Research Seminar Series: Show Up and Disrupt: Challenging Cultures of Oppression in Engineering Education

This seminar is co-sponsored by the OSU Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Zoom link: https://osu.zoom.us/j/6626152439

Guest Speaker: 

Donna Riley

School of Engineering Education

Purdue University

Abstract:

Building on decades of work developing support networks and organizations for, by and with women and minorities in engineering, an action-research project sought to employ social movement strategies to deepen and broaden our collective analysis of oppression and injustice in engineering education, to focus our analysis on addressing root causes, and to build power through acts of intersectional solidarity as allies, advocates and accomplices. Working in partnership with social justice organizations both within and outside of engineering, a group of organizers comprising students, faculty, administrators, and staff put together a campaign that built toward and beyond a week of action held February 23-29, 2020.

We were curious what would happen if promising approaches from social movements were directed toward creating radical change in engineering education. We sought to deepen ongoing conversations around power, privilege, and critical perspectives on diversity, equity, and inclusion. We wanted to invite community members to engage in actions that disrupt the status quo, dismantling systems of power and privilege, and rethinking how engineering education and logics of oppression are mutually constituted. We wondered what it might mean - and if it is possible - to work toward anti-racist, decolonizing, feminist, queer, and crip forms of engineering education.

This talk will review organizing theories employed, networks engaged, and details of our practices and activities engaged before, during, and since the week of action. The audience will be invited to engage in dialogue reflecting on lessons gleaned regarding both process and outcomes, as well as brainstorming next steps.

Speaker Bio: 

Donna Riley is Kamyar Haghighi Head of the School of Engineering Education and Professor of Engineering Education at Purdue University. Dr. Riley joined Purdue in 2017 from Virginia Tech, where she was Professor and Interim Head in the Department of Engineering Education. From 2013-2015 she served as Program Director for Engineering Education at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Riley spent thirteen years as a founding faculty member of the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College, the first engineering program at a U.S. women’s college. In 2005 she received a NSF CAREER award on implementing and assessing pedagogies of liberation in engineering classrooms. Riley is the author of two books, Engineering and Social Justice and Engineering Thermodynamics and 21st Century Energy Problems, both published by Morgan and Claypool. She is the recipient of the 2016 Alfred N. Goldsmith Award from the IEEE Professional Communications Society, the 2012 Sterling Olmsted Award from ASEE, the 2010 Educator of the Year award from the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals (NOGLSTP), and the 2006 Benjamin Dasher Award from Frontiers in Education. Riley earned a B.S.E. in chemical engineering from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in Engineering and Public Policy. She is a fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education.