Engineering Students’ Experiences of Socially-mediated Exclusion and Inclusion: Role of Actors and Discourses

Abstract Background – In the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the underrepresentation of female students and racialized minorities is consistently pronounced in its undergraduate enrolment. The department is placed within an engineering school that has been actively implementing equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) strategies, from high school outreach to undergraduate research, extracurricular events, peer mentorship and unconscious bias training for hiring committees. A larger study on the design learning in our program has led to a smaller study of EDI-related student experiences and perspectives from both the dominant and minority groups in Mechanical Engineering. Purpose/Hypothesis – This paper aims to help enhance institutional EDI efforts by identifying the role of adults and peers in the engineering students' experiences of exclusion and inclusion. Three questions are posed: (1) What pre-university experiences create barriers to pursuing engineering? (2) What helped youth pursue and enter engineering programs? (3) What motivates the current engineering students to stay or leave their program? Design/Method – Thematic analysis and rhetorical analysis were applied to the student interview data collected in 2018, as part of a larger study on engineering design education in our Department of Mechanical Engineering (2015-2019). Questions directly regarding EDI were incorporated into the semi-structured, in-depth interview design in 2018, as a result of the preliminary findings in previous years. Four male and three female undergraduate students in Mechanical Engineering participated in the individual, audio-recorded, 90-120 minute interviews in 2018. Results – Engineering students of both dominant and underrepresented identities experienced different forms of exclusion before university. Students who successfully entered engineering programs had key adult figures who provided the emotional support and information resources needed in order to uptake, and see oneself as able to succeed in, the opportunities that lead to an engineering degree and career. During university, the role of peers' behaviour, perception, and discourses became pronounced factors in either a sense of belonging or push out effect. Conclusions – We recommend that the strategies toward an inclusive culture include: (1) Staff and faculty skills to actively enhance the collective social capital network for all students; (2) Shaping a plural and diverse dominant images of engineers by their recognition in the curriculum and discourses; and (3) Behavioural approach to diversity, in developing expectations and skills to establish mutual respect among peers.