COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: We are thriving: Challenging negative discourse through voices of women in project teams

合作研究：我们正在蓬勃发展：通过项目团队中女性的声音挑战负面言论

• 批准号: 2015741
• 负责人: Richard Evans
• 金额: $ 11.8万
• 依托单位: Cornell University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-15 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2015741&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: COLLABORATIVE; RESEARCH; thriving; Challenging; negative

The goal of this research is to understand women who are thriving (i.e., developing and succeeding) in engineering student project teams and undergraduate engineering programs. Project teams are extra-curricular, student-led, engineering design teams. One important aspect of this research is that these thriving women are encouraged to speak for themselves, describe their own experiences, and tell their own stories. Another is the intentional focus on women who are doing well, feeling positive about themselves as engineers and about their professional futures. Currently, the number of women who pursue engineering degrees remains low, around 20%, despite over 40 years of research. Previous researchers have provided valuable frameworks to explain the low participation and retention of women, but these projects have focused on what may be wrong -- why women do not select engineering or why they decide to leave engineering. While important, this type of research may inadvertently encourage women to avoid engineering as it may propagate the message that they “do not belong”. This research adopts a novel approach to explore a new direction toward understanding women’s experiences in engineering and employs an asset-based approach in its attempt to identify what women find rewarding. Therefore, a fresh and quite possibly transformative understanding of women’s engagement in engineering is anticipated. The primary deliverable will be a perspective and specific actionable items that can be adopted by university engineering programs and engineering companies that will encourage greater participation of women in engineering, and also suggest how those programs and companies might create an environment in which women can thrive. The broader impacts of this research include (1) increasing gender equity in engineering; (2) engaging a diverse range of women participants; and (3) suggesting alternative pathways toward engineering degrees and careers in engineering. Each of these broader impacts will contribute to a long-term goal of changing the negative discourse regarding the persistence of the underrepresentation of women and minorities in engineering.This research asks and answers the research question: what are the personal and institutional factors that facilitate women who thrive in engineering student project teams? The research approach is to conduct a series of three semi-structured interviews with women project team leaders at Kansas State University, Cornell University, and University of Nevada Las Vegas. These partnering universities vary by location, size, type, and ability to attract and retain women in engineering. The interviews include their life history or how they understand their life-experiences in relation to engineering; learning journey or how their experiences in project teams has led them to identify as engineers; and PhotoVoice, an approach which places students behind a camera, such that they can document and explain those project team experiences to others and in their own terms. The aim is to learn about the positive experiences of these women, identified and explained by the women themselves, thereby enabling a better understanding and appreciation of those experiences. Additional interviews with women at other institutions, engineering leadership, and project team faculty advisers will inform the understanding of the roles project teams play in broadening engagement in engineering. These interview data, together with secondary, document-based contextual data, will be analyzed to identify positive engineering experiences and then will be used to create a theoretical framework for encouraging thriving. The research offers the prospect for a new, targeted and more positive focus regarding women’s participation in engineering. The results of this research will be included on a website created by an undergraduate student project team to maximize dissemination, long-term accessibility, and project sustainability.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.

这项研究的目的是了解工程学生项目团队和本科工程计划中蓬勃发展（即发展和成功）的女性。项目团队是课外，学生主导的工程设计团队。这项研究的一个重要方面是，鼓励这些蓬勃发展的女性为自己说话，描述自己的经历并讲述自己的故事。另一个是有意关注表现良好的女性，对自己作为工程师和专业未来感到积极的态度。目前，攻读工程学位的妇女人数在40年的研究中仍保持较低，约20％的目的地。以前的研究人员提供了有价值的框架来解释妇女的参与和保留率低，但是这些项目集中在可能的问题上 - 为什么妇女不选择工程学或为什么她决定离开工程学。尽管重要的是，这种类型的研究可能会无意中鼓励妇女避免工程学，因为它可能传播了她们“不属于”的信息。这项研究采用了一种新颖的方法来探索了解妇女在工程领域的经历和员工的新方向，并试图确定妇女发现有益的方法，以一种基于资产的方法。因此，预计将对妇女参与工程的参与有新鲜而可能的变革性理解。主要交付将是大学工程计划和工程公司可以采用的观点和特定可行的项目，这些项目将鼓励妇女更多地参与工程，并暗示这些计划和公司如何创造一个妇女可以繁衍生息的环境。这项研究的更广泛影响包括（1）工程学中的性别平等； （2）参与潜水员的女性参与者； （3）提出了工程学位和工程职业的替代途径。这些更广泛的影响将有助于改变有关妇女和少数群体在工程领域的持久性不足的负面话语的长期目标。这项研究问并回答了研究问题：哪些个人和机构因素是什么，这些因素有助于促进工程学生项目团队壮成长的妇女？该研究方法是与堪萨斯州立大学，康奈尔大学和内华达大学拉斯维加斯大学的女子项目团队领导者进行三项半结构化访谈。这些合作的大学因位置，规模，类型以及吸引和留住工程女性的能力而异。访谈包括他们的人生历史或他们如何了解与工程有关的生活经验；学习旅程或他们在项目团队中的经验如何使他们确定为工程师；和Photovoice，一种将学生置于相机后面的方法，以便他们可以用自己的方式记录和解释这些项目团队的经验。目的是了解这些女性的积极经历，并由妇女本身确定和解释，从而更好地理解和欣赏这些经历。与其他机构，工程领导力和项目团队教师顾问的其他妇女进行的其他访谈将告知人们对项目团队在扩大工程领域参与方面发挥的作用的理解。这些访谈数据以及基于文档的上下文数据将进行分析，以确定积极的工程经验，然后将用于创建一个理论框架以鼓励蓬勃发展。这项研究为妇女参与工程的新的，有针对性和更积极的关注提供了前景。这项研究的结果将包含在由本科生项目团队创建的网站上，以最大程度地提高传播，长期可访问性和项目可持续性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识分子的优点和更广泛的影响标准通过评估来诚实地支持支持。