Letter from the President
Strategic Doing at the Midpoint
Which ASEE activities should continue, and which should be expanded?
Following a March 1 retreat, the Board of Directors will seek members’ views on a list of Society objectives.
By Nicholas J. Altiero
It is hard to believe that I am now at the halfway point of my ASEE presidency. It has been a very busy, and I believe very productive, year for ASEE, and I have very much enjoyed working with the Board of Directors, Executive Director Norman Fortenberry, the ASEE staff, and the many highly engaged ASEE members who contribute so much to our organization’s success. I would like to take this opportunity to give you a midyear report on our Strategic Doing process and to outline the planned course of action in this regard leading up to the ASEE Annual Meeting in Seattle in June 2015.
As I reported in the September 2014 edition of Prism, the Strategic Doing process is intended to bring further clarity to the mission, objectives, and measures of success of our organization and to focus us on what we can and must do together. On November 1, 2014, the Executive Committee of the ASEE Board and the chair of the ASEE Long Range Planning Commitee, joined by senior ASEE staff, met in a full-day retreat to begin that process. Guided by a survey of a small but diverse group of ASEE leaders and active members, the focus of that retreat was on what our organization could do in accordance with our mission. At the end of the day, a questionnaire was prepared that was sent to a much larger list of ASEE leaders, including board members, committee chairs, and division chairs, seeking their input. Data from that survey are currently being compiled and will guide the next step in the process: identifying what we should continue to do and perhaps adding to our list of Society objectives.
The questionnaire that was sent out following the first Strategic Doing retreat focused on two critical questions: What are the activities on which ASEE should focus, and, within these areas of strategic focus, what are the characteristics of success? To frame the responses, four broad areas of strategic focus were suggested. These are: (1) educating engineers through undergraduate education; (2) educating engineering researchers; (3) educating engineers throughout their careers (lifelong education); and (4) expanding the engineering education pipeline. Additionally, a number of characteristics of success that span these areas were identified, and respondents were asked to rate their relative importance and identify effective metrics. These included promoting diversity, promoting effective public policy, advancing research, engaging industry, engaging societal challenges, promoting engineering education, translating research into practice, leading the future and shaping the agenda, and engaging global partners.
The next Strategic Doing retreat is scheduled for March 1, 2015, the day following the semiannual meeting of the ASEE Board of Directors. The plan is to have Strategic Doing on the agenda of the meeting of the full board in advance of the retreat to bring all board members up to date and to seek their additional input. Following the March 1 retreat, we will be reaching out to the entire ASEE membership to solidify the list of things that we collectively believe we should be doing as the leading organization in the world on engineering education. And we will then begin focusing on the most important questions of all, what we will continue to do, where we will expand what we are doing, and how we can best invest in these important objectives in order to ensure success in everything we undertake.
We will want to hear from you. In my September 2014 letter in Prism, I referred to the “collective wisdom” of our organization, and I remain convinced that that is our biggest strength. No other organization in the world can boast of a membership so focused on, and expert in, the subject of engineering education. When we reach out to all of you in March, please be prepared to let us know what we can do to make certain that our Strategic Doing is in line with and supportive of the objectives and the strengths of our membership. In the meantime, please feel free to express your views to the chairs of your divisions, to your representatives on the Board of Directors, or to me directly. My email address is altiero@tulane.edu, and I promise full consideration of your input. I am looking forward to hearing from you and looking forward to seeing you in Seattle!
Nicholas J. Altiero is president of ASEE.
Year of Action on Diversity
Habitat for Humanity
Our graduates must be prepared for a diverse workplace where others may not share the same “universal truths.”
By Lorie Groll, Teri Reed, and Monica Cox
Two fish are swimming in a pond one morning when they encounter a frog heading in the opposite direction. “Good morning,” the frog says. “How’s the water?” The flummoxed fish have no idea how to respond. They have no idea what “water” is.
Introducing this parable in a 2005 commencement address, novelist David Foster Wallace cautioned graduates that “the most obvious, important realities are the hardest to see and talk about.” Indeed, when we are surrounded by people who think alike and share the same “universal truths,” it is difficult to see that these are only universal within our own local cultures. Like fish, we are blind to our assumptions about reality. Often, the only way we can see the “water” (culture) is to step outside of it.
That’s no easy task. Humans have a hard time discussing culture – or even agreeing on its definition. Ethnologists A. L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, for instance, identified at least 162 different definitions, each influenced by the cultural milieu in which it is discussed. Just as a right-handed person rarely notes his or her advantage over the left-handed person, people who grow up in society’s dominant culture rarely need to question their own “obvious, important realities” or the position of privilege they represent.
This is not the case for those from marginalized cultures. In her keynote address at the College Board’s 2014 national conference, consultant Noma LeMoine used a more dramatic fish-and-water analogy to discuss the experience of African-American and Latino students in the U.S. education system. Likening them to saltwater fish put in a fresh-water pond, she described the bloating and uncomfortable death that ensues. Students from marginalized cultural backgrounds are told that the way they speak, dress, and walk is not only different, it is inferior, LeMoine explained. To stay afloat, these students must learn a new set of cultural rules. And they are left on their own to figure out how to navigate in this new sink-or-swim environment. To add another level of complexity, these students often must identify ways to align their university and home cultures upon returning from campus.
Educators notice that many underrepresented minority students are struggling to thrive at some universities and want to remedy the situation. But as LeMoine noted, they often begin by asking what is wrong with the students. Is it a saltwater fish’s problem that it cannot function in a freshwater habitat? LeMoine asks educators to consider ways to reshape the paradigm of education to accommodate the new cultural landscape. To expand on her analogy, we need to figure out how to help our students thrive in “brackish” environments.
Not so long ago, policymakers and engineering leaders highlighted ways to educate the “engineer of 2020.” With less than five years left to align engineering programs with the National Academy of Engineering’s recommendations, we cannot ignore the reality that in today’s multinational technical workforce, our graduates will need to work with people who may not share the same “universal truths.” Demonstrating technical proficiency is not sufficient. In order to be effective, the next generation of engineers must be able to reflect on their culture and question their values as they lead and work with others who will have values, assumptions, and realities very different from their own. They will need to be able to recognize and describe the water around them, and understand that there are multiple ways to experience the place they call home.
Lorie Groll is a postdoctoral research associate in engineering workforce development at Texas A&M, where Teri Reed is assistant vice chancellor for engineering. Monica Cox is an associate professor in Purdue University’s School of Engineering Education and director of its Pedagogical Evaluation Library.