Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are often framed as neutral and unbiased, even when they directly contribute to societal inequities such as unequal access to opportunities and health disparities. Persistent and growing social inequities connected to STEM practices, including engineering, demonstrate the need for current and future practitioners to center societal impact. Equity-focused STEM curricula can be important in this transformation. The culture of disengagement is a theoretical framework that explains the culture in which engineering practices are performed and upheld by the pillars of depoliticization, technical/social dualism, and meritocracy. We studied new course activities in two undergraduate engineering courses meant to counter the culture of disengagement to understand how students responded to engaging with racial inequities in two technical engineering courses. We used qualitative content analysis and reflexive thematic analysis to analyze our data. In both courses, students worked with data that demonstrated how systemic racism interacts with the practice of engineering; in Hydrology students performed calculations that revealed structural inequities; in Non-Point-Source Pollution, students read articles and interpreted figures. In both courses, no students claimed that race was irrelevant or inappropriate to discuss. Some students identified that inequities existed along racial/ethnic demographic lines and some also identified that racial/ethnic demographics were relevant in considering the engineering situation being studied. Our results demonstrate that using quantitative data that demonstrates structural inequities can be a pathway to bring vital topics like racism into technical engineering courses, and our discussion provides recommendations for instructors. Key implications of our findings include (1) small changes can be ways for instructors to begin to introduce topics such as systemic racism, and (2) engaging with topics such as racism in STEM is important both because of the content and because the change may help create a more diverse workforce that helps address equity issues more effectively.
Casper et al. (Mon,) studied this question.