the field help this? Does creativity come along with diversity?
Now these are all valid questions I plan on diving into more through interviews with Cal Poly engineers; however, my prediction would be that at California POLYTECHNIC State University engineering would be generally geared towards math and science and emphasis on social science perspective or art would be neglected.
I could be very wrong with my hypothesis but I plan on interviewing a handful of Cal Poly engineers about their personal knowledge of the field to find out. I want to pay special attention their experience with art/social science and diversity within the engineering field. I would really like to explore how the engineers feel themselves and if they think that an increase in diversity/creativity might help the field.
WM. A. WULF talks a lot about stereo-types of American engineers as being nerdy and dull. I really want to ask the engineers themselves how they confront these stereotypes and if they think there is truth behind it. My guess is there may be some truth behind it because engineering has become so profit based that many want to join the field in order to gain wealth instead of genuine interest in the subject. Through interviewing students and continuing my research I hope to confront some of the stereotypes of engineers and obstacles to achieving equality within the field.
Perhaps it would be helpful to share some of my experiences and observations at CalPoly:
ReplyDeleteDiversity, at least gender-wise, varies by engineering discipline within the College of Engineering. For example, the Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering program has more female students than Electrical Engineering program. Questions regarding the recruitment strategy for women into engineering disciplines, as well as the varying interests of women and what informs those interests would be enlightening to explore.
It is no secret that while CalPoly is considered the overall best-performing of the Cal States, it is one of, if not the least diverse. I’m not sure how exactly that extends to the College of Engineering students, faculty and staff …. You might want to take into consideration that most students at CalPoly are not residents of this county and come from other areas in California. For some of those minorities who come from an economically disadvantaged background, it might not be viable to move away from home and instead might opt to go to a school closer to home. Therefore, keep in mind CalPoly has particular characteristics that might make skew your research and conclusions you might draw about diversity in engineering in the Unites States.
Year in school might be a factor in the diversity you see at CalPoly. From my experience, a number of students get kicked out in the first to second year at school, and perhaps it would interesting to explore what proportion of those students contribute to CENG’s diversity.
Mariel, I am excited about your interview based approach to this research topic. A couple of additional things to think about as you move forward with the project:
ReplyDelete1) At various points in time, engineering education reformers in the U.S. worked to integrate the humanities in to engineering education to create particular types of engineers. You might want to look at the Wisnowski piece (a recommended reading in the last module) for a discussion of what happened in the 1960s and the role the humanities were supposed to play in engineering education, according to these reformers.
2) Relatedly, there is an interesting discussion happening with mainstream engineering education, policy, and practice about the relationship between diversity and creativity. It might be interesting to map out the (re)emergence of that discussion within the National Academy of Engineering, for example. How are discussions about diversity within the NAE different/the same as discussions about engineering and diversity by ES & WGS scholars?
3) One of the statements that I commonly hear at Cal Poly is that we are so predominantly white because "there just aren't qualified students of color." It might be quite interesting to do a comparative analysis of the two Cal Polys, for example, to see how the gender and race demographics play out in different engineering disciplines. Is it that students of color aren't qualified, or rather that qualified students of color do not want to come to SLO? Too, how do the numbers of students accepted vs. matriculated at CP compare to the acceptance rates of white students?
4) It might be interesting to include attention to the role of Polycultural weekend (http://studentlife.calpoly.edu/multicultural/pcw/index.asp) and organizations like the Black Scientists and Engineers and MeCHA in the recruitment and retention of students in STEM fields at this university.
5) Christina's suggestion to include class is a great one - how might that be incorporated?