This collaborative project has a goal of increasing the diversity of engineering faculty at post-secondary institutions through engaging graduate students, post-doctoral professionals and early career faculty in faculty oriented professional development activities. The lack of diversity in the engineering ranks is well documented. According to data collected by the American Society for Engineering Education, the percentage of Hispanic tenure track faculty actually declined from 2012 to 2013, from 3.9% to 3.6%. During that same period, the number of African American faculty also declined from 2.7% to 2.6%. The numbers of American Indian and Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders changed by single digit numbers, their overall percentage being so small that it did not vary significantly. When considering gender, the number of tenure track female faculty was 14.5% in 2012, a number that has slowly increased from the 8.9% in 2001. It is a national imperative to diversify the engineering profession, and the presence of role models within the engineering faculty ranks is crucial to support the encouragement of underrepresented students seeking and earning engineering degrees. More specifically, 408 engineering doctoral degrees were awarded to members of this target demographic in 2012, however the number of assistant professors only increased by 28 (from 411 to 439). This is FTE for the given year and does not account for faculty that may have been promoted from assistant to associate or those who may have left the academy. If even ¼ of those earning doctorates had joined engineering faculties, this would result in an almost 25% increase in the representation. Clearly greater effort is needed to increase the number of those that earn doctoral degree who choose to enter academic ranks.
Seven engineering professional organizations that target underrepresented populations in engineering and other STEM fields will collaborate on this project: the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), Great Minds in STEM (GMiS), Latinos in Science and Engineering (MAES), the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), the Society for Advancement of Hispanics/Chicanos and Native Americans in STEM (SACNAS), the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), and the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). This project will facilitate travel for graduate students, postdoctoral professionals and early career faculty to attend national engineering conferences hosted by each organization. Utilizing content experts, these organizations will provide professional development opportunities at these conferences designed to prepare participants to become successful engineering faculty. By creating a collaborative infrastructure between these organizations, they will design, implement and evaluate the efficacy of increasing engineering faculty diversity through these workshops and professional development activities for the targeted participants. This activity will also create a self-supporting community engaged in higher educational pursuits thus addressing the isolation often perceived as contributing to the low numbers of faculty from diverse groups. A secondary benefit is that the undergraduate and pre-college students who attend these same conferences will have the opportunity to interact with the graduate students, postdoctoral professionals and early career faculty participants, thereby increasing their opportunity to learn about and potentially seek graduate degrees, increasing the pool of those who seek tenure track positions.
