Background

Building upon the ASEE Year of Impact on Racial Equity (2021-2022), This year’s focus will be a Year of Transformative Equity to highlight and support actions towards dismantling systemic barriers, cultivating an environment that upholds dignity, honor, and respect for all individuals within the engineering education community.  We aim to achieve procedural and outcome fairness through innovative and strategic interventions that address both visible and underlying inequities.

Three Focus Areas

Our plan for this year is focused on making organizational change with engineering and engineering technology student organizations, colleges of engineering and engineering technology, ASEE constituent groups, and organizers of pre-college outreach efforts.

1. • Partnering for Higher Education Student Success: Strengthen pathways for students who come from backgrounds historically marginalized in engineering through direct support and systemic change initiatives
   • Shaping Equitable Academic Cultures: Revise and reform institutional cultures and policies to foster an inclusive, respectful, and fair academic environment
   • Collaborative Strategies in Pre-College Education: Enhance pre-college education frameworks to promote equity, preparing a diverse array of students for success in higher education and beyond.

Expected outcomes

This Year of Impact will also be different from the prior Year of Action on Diversity because of its focus on institutionalizing efforts. Participating organization will be asked to set up structures (via policies and programmatic changes) that are self-sustaining and embrace continuous improvement. In this way, the work will become a sustained movement instead of a year that then returns back to “normal”.

The expected outcomes for this year include:

1. 1. Increased participation and comfort among Black and brown K-12 children in pre-college engineering activities which communicate that an engineering career is an option for everyone;
   2. Empowered engineering and engineering technology student organizations to make engineering education more inclusive; and
   3. Actionable organizational policies and effective practices implemented in Colleges of Engineering that disrupt the status quo regarding who gets to participate in engineering education as a student and as a faculty member.

Call to Essential Action

The essential actions are integrated throughout the various committees within the commission. Please volunteer your time and skills to help the Year of Transformative Equity by emailing asee.includes@gmail.com or stay informed by joining our mailing list (add link here).

If you sign-up, you can be involved in a myriad of ways, but we especially need help with:

1. 1. Policy review and reformulation sessions
   2. Joint programming and events
   3. Shared resources & networks
   4. Mentorship