Sharing Exemplary Admissions Practices that Promote Diversity in Engineering

所有的学生都应该有机会学习工程学。尽管长期以来一直呼吁增加女性、非裔美国人、美国印第安人/阿拉斯加原住民、任何种族的西班牙裔、低收入家庭学生和其他未被充分代表的群体在本科工程教育中的人数，但大多数学生都是来自中上层家庭的白人或亚洲男性。一些院校更善于根据学生在高中的表现或领导能力或创造力等个人特征来预测学生在工程专业的成功，使那些通常不会被工程专业录取的学生不仅能够入学，而且能够取得成功。本项目认可并促进了这些有效的实践，并为未来的研究提供了关于衡量工程教育成功的方法和改进系统的思路，以便各种背景的学生都对工程教育感兴趣并参加工程教育。当来自不同背景的学生参与工程教育时，所有学生都能从设计挑战的各种视角中受益，更多地考虑他人以及他们工程工作中的道德和社会正义问题，并参与看起来像他们在工作中遇到的团队。随着这些学生毕业并进入社会和劳动力市场，他们将更有可能为全球问题提供创新的解决方案，从而改善所有公民的生活质量。由于使美国工程人才多样化的关键任务需要在整个工程教育和劳动力系统中采取行动和干预，特别是在大学招生等重要的过渡点，美国国家工程院正在动员工程系主任和教职员工、招生人员、与相关领域的研究人员合作，强调并鼓励有效招生实践的传播，提高工程教育的多样性。该项目(1)为那些利用招生政策有效实现工程教育多样化的机构提供国家认可；(2)为那些正在制定或研究招生政策以促进多样性但尚未取得成功的机构提供指导；(3)为工程招生标准、指标、政策，以及这些实践如何融入招聘和留住各种背景的工程专业学生的更大系统。该项目包括一个研讨会，在这个研讨会上，信息、专业知识、指导以及促进的讨论和协作帮助与会者推进他们的工作，并为他们自己的机构制定有效的计划。参加研讨会的人构成了美国各地一群领导者和变革推动者的基础。此外，广泛传播研讨会视频和研讨会讨论的书面摘要，使院长、管理人员和其他没有参加研讨会的人能够从演讲和讨论中学习。最终，该项目将改善工程学院评估潜在成功的方式，并接受来自各种背景的申请人，并将传播最佳实践，以支持各院校实现工程项目的多样化，这将使当前和未来的工程师以及更广泛的劳动力受益。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。

All students should have the opportunity to study engineering. Despite long-standing calls to increase the numbers of women, African-Americans, American Indians/Alaska Natives, Hispanics of any race, students from low-income families, and other underrepresented groups in undergraduate engineering education, most students are white or Asian men from upper middle-class families. Some institutions have become better at predicting student success in engineering majors based on high school performance or personal traits such as leadership skills or creativity, enabling students who would not normally be admitted to engineering programs to not only enroll but succeed. This project recognizes and promotes these effective practices and develops ideas for future research about ways to measure success in engineering education and to improve the system so that students from all backgrounds become interested in and enroll in engineering education. When students from varied backgrounds engage in engineering education, all students benefit from a variety of perspectives on design challenges, think more about others and about ethics and social justice issues of their engineering work, and participate in teams that look like those they will encounter in the workforce. As these students graduate and enter society and the workforce, they will be more likely to produce innovative solutions to global problems that improve the quality of life for all citizens.Because the critical task of diversifying the US engineering workforce requires action and interventions throughout the engineering education and workforce system, especially at important transition points such as university admissions, the National Academy of Engineering is engaging engineering deans and faculty, admissions staff, and researchers in relevant areas in a collaborative process that highlights and encourages the diffusion of effective admissions practices that improve diversity in engineering education. The project (1) provides national recognition to institutions that are effectively diversifying engineering education using admissions policies, (2) provides guidance to institutions that are developing or researching admissions policies to advance diversity but have not yet met with success, and (3) defines directions for future research on both best practices in engineering admissions criteria, metrics, and policies and how those practices fit into the larger system of recruiting and retaining engineering students from all backgrounds. The project includes a workshop where information, expertise, mentoring, and facilitated discussions and collaboration help attendees advance their work and develop effective plans for their own institutions. The workshop attendees form the basis for a cohort of leaders and agents of change across the US. In addition, broad dissemination of both the workshop session videos and the written summary of the workshop discussion enables deans, administrators, and others who did not attend the workshop to learn from the presentations and discussions. Ultimately, the project will improve the way engineering schools evaluate the potential success of and accept applicants from all backgrounds and will disseminate best practices to support institutions as they diversify their engineering programs, which will benefit current and future engineers as well as the broader workforce.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.