Eileen Cashman

Feminism and engineering

Can you be feminist and an engineer? This paper explores this question and aims to show some of the breadth of experience and meanings involved in constructing this combination. Specifically, for this study we used ourselves as the sample population. We are four women engineers who identify themselves as feminists, with Ph.D. degrees and interests in education. Our backgrounds include electrical, environmental, and industrial engineering and teaching experiences at large and small private and public universities. Our experiences with formal courses in pedagogy and feminism range from none to quite extensive. For this study, we each wrote an essay in response to questions of how we combine feminism and engineering as well as our opinions on feminist pedagogy. We used these essays as data for a qualitative analysis from which several common themes and differences emerged. In this paper, we briefly describe ourselves and present our definitions of feminism. We provide illustrations of our most common themes from our reflections. The two most frequent themes were those of social justice for engineering including making the engineering community more welcoming to a diverse group of people and wanting to enhance student learning. Consideration of feminist pedagogy led to a third theme of critiquing the engineering process itself including who and what is studied. Finally, we present our variety of views on our motivation for investigating feminist pedagogy and its use in engineering education

Interactive session - feminist frontiers

This interactive session explores the feminist frontiers of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. The goals of the session are: 1) to assist participants in developing their definitions of feminism; 2) to assist participants in developing their definitions of feminist pedagogy; and 3) to encourage participants to begin to explore specific ways to implement feminist pedagogy in their classrooms and ways it may be useful to engineering education. The session is of interest to faculty who are interested in new pedagogical methods and/or increasing diversity in their classrooms. Together we will consider our current understanding of feminism and review scholarly distinctions between types of feminism. Then we will explore the tenets of feminist pedagogy and how it is implemented in the classroom. Finally, we discuss how engineering education can benefit from feminist pedagogy. Examples and resources was shared with participants to make the ideas more concrete.

Ways to learn and teach creativity and design in computing science

The role of design and creativity is well established in many disciplines in science, engineering and art. However, in computing science disciplines, specifically in the development of software systems and information technology, the computing educational community is struggling to include creativity and design in their teaching and research. Existing curriculum in computing science lacks the foundation necessary to systematically include these concepts in the learning experience. At Humboldt State University (HSU), the authors have initiated a NSF funded educational and research project to build an interdisciplinary community with interest, experience and knowledge in teaching and learning creativity and design. During the fall of 2006, fifteen faculty from thirteen disciplines at HSU began to explore a variety of activities to facilitate the teaching and learning of creativity and design from an interdisciplinary perspective. This paper briefly presents our design process and overview of a five week course for teaching creativity and design to undergraduate computer science students.

Workshop Classroom Border Crossings: Incorporating Feminist and Liberative Pedagogies in your CSET Classroom

Effective teachers use a variety of pedagogies to engage a wider diversity of students, providing a more equitable classroom. In this workshop, participants will explore the use of feminist and liberative pedagogies in CSET classrooms. These pedagogies are founded on the ideals of social justice and democracy. The workshop will include discussions of classroom management strategies, critiques and redesign of the engineering process, and assessment and evaluation of student learning. Participants will leave the workshop with a list of concrete ideas for implementing feminist and liberative pedagogies and an annotated bibliography of helpful references. This workshop continues the collaborative work of these authors, presented in a 2004 Special Session and a 2005 Paper Session at FIE conferences

Work in progress — Hydrogen Energy in Engineering Education (H 2 E 3 )

The Hydrogen Energy in Engineering Education project is aimed at meeting the need for a new generation of graduating engineers trained in hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. The goals of this project, funded by DOE, are to increase the awareness of hydrogen technologies through hands-on learning experiences in existing undergraduate engineering courses and summer internships with industry partners. The project deliverables will include both laboratory hardware that is appropriate for university engineering laboratory classes and associated curriculum.

Special session: Race and the idea of privilege in the engineering classroom

White privilege is an important concept when considering issues such as social justice, the internal “culture” of engineering education and systematic change in engineering education. However, it is not well understood by most engineering educators. This Special Session will help participants explore the idea of White Privilege within the context of engineering education. Through an interactive format, participants will learn some theory and develop some ideas for addressing White Privilege in engineering learning environments. The related idea of stereotype threat will also be discussed.

Final Technical Report: Hydrogen Energy in Engineering Education (H2E3)

Schatz Energy Research Centers Hydrogen Energy in Engineering Education curriculum development project delivered hydrogen energy and fuel cell learning experiences to over 1,000 undergraduate engineering students at five California universities, provided follow-on internships for students at a fuel cell company; and developed commercializable hydrogen teaching tools including a fuel cell test station and a fuel cell/electrolyzer experiment kit. Monitoring and evaluation tracked student learning and faculty and student opinions of the curriculum, showing that use of the curriculum did advance student comprehension of hydrogen fundamentals. The project web site (hydrogencurriculum.org) provides more information.

Work in progress — Retention and FIGS: Institutional versus engineering major efficacy

In an attempt to retain students, institutions have implemented programs focused on “the first year experience”. Many institutions link their first-year programs to specific disciplines, calling these programs freshmen interest groups or “FIGs.” In this research we explore the extent to which this FIG model, found in other research to be effective for improving general institutional retention, can be extended to improve major specific retention in Environmental Resources Engineering (ERE) at Humboldt State University. Analysis from institutional and departmental sources on three cohorts of freshmen ERE majors in FIG (n=29) and Non-FIG (n=15) groups, as well as other non-ERE FIGS groups indicates that ERE freshmen enrolled in FIGs continued to their sophomore year at HSU at the same average rate as students in other FIGs (76%) and at a significantly higher rate than all Non-FIG freshmen (72%). However, FIG participation did not affect retention in the engineering major itself. Our study suggests that the FIG model best addresses the instabilities of transition into college and that major retention in science and engineering is a more complex phenomenon that the current FIGs model does not address. Data for two additional cohorts of freshmen (n=65) will be added to this analysis and the combined results will be reported at the conference.

Designing a new learning environment in introductory engineering courses at Humboldt State University

Faculty in Humboldt State Universitys environmental resources engineering (ERE) program are revitalizing two introductory courses-- Introduction to environmental resources engineering and introduction to design, to improve the retention and recruitment of students into environmental engineering and environmental science programs. Assessment of student learning outcomes, with a focus on student attitudes, is an import aspect of this project. This paper will report on the current progress of the project and the assessment conducted to date.

Go with the flow: a design project to build community

This paper describes the implementation of a hydraulic flume project that integrates an academic club project with a senior engineering design course and an introductory level engineering design course. This flume project incorporates multiple educational objectives including the demonstration of engineering design principles, community education outreach, service learning and peer mentoring.