University of Toledo to study how to increase diversity in engineering

A team of researchers was awarded a $123,859 two-year grant to study factors that affect African-American students’ success in engineering, which will start on Oct. 1.

The research team is made up of Lesley Berhan, associate professor in engineering and director of engineering diversity initiatives, Willie McKether, vice president for diversity, Revathy Kumar, education psychology professor, and Aaron Adams, assistant professor of engineering at Alabama A&M University.

“I wanted to form a collaboration of researchers in both education and anthropology to really study and uncover what I think are important factors to the success of students in engineering and specifically underrepresented students,” Berhan said.

When comparing the percentage of African Americans in the population to the percentage of African American engineers, the two do not go together, Kumar said. There is a serious gap that needs to be closed and, according to Berhan, this is an area that has gone relatively unstudied.

Alabama A&M is a historically black university, so by working with Adams, the researchers plan to compare different factors that affect students at the University of Toledo, which is predominately white, with a historically black university.

“Once the students come to college, are there things that we can do to ensure their success, and are there lessons to be learned from the HBCUs, especially where engineering is concerned?” Berhan said.

The factors being studied during this project are the role of student organizations, institutional support and attitudes of faculty and staff. The researchers want to learn if the factors are the same or different at each university and study what it takes to be successful at each type of institution.

“At a predominantly white institution such as ours, an organization such as National Society of Black Engineers is critical for their success because you have a network of peers in engineering, and you have a lot of the support mechanisms there,” Berhan said. “At a HBCU, the role might be quite different.”

By comparing the factors between UT and Alabama A&M, the team hopes to find differences that might impact retention and success of African American engineering students.

“Once we identify these factors, then we hope to be able to implement this knowledge in a concrete way,” Berhan said.

The awarded grant was timely because, just last year, the university began to become more active in diversity and inclusion. Berhan was recently hired as director of engineering diversity initiatives, and McKether is now vice president of diversity and inclusions, a position that did not previously exist. Kumar referred to the timing as serendipitous.

“The population is becoming increasingly diverse and, really, I think that employers have also seen the need for a more diverse workforce in engineering. When we have diversity, it’s not just about equity, but with diversity comes better products,” Berhan said. “You have diversity of thought when you have people with different backgrounds around the table.”

In order to figure out how to diversify the engineering workforce and help African American students succeed in engineering, the research team needed to be diverse as well. As Berhan put it, when everyone looks the same, everyone thinks the same.

“This is a good example of why diversity is needed,” Adams said. “Engineers have tried to solve this problem for a long time and haven’t, so we’re kind of getting some other expertise now and a diverse way of looking at the problem.”

Have a multidisciplinary team of researchers will be a strength to the study, according to McKether. By having a team made up of an anthropologist, an educational psychologist and engineers, each team member brings different expertise to the table, Berhan noted.

“Even when we are talking, the things that Lesley has said are very different from what I am going to say, and so we just bring these different perspectives and I’m very excited about that,” Kumar said.

The diversity of the researchers will also lead to greater disseminations of the results.

“The dissemination will be wider,” McKether said. “We will see it in engineering conferences and journals, education conferences and journals, and anthropology as well.”

UT isn’t the only college facing this problem, McKether said, but it is actually an issue that has been identified on a national level.

“This is research that we are interested in and we all feel passionate about,” Berhan said. “Sometimes you do research and you can’t really see the application or potential impact, so this is an opportunity for us to be involved in a project that has tangible, real-world, relatively immediate benefits.”

The impact of the insight the team hopes to gain will have a broader impact, said Berhan. It won’t just benefit UT, but it will benefit universities across the nation.