Track 4: Center for Equity in Engineering: Organizational Transformation for Graduate Education

轨道 4：工程公平中心：研究生教育的组织转型

• 批准号: 2217640
• 负责人: Julia Ross
• 金额: $ 120万
• 依托单位: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-08-15 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2217640&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Track; Center; Equity; Engineering; Organizational

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).University-level administrators, College-level personnel, academic departments, graduate programs, and individual advisors all play important roles in graduate engineering education, but integrating those different influencers to achieve an overarching, coordinated goal is quite challenging. This project will establish a Center for Equity in Engineering focused on organizational transformation for graduate education at Virginia Tech (VT). Establishing such a center is important because the highly decentralized nature of graduate education in engineering makes integrated reform strategies extremely challenging and fosters inequities throughout the system. Importantly, the Center will reframe broadening participation such that the focus is on changing systems to promote student success rather than trying to “fix” graduate students. We will focus on organizing, aligning, and integrating many interconnected systems and processes within the system of graduate education (e.g., recruitment, admissions, funding, research, professional development) to promote student success and wellbeing and disrupt systems of oppression across these systems. Aligned with the vision for an ideal STEM graduate education system set forth by the National Academies and the objectives of the National Science Foundation's Broadening Participation in Engineering program, we envision a more equitable and inclusive graduate engineering education where student experiences and outcomes are not predicted by demographic variables or citizenship. Instead, this Center will work toward facilitating an environment where every graduate student will be provided with opportunities to develop their technical and professional skills, establish their identities as professional engineers, and be included and engaged in the community. This Center will provide a model for other institutions to support a more equitable graduate education enterprise within colleges of engineering.By meaningfully addressing continual calls for systemic, structural, and sustainable change within graduate education, this Center will make significant intellectual contributions in advancing understanding of how to enact organizational transformation to promote equity in graduate engineering education. Grounded in a collective impact framework and an action research design, this project will be organized around four pillars: 1) revamping policies, 2) aligning structures, 3) shifting culture, and 4) transforming practice. Through coordinated efforts, the Center will reorient existing decentralized structures, resource flows, and decision processes and foster both bottom-up and top-down change processes. The Center is designed in a way that integrates existing organizational structures, builds infrastructure so that activities in progress can become better coordinated and impactful, includes a variety of mechanisms to ensure successful engagement of stakeholders throughout the organization (i.e., administrators, faculty, and students), and ensures multiple, regular opportunities for critical feedback and evaluation. The Center leadership team includes every VT College of Engineering administrative position associated with graduate education as well as scholars and leaders in broadening participation and graduate education. Using an Action Research lens, we will document successes and failures, resulting in complementary insights and robust findings that will advance understanding of what promotes and impedes transformative change. This Center will include efforts that span two VT campuses: a well-established campus in Blacksburg, VA and the new Innovation Campus in Alexandria, VA, which exclusively focuses on graduate engineering education and aspires to produce the most diverse cohorts of graduates in the nation. This design will enable insights on how to pursue organizational change in two distinct contexts: one with existing inertia and one that is void of historical baggage. In addition to a dissemination strategy that includes a variety of different formats to reach a range of audience needs, the Center will engage multiple working groups of graduate students and faculty who will hopefully become more equity-minded, which also will broaden the impacts of this Center as ideas from their engagement are built into their future work and interactions with colleagues and graduate students.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.

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助。大学级管理人员、学院级人员、学术部门、研究生项目和个人顾问在研究生工程教育中都发挥着重要作用，但整合这些不同的影响者来实现一个总体的、协调的目标是相当具有挑战性的。该项目将建立一个工程公平中心，专注于弗吉尼亚理工大学（VT）研究生教育的组织转型。建立这样一个中心很重要，因为工程研究生教育的高度分散性使得综合改革战略极具挑战性，并在整个系统中助长不平等。重要的是，该中心将重新定义扩大参与的框架，以便将重点放在改变系统以促进学生的成功，而不是试图“修复”研究生。我们将专注于在研究生教育系统内组织、协调和整合许多相互关联的系统和流程（例如，招聘、录取、资助、研究、专业发展），以促进学生的成功和福祉，并打破这些系统中的压迫系统。根据美国国家科学院提出的理想STEM研究生教育体系的愿景和美国国家科学基金会“扩大工程参与”计划的目标，我们设想一个更加公平和包容的研究生工程教育，学生的经历和结果不受人口变量或公民身份的预测。相反，该中心将致力于促进一个环境，使每个研究生都有机会发展他们的技术和专业技能，建立他们作为专业工程师的身份，并被纳入和参与社区。该中心将为其他机构提供一个模式，以支持工程学院内更公平的研究生教育事业。通过有意义地解决研究生教育中系统性、结构性和可持续变革的持续需求，本中心将在促进对如何实施组织变革以促进研究生工程教育公平的理解方面做出重大的智力贡献。该项目以集体影响框架和行动研究设计为基础，将围绕四大支柱进行组织：1)改革政策，2)调整结构，3)转变文化，4)转变实践。通过协调努力，中心将重新定位现有的分散结构、资源流动和决策过程，并促进自下而上和自上而下的变革过程。该中心的设计方式整合了现有的组织结构，建立了基础设施，使正在进行的活动能够更好地协调和影响，包括各种机制，以确保整个组织的利益相关者（即管理人员，教师和学生）的成功参与，并确保多次，定期的关键反馈和评估机会。中心领导团队包括VT工程学院与研究生教育相关的每个行政职位，以及扩大参与和研究生教育的学者和领导。使用行动研究的视角，我们将记录成功和失败，从而产生互补的见解和强有力的发现，这将促进和阻碍变革的理解。该中心将包括两所弗吉尼亚大学校园的努力：位于弗吉尼亚州布莱克斯堡的成熟校园和位于弗吉尼亚州亚历山大的新创新校园，后者专门专注于研究生工程教育，并渴望培养全国最多样化的毕业生群体。这种设计将使我们能够洞察如何在两种不同的环境中追求组织变革：一种是现有的惯性，另一种是没有历史包袱的。除了包括各种不同形式的传播策略以满足一系列受众需求外，该中心还将吸引研究生和教师组成的多个工作组，这些工作组有望变得更加公平，这也将扩大该中心的影响，因为他们参与的想法将融入他们未来的工作以及与同事和研究生的互动中。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。