Collective agency, collective change

Engineering education is a relatively new discipline with many initiatives improving the quality of education students receive nationwide. Broadening participation is one such initiative, particularly important in expanding access and preparing Virginia Tech's engineers and computer scientists to enter today’s diverse global workforce.

Creating change can be a challenge, however, especially for faculty members from underrepresented groups who face unique barriers themselves.

“We, the field of engineering, say we want to improve our educational policies and practices, but not everyone has the same opportunity to contribute to that project,” said Walter Lee, associate professor in the Department of Engineering Education, part of the College of Engineering.

“In response to the field of engineering education growing, our research team wants to better understand the experience of our faculty peers. In doing so, we plan to strengthen the community of scholars, clarifying spaces where we can better support each other as we each work to improve engineering at large,” Lee said.

With a $1.2 million multi-university grant from the National Science Foundation, Lee, alongside scholars Jeremi London and Monique Ross, will study specific challenges Black discipline-based education researchers face. The qualitative study will occur in three phases over the course of three years, addressing two common barriers for faculty of color in STEM: isolation and scholarly devaluation. 

“By isolation, we’re basically talking about the demographic reality. It’s not uncommon for Black faculty to be ‘the only one’ in a department and/or one of a few in an entire college,” Lee said. “Some Black faculty are more fortunate, but that simply isn’t the reality for most of us. The general landscape of engineering lends itself to isolation, just by the numbers.”

The demographic reality

In 2021, 64.2 percent of faculty engineers were white and 6.8 percent were Black or African American. While educators are trying to increase representation and foster inclusivity, Black discipline-based education researchers must still operate within the current framework before it’s improved.

Ross said, “Collaboration is critical because as stated, a lot of us are ‘lone wolf’ scholars and we are trying to combat that isolation. In order to do that, we have to collaborate across institutions. There are not enough of us at any one institution to do it any other way.”

For 25 years, Wayne Scales, the J. Byron Maupin Professor of Engineering, who started at Virginia Tech in 1992, was the only Black faculty member in electrical and computer engineering. He has dedicated his career, in part, to improving educational opportunities, resources, and practices for minorities in STEM, most recently in the area of quantum engineering.

“There is a critical need for mentoring and developing Black faculty in research and academic leadership,” Scales said. “The work that Walter is doing is very important to try to understand and provide strategies for people to learn from those that have survived and succeeded for long periods of time in this isolated environment, although it’s like putting a Band-Aid on cancer, in some regards. Even though it’s 2024, if you come into a university as a Black faculty member, you’re often going to go in as the only person in your department. You’re facing unique barriers including isolation, which makes opportunities for mentorship, success, and emotional health in academia difficult.”

Although the demographics of Virginia Tech’s Department of Engineering Education are more diverse than other departments as it relates to faculty, most discipline-based education researchers in the U.S. are housed in a more traditional engineering department, such as computer science or mechanical engineering. Ross said because of the structure of the College of Engineering, the team is team is positioned well for this project.

“Dr. Lee is in an engineering education department; me, in an engineering education department and computer science department; Dr. London, in an administrative role and mechanical engineering department, giving us diverse perspectives and expertise to lean on and leverage. Also, considering we have collectively been affiliated with six different institutions, we have a broader network to begin to develop the connections critical to charting the landscape of Black discipline-based education research faculty,” said Ross. “As individual scholars, we have knowledge of the system and how it operates, but it is siloed and thus not as powerful. As a coalition or a collective, we have a combined wisdom and insight to help us as outsiders to our respective discipline — as education research scholars — and as Black people to flourish in the academy and in some cases influence the structure.”

Barriers to entry, barriers to stay

The second issue Lee, London, and Ross will evaluate is scholarly devaluation, a term referring to the biases and barriers that make it harder for marginalized faculty, such as women and faculty of color, to be seen as “legitimate” scholars with something worth contributing to the fields of engineering and computer science. This phenomenon negatively impacts Black faculty across the country, with epistemic oppression presenting in a myriad of overt and covert ways.  

Lee said, “Both who you are and what type of work you do can make it harder to find appropriate reviewers for journal articles, get research proposals funded, and be promoted for tenure. Sometimes there’s outright backlash, and other times people simply don’t understand what you’re doing or talking about. A lot of our work conflicts with the historical value systems and power structure of higher education.”

Scales added, “We need to keep the bigger picture in mind, which is why do Black faculty have to deal with these types of difficult circumstances when they come into higher education and, even if they’re very talented, they often don't get tenure. We need to get to the cancer, which is the power dynamics within higher education. Academia was originally developed by and for white males who were the single breadwinners in the family. That culture continues to exist to a great degree, and until we're in a position where we can break that power infrastructure so that the upper rungs of leadership at institutions look more like the actual population, we’re going to continue to have these problems. People of color need to hold more positions with decision-making power and resources before there can be any type of real institutional transformation.” 

Creating institutional change is important for both faculty and students. Ross pointed out that there is a wealth of literature that speaks to the necessity for people to see themselves in their projected occupations.

“You can’t be what you can’t see,” Ross said. “If students don’t see themselves in faculty roles in the academy, they are less inclined to strive beyond the boundary of an undergraduate degree in computing or engineering. And if we wish to broaden representation in the academy, we need these young scholars in training to be able to see themselves as faculty members. It’s a bit of a chicken and the egg problem. It also serves non-Black engineering and computer science students to see Black faculty mentors as well, as it helps to dismantle their conceptions of who can and should be an engineer or computer scientist. Broadening representation really serves all.”

Bolstering collective agency

The first phase of Lee and researchers’ qualitative study will document and analyze the geographic distribution of Black discipline-based education researchers, as there has yet to be a formal census or organized way to locate who is doing what work where. The next phase will include interviews — cross generational, with late-, mid-, and early-career Black discipline-based education researchers, asking questions about their workplace challenges, tactics they have found successful in their areas of study, and more. The final phase will involve scaffolding collaborations across institutions, similar to work that is ongoing at Virginia Tech focused on institutions.

Scales said, “One of the other things that’s critical to develop is equitable, sustainable partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities [HBCUs] and minority-serving institutions, which are known to be underfunded and under supported although producing a large fraction of Black STEM graduates. That takes money and resources. Part of my work with Drs. Trey Waller and Bev Watford in CEED [Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity] and Dr. Erica Cooper in the Office for Inclusion and Diversity, is to develop these crucial partnerships. Thirty to 40 percent of Black STEM graduates come out of HBCUs, so how can a predominantly white school solve the problem without partnering with those institutions? It's important to understand that there’s no way that predominantly white institutions like Virginia Tech can solve these problems alone.”

A similar philosophy guides this project. By the end of the study, Lee and researchers hope to identify shared experiences among individual Black discipline-based education researchers to then leverage the power of community and foster collective agency.

“A lot of times, even if universities, journals, or funding agencies want to make a change they don’t know how. Or aren’t paying attention to the ways they’re actually making that change harder to realize. In learning about the broader experience of Black discipline-based education researchers, rather than just relying on the perspectives of a few, we will have a more unified voice,” Lee said.

He added, “In leveraging the power of the group, the likelihood of what we want to see changed as a community actually changing will be higher. It’s about individual agency, but also collective agency. There is power in unity."