Broadening participation in the engineering professoriate: Influences on Allen's journey in developing professorial intentions

Abstract

Abstract Background Given the significant roles that faculty play, it is important to understand how and why engineering graduate students choose faculty careers over other professional opportunities. Yet little is known about this decision‐making process, particularly for students of color. Purpose This article offers a rich, empirically grounded account of the development of one graduate student's professorial intentions as a launch‐point from which to explore how to broaden participation in the professoriate among underrepresented students of color in engineering. Method Narrative data were analyzed chronologically and thematically to investigate the influences that help explain Allen's professorial intentions. This study foregrounds Allen's meaning‐making pertaining to how his educational experiences and various identities shaped his evolving understandings of the professoriate and of his suitability for a faculty career. Results Allen's journey describes a trajectory from disinterest to interest in the professoriate through his evolving understandings of the academy and the professoriate, the development of a faculty prototype and its role in his thinking about faculty norms and roles, and finally, envisioning himself in the professoriate. Conclusions The underrepresentation of historically marginalized individuals among engineering faculty will remain a problem until more knowledge is gained about why students choose to pursue the engineering professoriate. Future studies that follow this line of inquiry by focusing on smaller numbers of participants may similarly identify key experiences and factors that promote interest in or turn students away from faculty careers.

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