Addressing Negative Racial and Gendered Experiences That Discourage Academic Careers in Engineering

Abstract

Engineering faculty members play a multifaceted role in the profession in that they help discover, promote, and disseminate advancements in technology, and they engage in capacity-building by training a future workforce of engineers. However, many potential faculty members are dissuaded from academia. A study of Black engineering PhD students and postdoctoral scholars investigates their career decision-making processes concerning the professoriate. The racial and gendered experiences of these students and scholars have impacted their desires and choices to pursue an academic career. Programmatic innovation is needed within graduate mentoring programs to address racial, gender, and other identity-based biases within engineering and academia, in addition to traditional content that focuses on presentation skills, networking, and other professional development areas. A new approach develops a mentoring curriculum that raises racial and gender consciousness by utilizing the expertise of scholars from various social science disciplines.

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