Advances in Engineering Education - VOLUME 9 ISSUE 4 - Looking Ahead: Student’s Perceptions of Diversity Before and After A Diversity Workshop

Oct 15, 2026

The study examines how engineering students’ perceptions of diversity change before and after a hands-on workshop focused on inclusion. It addresses underrepresentation in engineering workforce and education, noting disparities by race/ethnicity, gender, and LGBTQ+ status, and the negative effects of low diversity on creativity and productivity. Using a 50-minute workshop delivered to incoming first-year students and pre/post surveying by randomized groups, results are framed around student perspectives rather than training-centered delivery.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryExam

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time20 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Engineering workforce and education underrepresentation

Methods

Workshop design and delivery

Student activities for self-reflection

Survey approach

| | Ad | vances in Engineering Edu | cation | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 2021: VOLUME 9 ISSUE 4 Looking Ahead: Student’s Perceptions of Diversity Before and After A Diversity Workshop LUIZA NOTINI MATTHEW R. NAGORZANSKI AND MICHELLE M. SCHERER Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of Iowa, Iowa City IA, 52242, United States Key words: Inclusivity, Race/Ethnicity, Sexual orientation INTRODUCTION The U. S. engineering workforce is not representative of the country’s diverse population. While Blacks and Hispanics account for 13. 4% and 18. 5% nationwide, they represent only 5% and 7% in the engineering workforce, respectively. The engineering workforce is also underrepresented in gender, with just 14% of engineers identifying as female compared to 50. 8% in the general population (US Census Bureau 2019; Funk and Parker 2018) . LGBTQ+ populations are also underrepresented in STEM (Cech 2015) . The lack of diversity in engineering has been shown to hamper both creativity and productivity (McLeod, Lobel, and Cox 1996; Ely, Padavic, and Thomas 2012; Alesina, Harnoss, and Rapoport 2016; Trenor et al. 2008; Roberge and van Dick 2010) . Lack of diversity in engineering starts long before students enter the job market and can be seen numerically in engineering education. Despite numerical increase in enrollment, minorities and women remain significantly underrepresented in engineering in undergraduate and graduate higher education (Anderson et al. 2018; de Brey et al. 2019) . With low representation, populations of minorities, female-identified students, and members of the LGBTQ+ community are more likely to drop out and not graduate with a degree in engineering (Hausmann, Schofield, and Woods 2007; de Brey et al. 2019; Trenshaw et al. 2013) . As the U. S. population shows increasing racial and ethnic diversity (Craig, Rucker, and Richeson 2018), it is imperative that we take steps as engineering educators to create a more inclusive engineering education environment. Several colleges in the U. S. have introduced diversity initiatives 2021: VOLUME 9 ISSUE 4 1 ADVANCES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION Looking Ahead: Student’s Perceptions of Diversity Before and After A Diversity Workshop such as faculty/staff diversity training (O’Leary et al. 2020), diversity-focused workshops (Rheinganset al. 2018), and even mentoring programs to women and underrepresented racial and ethnic groups (Young 2018; Ikuma et al. 2019) . At the University of Iowa, the College of Engineering recently established the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Council, and with their support, we aim to learn about first-year engineering students’ perceptions of diversity. To this end, we developed a hands-on workshop to facilitate conversation about diversity and learn how the students perceive diversity. While other institutions have also adopted diversity training for first-year engineering students, our pilot study is novel because it frames the conversation about diversity from the student’s perspective rather than from the perspective of training, which has been shown to be ineffective (Naff and Kellough 2003; Chang et al. 2019; Dobbin and Kalev 2018) . This education-based conversational approach is novel in that it leads to the inclusion, in addition to race and gender, of other dimensions of diversity that are rarely included in diversity training, including, but not limited to, sexual orientation, non-binary gender identity, age, political views, and religious beliefs. METHODS The fifty minute workshop ‘Celebrating Diversity in Engineering’ was created and delivered by Luiza Notini and Matthew Nagorzanski as part of a teaching as research project for the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) at the University of Iowa. The workshop was offered four times, to groups of ~ 130 students. Participants included a total of 514 inco

FAQs

What disparities in engineering does the article highlight?

It notes that Blacks and Hispanics, women, and LGBTQ+ populations are underrepresented in the engineering workforce and in undergraduate and graduate engineering education.

How was the diversity workshop designed and delivered?

A 50-minute workshop titled “Celebrating Diversity in Engineering” was created as a teaching-as-research project and delivered by the authors to multiple groups of incoming first-year engineering students.

What activities did students complete during the workshop?

Students participated in self-reflection activities including “How Diverse is My Universe” and the “Iceberg of Identity,” which guided them to consider visible and invisible aspects of identity.

Oct 15, 2026

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