COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: We are thriving: Challenging negative discourse through voices of women in project teams

合作研究：我们正在蓬勃发展：通过项目团队中女性的声音挑战负面言论

• 批准号: 2015688
• 负责人: Jia Liang
• 金额: $ 21.13万
• 依托单位: Kansas State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-15 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2015688&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: COLLABORATIVE; RESEARCH; thriving; Challenging; negative

The goal of this research is to understand women who are thriving (i.e., developing and succeeding) in engineering student project teams and undergraduate engineering programs. Project teams are extra-curricular, student-led, engineering design teams. One important aspect of this research is that these thriving women are encouraged to speak for themselves, describe their own experiences, and tell their own stories. Another is the intentional focus on women who are doing well, feeling positive about themselves as engineers and about their professional futures. Currently, the number of women who pursue engineering degrees remains low, around 20%, despite over 40 years of research. Previous researchers have provided valuable frameworks to explain the low participation and retention of women, but these projects have focused on what may be wrong -- why women do not select engineering or why they decide to leave engineering. While important, this type of research may inadvertently encourage women to avoid engineering as it may propagate the message that they “do not belong”. This research adopts a novel approach to explore a new direction toward understanding women’s experiences in engineering and employs an asset-based approach in its attempt to identify what women find rewarding. Therefore, a fresh and quite possibly transformative understanding of women’s engagement in engineering is anticipated. The primary deliverable will be a perspective and specific actionable items that can be adopted by university engineering programs and engineering companies that will encourage greater participation of women in engineering, and also suggest how those programs and companies might create an environment in which women can thrive. The broader impacts of this research include (1) increasing gender equity in engineering; (2) engaging a diverse range of women participants; and (3) suggesting alternative pathways toward engineering degrees and careers in engineering. Each of these broader impacts will contribute to a long-term goal of changing the negative discourse regarding the persistence of the underrepresentation of women and minorities in engineering.This research asks and answers the research question: what are the personal and institutional factors that facilitate women who thrive in engineering student project teams? The research approach is to conduct a series of three semi-structured interviews with women project team leaders at Kansas State University, Cornell University, and University of Nevada Las Vegas. These partnering universities vary by location, size, type, and ability to attract and retain women in engineering. The interviews include their life history or how they understand their life-experiences in relation to engineering; learning journey or how their experiences in project teams has led them to identify as engineers; and PhotoVoice, an approach which places students behind a camera, such that they can document and explain those project team experiences to others and in their own terms. The aim is to learn about the positive experiences of these women, identified and explained by the women themselves, thereby enabling a better understanding and appreciation of those experiences. Additional interviews with women at other institutions, engineering leadership, and project team faculty advisers will inform the understanding of the roles project teams play in broadening engagement in engineering. These interview data, together with secondary, document-based contextual data, will be analyzed to identify positive engineering experiences and then will be used to create a theoretical framework for encouraging thriving. The research offers the prospect for a new, targeted and more positive focus regarding women’s participation in engineering. The results of this research will be included on a website created by an undergraduate student project team to maximize dissemination, long-term accessibility, and project sustainability.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.

这项研究的目标是了解在工程专业学生项目团队和本科工程项目中蓬勃发展(即发展和成功)的女性。项目团队是课外的、由学生主导的工程设计团队。这项研究的一个重要方面是，鼓励这些茁壮成长的女性为自己说话，描述自己的经历，讲述自己的故事。另一个是刻意关注那些做得很好的女性，她们对自己作为工程师和未来的职业前景感到乐观。目前，尽管进行了40多年的研究，但攻读工程学学位的女性人数仍然很低，约为20%。之前的研究人员已经提供了有价值的框架来解释女性参与率和留存率低的原因，但这些项目关注的可能是哪里出了问题--为什么女性没有选择工程学，或者为什么她们决定离开工程学。虽然这类研究很重要，但它可能会在无意中鼓励女性避免工程学，因为它可能会传播一种信息，即她们“不属于”。这项研究采用了一种新的方法来探索理解女性工程经验的新方向，并采用了基于资产的方法来尝试确定女性认为有回报的东西。因此，人们期待着对女性参与工程的新的、很可能是变革性的理解。主要成果将是大学工程项目和工程公司可以采用的观点和具体的可操作项目，这些项目将鼓励女性更多地参与工程领域，并建议这些项目和公司如何创造一个让女性茁壮成长的环境。这项研究的更广泛的影响包括：(1)增加工程学领域的性别平等；(2)吸引不同的女性参与者；(3)建议获得工程学学位和从事工程学职业的其他途径。这些更广泛的影响中的每一个都将有助于改变关于工程学中女性和少数族裔代表不足的持续负面言论的长期目标。这项研究询问并回答了研究问题：哪些个人和制度因素有助于女性在工科学生项目团队中茁壮成长？研究方法是对堪萨斯州立大学、康奈尔大学和内华达大学拉斯维加斯分校的女性项目团队负责人进行一系列的三次半结构化访谈。这些合作大学因地点、规模、类型以及吸引和留住工程专业女性的能力而异。访谈包括他们的生活史或他们如何理解与工程有关的生活经历；学习旅程或他们在项目团队的经历如何使他们认同为工程师；以及PhotoVoice，一种将学生放在相机后面的方法，这样他们可以用自己的语言记录和解释那些项目团队的经历。其目的是了解这些妇女自己确定和解释的积极经历，从而能够更好地理解和欣赏这些经历。对其他机构的女性、工程领导和项目团队教员顾问的更多采访将有助于理解项目团队在扩大工程参与方面所扮演的角色。这些访谈数据，连同基于文件的二手背景数据，将被分析以确定积极的工程经验，然后将被用来创建鼓励蓬勃发展的理论框架。这项研究为女性参与工程学提供了一个新的、有针对性的、更积极的关注方向。这项研究的结果将被包括在一个由本科生项目团队创建的网站上，该网站旨在最大化传播、长期可获得性和项目的可持续性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Nevertheless, she persisted: Women thrive when they experience the joy of doing engineering

尽管如此，她坚持认为：当女性体验到工程的乐趣时，她们就会茁壮成长

• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Research in Engineering Education Symposium
• 作者: Evans, R.

A Qualitative Study of Undergraduate Women in Engineering Project Teams

工程项目团队中本科女性的定性研究

• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: In 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. 2023
• 作者: Liang, Grace J.;Evans, Rick;Asadollahipajouh, Mojdeh;Kulesza, Stacey E.;Glushko Evans, Anna
• 通讯作者: Glushko Evans, Anna

We Are Thriving: Increasing the Number of Women in Engineering

我们正在蓬勃发展：增加工程领域的女性人数

• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
• 作者: Redmond, K.E.;Panther, G.;Asadollahipajouh, M.;Evans, R.;Kulesza, S.;and Liang, G.
• 通讯作者: and Liang, G.