Positioning Engineering Faculty to Support Black Engineering Graduate Students through Awareness, Knowledge, Capacity Building, and Community

This project aims to address racial equity in engineering education by enhancing the awareness and knowledge of engineering faculty to support Black engineering graduate students. Black students in engineering programs often experience microaggressions, lack of support, and systemic barriers, which impede their academic success and well-being. This initiative aims to disrupt these cycles by equipping faculty with the tools and understanding necessary to be positioned to be actionable in cultivating a more inclusive and supportive environment.

By focusing on the three phases of awareness, knowledge, capacity building, and community, the project will provide faculty with empirical data on the lived experiences of Black students, engage them in professional development to build cultural competence, and establish a supportive community of practice. This comprehensive approach not only seeks to improve the academic outcomes and mental health of Black engineering students but also serves as a model for fostering antiracist educational environments across disciplines and institutions.

The anticipated outcomes include greater faculty awareness of racial inequities experienced by Black students, improved faculty-student rapport and relationship, and a reduction in the harm done to Black engineering graduate students. This project has the potential to advance social justice, contribute to a more equitable academic landscape, and inspire similar initiatives in other fields and institutions.

To address systemic racial inequities faced by Black engineering graduate students, this research is situated in the theory of racialized organizations and seeks to develop a comprehensive professional development program that increases faculty awareness of the unique challenges faced by Black scholars. Using a multimodal, mixed-method approach, the project will compare three educational modalities (e.g., case study, 2D-video, and immersive virtual reality simulations) to determine the most effective method for fostering faculty awareness and resonance of the lived experience of Black graduate scholars in engineering.

Conducted with engineering faculty at Arizona State University (ASU) and George Mason University (GMU), cohorts will participate in the Positioning Faculty for Antiracist Orientations (PFAO) program anchored in the High Impact Cultural Competency framework. This program is designed to build cultural competency while establishing a supportive, longitudinal community of practice of Engineering faculty committed to racial equity.

The project will leverage previous NSF funded work centering Black students as experts of their own experiences in applying their insights to inform the development of educational content. Over five years, the project will directly impact 90 engineering faculty, a novel and significant effort focused on the gatekeepers of engineering culture. The study's findings have potential implications for higher education, providing a model for capacity building and positioning antiracist orientations that can be adapted to support other minoritized groups.

This work is supported by an interdisciplinary team and aims to contribute significantly to the fields of Engineering, Education, Psychology, and Computing.

This collaborative project is funded by the EDU Racial Equity in STEM Education activity, which is supported by the Directorate for STEM Education (EDU). This activity supports research and practice projects that investigate how considerations of racial equity factor into the improvement of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and workforce.

Awarded projects seek to center the voices, knowledge, and experiences of the individuals, communities, and institutions most impacted by systemic inequities within the STEM enterprise. Programs across EDU contribute funds to the Racial Equity activity in recognition of the alignment of its projects with the collective research and development thrusts of the four divisions of the directorate.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.