Track 4: Center for Equity in Engineering: Organizational Transformation for Graduate Education

轨道 4：工程公平中心：研究生教育的组织转型

• 批准号: 2217640
• 负责人: Julia Ross
• 金额: $ 120万
• 依托单位: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-08-15 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2217640&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Track; Center; Equity; Engineering; Organizational; Track; Center; Equity; Engineering; Organizational

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).University-level administrators, College-level personnel, academic departments, graduate programs, and individual advisors all play important roles in graduate engineering education, but integrating those different influencers to achieve an overarching, coordinated goal is quite challenging. This project will establish a Center for Equity in Engineering focused on organizational transformation for graduate education at Virginia Tech (VT). Establishing such a center is important because the highly decentralized nature of graduate education in engineering makes integrated reform strategies extremely challenging and fosters inequities throughout the system. Importantly, the Center will reframe broadening participation such that the focus is on changing systems to promote student success rather than trying to “fix” graduate students. We will focus on organizing, aligning, and integrating many interconnected systems and processes within the system of graduate education (e.g., recruitment, admissions, funding, research, professional development) to promote student success and wellbeing and disrupt systems of oppression across these systems. Aligned with the vision for an ideal STEM graduate education system set forth by the National Academies and the objectives of the National Science Foundation's Broadening Participation in Engineering program, we envision a more equitable and inclusive graduate engineering education where student experiences and outcomes are not predicted by demographic variables or citizenship. Instead, this Center will work toward facilitating an environment where every graduate student will be provided with opportunities to develop their technical and professional skills, establish their identities as professional engineers, and be included and engaged in the community. This Center will provide a model for other institutions to support a more equitable graduate education enterprise within colleges of engineering.By meaningfully addressing continual calls for systemic, structural, and sustainable change within graduate education, this Center will make significant intellectual contributions in advancing understanding of how to enact organizational transformation to promote equity in graduate engineering education. Grounded in a collective impact framework and an action research design, this project will be organized around four pillars: 1) revamping policies, 2) aligning structures, 3) shifting culture, and 4) transforming practice. Through coordinated efforts, the Center will reorient existing decentralized structures, resource flows, and decision processes and foster both bottom-up and top-down change processes. The Center is designed in a way that integrates existing organizational structures, builds infrastructure so that activities in progress can become better coordinated and impactful, includes a variety of mechanisms to ensure successful engagement of stakeholders throughout the organization (i.e., administrators, faculty, and students), and ensures multiple, regular opportunities for critical feedback and evaluation. The Center leadership team includes every VT College of Engineering administrative position associated with graduate education as well as scholars and leaders in broadening participation and graduate education. Using an Action Research lens, we will document successes and failures, resulting in complementary insights and robust findings that will advance understanding of what promotes and impedes transformative change. This Center will include efforts that span two VT campuses: a well-established campus in Blacksburg, VA and the new Innovation Campus in Alexandria, VA, which exclusively focuses on graduate engineering education and aspires to produce the most diverse cohorts of graduates in the nation. This design will enable insights on how to pursue organizational change in two distinct contexts: one with existing inertia and one that is void of historical baggage. In addition to a dissemination strategy that includes a variety of different formats to reach a range of audience needs, the Center will engage multiple working groups of graduate students and faculty who will hopefully become more equity-minded, which also will broaden the impacts of this Center as ideas from their engagement are built into their future work and interactions with colleagues and graduate students.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.

该奖项是根据2021年《美国救援计划法》的全部或部分资助（公法117-2）。宇宙级的管理人员，大学级人员，学术部门，学术部门，研究生课程和个人顾问都在研究生工程教育中发挥重要作用，但在这些不同的影响者中兼顾了这些不同的影响者，以弥补这些不同的影响者，以实现跨越的目标，是相当挑战的。该项目将建立一个专注于弗吉尼亚理工学院研究生教育组织转型的工程股权中心。建立这样的中心很重要，因为工程研究生教育的高度分散的性质使整合的改革策略极为挑战，并且在整个系统中培养了不平等。重要的是，该中心将反映出扩大的参与，以便重点是改变系统以促进学生成功，而不是试图“修复”研究生。我们将专注于在研究生教育系统（例如招聘，招生，资金，研究，专业发展）中组织，结盟和整合许多相互联系的系统和流程，以促进学生的成功以及福祉和破坏这些系统的意见系统。与国家科学基金会扩大参与工程计划的理想STEM研究生教育系统的愿景与理想的STEM研究生教育系统相符，我们设想了一种更公平，更具包容性的研究生工程教育，在该教育中，学生的经验和成果不会由人口统计学变量或公民身份预测。取而代之的是，该中心将致力于支持一个环境，在该环境中，每个研究生都将获得发展其技术和专业技能，建立自己作为专业工程师的身份，并被包括并参与社区的机会。该中心将为其他机构提供一个模型，以支持工程学院内更公平的研究生教育企业。通过有意义地解决研究生教育中系统性，结构性和可持续变化的连续性呼吁，该中心将在促进对如何促进组织转型以促进研究生工程教育中的公平性方面做出重大智力贡献。该项目以集体影响框架和行动研究设计为基础，将在四个支柱周围组织：1）修改政策，2）对齐结构，3）转移文化，以及4）改造实践。通过协调的努力，该中心将重新定向现有的分散结构，资源流和决策过程，并促进自下而上和自上而下的变更过程。该中心以整合现有的组织结构，建立基础设施的方式进行设计，以便在进行的活动中可以更好地协调和影响力，其中包括多种机制，以确保在整个组织（即管理员，教职员工和学生）中成功地参与利益相关者，并确保对重大反馈和评估的定期机会。中心领导团队包括与研究生教育以及学者和领导者扩大参与和研究生教育相关的每个VT工程行政职位。使用动作研究镜头，我们将记录成功和失败，从而产生完整的见解和强大的发现，这些发现将进一步了解促进和阻碍变革性变革的原因。该中心将包括跨越两个VT校园的努力：弗吉尼亚州布莱克斯堡的一个成熟的校园和弗吉尼亚州亚历山大市的新创新校园，该校园仅专注于研究生工程教育，并渴望在全国范围内生产最多的毕业生。这种设计将使如何在两种不同的情况下进行组织变革的见解：一种具有现有惯性的情况，一种没有历史行李。除了包括各种不同格式以满足受众需求的传播策略外，该中心还将与多个工作组和教职员工互动，他们希望变得更有意义，这也将扩大该中心的影响，因为他们参与的想法从他们的互动中构成了他们的互动，并通过对知识的授权进行了支持，并以此为基础。和更广泛的影响审查标准。