Incorporating Cultural Humility in Graduate Engineering Education: Insights from focus groups and seminars

Addressing pressing global engineering challenges requires graduating students develop essential professional skills for effective collaboration across diverse and interdisciplinary teams. These skills include recognizing the multifaceted nature of engineering solutions in global contexts and engaging within a multicultural workforce. Insufficient cultural awareness can often lead to students facing difficulty in interacting with their peers, faculty, industry professionals, and clients, which could affect their overall professional growth and well-being. Managing intercultural exchange relies on 'Cultural Humility' which includes embracing diverse ideas and a commitment to lifelong learning. This work presents the findings on integrating discussions of cultural humility into graduate engineering education through focus groups and seminars. The focus group, involving culturally diverse graduate students in civil engineering, explored the impact of lived experiences and cultural differences on student-student and student-faculty interactions. The findings indicate the importance of providing diverse examples and case studies in the classroom and fostering peer mentorship amongst students from varied cultural backgrounds to promote cultural humility. Participants reported an increased sense of belonging, feeling more at ease asking questions about biases without fear of judgment. Insights from the focus group were incorporated into a work-in-progress seminar for incoming graduate students aiming to explore the intersection of cultural humility and engineering education and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. The poster presentation will share findings from the seminar. Ultimately, the interplay between cultural humility and engineering is vital for navigating challenges and fostering innovative solutions aligned with the needs and values of the global community.