At the start of their work for the National Science Foundation’s Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) Program (IUSE/Professional Formation of Engineers, NSF 19-614), RED teams face a variety of challenges. Not only must they craft a shared vision for their projects and create strategic partnerships across their campuses to move the project forward, they must also form a new team and communicate effectively within the team. Our work with RED teams over the past 5 years has highlighted the common challenges these teams face at the start, and for that reason, we have developed the RED Start Up Session, a ½ day workshop that establishes best practices for RED teams’ work and allows for early successes in these five year projects.
As the RED Participatory Action Research team (REDPAR)--comprised of individuals from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and the University of Washington--we have taken the research data collected as we work with RED teams and translated it into practical strategies that can benefit RED teams as they embark on their projects. This presentation will focus on the content and organization of the Start Up Session and how these lessons learned can contribute to the furthering of the goals of the RED program: to design “revolutionary new approaches to engineering education,” focusing on “organizational and cultural change within the departments, involving students, faculty, staff, and industry in rethinking what it means to provide an engineering program.”
We see the Start Up Session as an important first step in the RED team establishing an identity as a team and learning how to work effectively together. We also encourage new RED teams to learn from the past, through a panel discussion with current RED team members who fill various roles on the teams: engineering education researcher, project manager, project PI, disciplinary faculty, social scientist, and others. By presenting our findings from the Start Up Session at ASEE, we believe we can contribute to the national conversation regarding change in engineering education as it is evidenced in the RED team’s work.
http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-8367-9463
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
[biography]
Dr. Julia M. Williams is Professor of English at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Her research areas include technical communication, assessment, accreditation, and the development of change management strategies for faculty and staff. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Engineering Education, International Journal of Engineering Education, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, and Technical Communication Quarterly, among others.
Sriram Mohan is a Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Rose-Hulman institute of Technology. Sriram received a B.E degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Madras and M.S and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science f
Eva Andrijcic serves as an Associate Professor of Engineering Management at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. in Systems and Information Engineering from University of Virginia, where she worked at the Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems. She received a B.S. in mathematics from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. Her major interests are in the areas of risk analysis and management, critical infrastructure management and protection, interdisciplinary engineering education, and risk education.
Cara Margherio is the Assistant Director of the UW Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity (CERSE). Cara manages the evaluation of several NSF- and NIH-funded projects. Her research is grounded in critical race and feminist theories, and her research interests include community cultural wealth, counterspaces, intersectionality, and institutional change.
Elizabeth Litzler, Ph.D., is the director of the University of Washington Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity (UW CERSE) and an affiliate assistant professor of sociology. She has been at UW working on STEM Equity issues for more than 15 years. Dr. Litzler is a member of ASEE, incoming chair of the ASEE Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and a former board member of the Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN). Her research interests include the educational climate for students, faculty, and staff in science and engineering, assets based approaches to STEM equity, and gender and race stratification in education and the workforce.
Ms. Doten-Snitker was a Graduate Research Assistant at the University of Washington's Center for Evaluation and Research for STEM Equity, where she was part of a team conducting evaluation research for university-level educational and professional training, with a focus on increasing equity and participation of underrepresented and minority students and professionals. She has contributed to evaluation research for a range of programs funded by the NSF, NIH, and USAID. She completed a PhD in Sociology at the University of Washington in 2020.
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