Embracing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Our Classroom and Teaching

Abstract Recent events have brought to light the gravity of the challenges that our society faces today relative to systemic racism and its impact on equity and access in our society. Marginalized groups face daily micro-aggressions and bias due to the impacts of systemic racism. Recently, the NAE hosted their annual meeting and included a keynote speaker, Dr. John Slaughter, who has committed his life's work to dismantling racism specifically in engineering education. Dr. Slaughter called the organization and members to recognize the challenges that systemic racism poses for the engineering field and to take action in changing the way our students are educated. Dr. Slaughter pointed out that without an inclusive engineering workforce, we are missing viable and important solutions to engineering problems. As engineering leadership educators, our obligation to our students extends beyond transmission of technical knowledge. We have a responsibility to infuse our curriculum with knowledge of systemic racism, how bias can impact our solutions, and how engineers can lead and create teams that foster belonging and inclusivity. The fabric of our society has become fragile and is breaking apart, rapidly. We must help engineering leadership students develop a growth mindset and discover the sophistication of mind to celebrate diversity, equity, and inclusion in their daily lives, school, and workplace. This requires us to consider inclusive leadership as a foundational approach to engineering leadership development. Inclusive leadership has been shown to positively impact team performance, decision-making, collaboration, innovation, and motivation. Inclusive leaders celebrate differences and recognize and challenge attacks on DEI. As engineering leadership educators, we must lead by example, model inclusive leadership behavior, and have courage to infuse these concepts into our curriculum. This paper assembles the collective thoughts, perspectives, insights, and experiences of a distinguished panel of educators and scholars on embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the classroom and teaching practices. The panel brings together people from multiple universities, different stages of their career, with interests in various areas related to DEI. It includes John Slaughter who has devoted his life to combatting racism, to scholars whose research is dedicated to teaching about DEI and creating a work environment that values DEI, and educators who have found creative ways to incorporate DEI in their instruction of engineering courses. The panel and this paper will have recommendations on why it is important to welcome DEI in our workplace and in our classrooms, how to embrace DEI in designing and delivering our courses, and teaching strategies to celebrate and support DEI as we prepare students for the workforce.