Measuring Underrepresented Student Perceptions of Inclusion within Engineering Departments and Universities

摘要

Despite efforts made by the engineering community, the struggle to increase racial and ethnic diversity continues. As women and ethnic minorities make up a larger percentage of the United States labor force, academic departments need to support the development of students from these talent pools. To improve the retention of these students, engineering departments need to be inclusive, allowing students to feel welcomed, valued, respected, and supported. The overall purpose of this study was to develop and pilot a survey instrument, grounded in Tinto's Model of Institutional Departure, to provide engineering educators and administrators with a tool that can be used to investigate how underrepresented engineering students rate the level of inclusion within engineering departments, paying close attention to gender and race/ ethnicity. Herein we specifically report on the instrument development and the initial findings through data collected from two public, predominately White research institutions with high undergraduate engineering student enrollment. Our results demonstrate that the Engineering Department Inclusion Level (EDIL) survey can yield valid and reliable scores with the population of interest. Before embarking on further data collection to continue developing the survey, we wanted to determine what value the survey might have. Results indicate no differences between men and women from underrepresented populations but that African-Americans rated the same environments less inclusive than other racial/ ethnic groups across all of the scales. Finally, PhD students scored University Pride lower than participants at other academic levels. Moreover, based on initial data results, we suggest further research on feelings of inclusion as an important aspect to creating a diverse environment.