Student Paper
The field of aerospace engineering is collectively grappling with the problem of disproportionate underrepresentation of women and people of color both within educational programs and within the aerospace industry. Identifying the problems is a vital preliminary step towards building equitable systems, and the underrepresentation and inequitable outcomes of women and students of color is indeed a well-documented problem. However, building on the theoretical foundation of critical theory, we argue that there exists another substantial sector of the population that is currently marginalized within aerospace engineering: the working class. As income inequality continues to grow both nationally and globally, the population of students who are not coming from highly affluent backgrounds are at a continually growing disadvantage within educational spaces.
This quantitative study takes place at a large, highly selective public research university. Working class Americans account for the vast majority of the national population but are a minority amongst the students studying engineering at this institution. Marginalization processes on the bases of ethnicity and social class have a compounding effect, as is recognized by the theory of intersectionality. Nationally, people of color are more likely than people who are white to be members of the working class, and the same is true at this institution. The aerospace field is also known to have even lower rates of representation of women than other engineering disciplines. Thus, this study seeks to examine how systemically oppressed identities affect outcomes for the undergraduate student population. To do so, we evaluate representation rates and the effects of student identity on the measured outcomes of graduation rate, time to graduation, and cumulative grade point average using critical quantitative methodology. The results offer insights into how systems of oppression are perpetuated within aerospace academia and what specific goals must retain our focus as we build collectively toward systemic change.
Corin (Corey) Bowen is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Education, housed in the Department of Civil Engineering at California State University - Los Angeles. Her engineering education research focuses on structural oppression in engineering systems, organizing for equitable change, and developing an agenda of Engineering for the Common Good. She teaches structural mechanics and sociotechnical topics in engineering education and practice. Corey conferred her Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor in April 2021; her thesis included both technical and educational research. She also holds an M.S.E. in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor and a B.S.E. in civil engineering from Case Western Reserve University, both in the areas of structural engineering and solid mechanics.
Aaron W. Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department and a Core Faculty member of the Engineering Education Research Program at the University of Michigan. His design-based research focuses on how to re-contextualize engineering science engineering courses to better reflect and prepare students for the reality of ill-defined, sociotechnical engineering practice. Current projects include studying and designing classroom interventions around macroethical issues in aerospace engineering and the productive beginnings of engineering judgment as students create and use mathematical models. Aaron holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Michigan and a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to re-joining Michigan, he was an instructor in Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.
