Travel Grant to Support Diversity and Inclusion in the ASME MEED Summit and IMECE Conference

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Sustaining more women and underrepresented minorities in engineering is critical to developing and maintaining a viable and innovative workforce that is prepared and empowered to tackle humanity’s most pressing needs. Inclusion of these groups in every aspect of the career continuum is extremely important, especially at conferences and meetings of professional societies. Since the inception in 1968 and 1989, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) and the International Mechanical Engineering Education Leadership Summit (MEED), respectively, have served as premier forums for information sharing, innovation and professional growth in the Mechanical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering Technology fields. However, the representation of women and department leaders from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) who participate in these conferences has been low, ranging between two and five percent. This travel grant will be used to support the participation of mechanical engineering and engineering technology department heads/chairs and administrative leaders from HBCU institutions as well as those from historically underrepresented groups, including women, in the ASME MEED Summit from April 15-18, 2020 and the ASME IMECE from November 11-19, 2020.ASME's MEED Summit is a strategy and management forum for mechanical engineering education leaders at the department head/chair level and industry and government leaders committed to shaping the future of mechanical engineering education, industry practice and fostering public-private research and workforce development collaborations. ASME's IMECE Conference is the largest interdisciplinary mechanical engineering conference in the world and plays a significant role in stimulating innovation from basic discovery to translational application. These convenings provide a platform for domestic and international department heads and chairs to engage in discussions of trends, best practices, and challenges that the field is facing from a departmental level. Ensuring the participation of departmental leaders from diverse institutional types as well as engaging those from groups underrepresented in mechanical engineering is critical as ASME works to establish the policies and educational practices that shape the field. The cohort selected through this travel grant will contribute to building capacity for the preparation, development, and sustainment of a diverse set of engineers, as well as foster a pipeline of leadership talent within ASME and its representation in ABET and other external entities.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.