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: 2015741
• 负责人: Richard Evans
• 金额: $ 11.8万
• 依托单位: Cornell 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=2015741&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那些正在蓬勃发展的女性（即，发展和成功）在工程学生项目团队和本科工程项目。项目团队是课外的，学生主导的，工程设计团队。这项研究的一个重要方面是，这些蓬勃发展的妇女被鼓励为自己说话，描述自己的经历，讲述自己的故事。另一个是有意关注那些做得很好的女性，她们对自己作为工程师和职业前途感到积极。目前，尽管进行了40多年的研究，攻读工程学位的妇女人数仍然很低，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低和保留率低的原因，但这些项目的重点是可能存在的问题--为什么女性不选择工程专业或为什么她们决定离开工程专业。虽然这类研究很重要，但可能会无意中鼓励妇女避免从事工程，因为这可能会传播她们“不属于”的信息。本研究采用了一种新的方法，探索一个新的方向，了解妇女的经验，在工程和采用资产为基础的方法，试图确定妇女发现奖励。因此，一个新的，很可能是变革性的理解，妇女参与工程的预期。主要交付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可操作项目，这些项目将鼓励妇女更多地参与工程，并建议这些项目和公司如何创造一个妇女可以茁壮成长的环境。这项研究的更广泛的影响包括：（1）增加工程领域的性别平等;（2）吸引各种女性参与者;（3）提出工程学位和工程职业的替代途径。这些更广泛的影响将有助于改变的负面话语的长期目标有关的持续性的妇女和少数民族在engineering.This研究问和回答的研究问题：什么是个人和机构的因素，促进妇女谁在工程专业学生项目团队蓬勃发展？研究方法是对堪萨斯州立大学、康奈尔大学和内华达州拉斯维加斯大学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领域女性的能力而异。采访包括他们的生活史或他们如何理解他们的生活经历与工程;学习旅程或他们在项目团队中的经历如何使他们成为工程师;以及PhotoVoice，一种将学生放在相机后面的方法，这样他们就可以记录和解释这些项目团队的经验。目的是了解这些妇女自己确定和解释的积极经验，从而能够更好地理解和欣赏这些经验。 在其他机构，工程领导和项目团队教师顾问的妇女的额外采访将告知项目团队在扩大工程参与中发挥的作用的理解。这些访谈数据，以及次要的，基于文档的上下文数据，将被分析，以确定积极的工程经验，然后将被用来创建一个理论框架，鼓励蓬勃发展。这项研究提供了一个新的前景，有针对性的和更积极的关注妇女参与工程。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，以最大限度地传播，长期可访问性和项目的可持续性。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。