IUSE/PFE:RED Innovation: Breaking the Binary

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This revolutionary project will involve both students and faculty in a process of transforming the Computer Engineering (CPE) department at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and potentially engineering education as a whole, through rejecting binaries or dualisms commonly used to create hierarchies in engineering thought and practice. The activities in this project will ask faculty and students to actively engage in dismantling the binaries by identifying and breaking down oppressive norms. Instead, they will embrace a complex coexistence; develop new skills in co-creation of holistic learning experiences and inclusive cultures; and evolve personal and professional identities that are constantly challenged and often in flux. The work is based on a “Critical Collaborative Educational Change” model which maps individual and group change to critical consciousness, values and beliefs, actions, and collective well-being in order to break the binaries in our culture, policies, and curriculum. Activities in the project include workshops and critical dialogs which will inform curriculum and course redesign, critical mentoring with faculty and students, and finding and changing department policies and practices by working with a student advisory board. The research will inform the engineering education community about the need and path to significant transformation. The three broad goals of the project are to 1) Enhance critical consciousness and expand group capacity through workshops and critical groups dialogs, 2) Interrupt structures that inhibit action by deepening relationships between and among students, staff, and faculty, and 3) Dismantle and reimagine the department by identifying and understanding structures of oppression impacting the individuals in the department. The proposed plan offers an opportunity to research how faculty and students engage in the dismantling of oppressive engineering learning structures. The work will draw attention to the connection between departmental culture and individual and collective well-being. Through the project activities the team will gain insights into how educators translate their new ways of knowing, being, and relating to the design of tangible curricular artifacts (courses, assignments, physical spaces) and visible behaviors (pedagogical style, caring, interpersonal connections), as well as understandings of how students respond to the more visible components of the new program. We will answer the following: (1) As we engage in the activities described in this proposal, how will the CPE department culture reject binaries that commonly create hierarchies in engineering thought and practice, and embrace a learning culture that is holistic and integrated? (2) To what extent does the Critical Collaborative Education Change Model help students, staff, and faculty navigate, respond to, and engage in critical organizational change? (3) What are the impacts of a holistic environment on individual growth and social cohesion? This project includes a strong vision for change, qualified team, connection to research, and a faculty development plan.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.