ASEE 2024 Paper—Examining Cultural Elements to Enable Change

Marnie Jamieson; John R. Donald

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: Special Session: Engineering Leadership—The Courage to Change
Tagged Division: Engineering Leadership Development Division (LEAD)
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/46599

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Paper Authors

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Marnie Jamieson University of Alberta orcid.org/0000-0002-9065-5347

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Marnie V. Jamieson, M. Sc., P.Eng. is a Teaching Professor in Chemical Process Design in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Alberta and holds an M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering Education and a PhD in Chemical Engineering. She is currently the William and Elizabeth Magee Chair in Chemical Engineering Design. She leads the process design teaching team. Her current research focuses on engineering design and leadership, engineering culture, the engineering graduate attributes and their intersection with sustainability, learning culture, diversity, equity and inclusion, and continuous course and program improvement.

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John R. Donald P.Eng. University of Guelph

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John R. Donald is a professor at the University of Guelph with over 25 years of leadership experience in post-secondary education and engineering consulting. John is a past president (2017–18) and fellow (2020) of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA-ACÉG), and founder of the Guelph Engineering Leadership Program. His current research focuses on engineering leadership and development of professional skills in the engineering design curriculum.

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Abstract

The future of engineering education requires engineering faculty, schools and programs to enact change in the curriculum to respond to the complex challenges in our world today and to recognize the socio-enviro-technical nature of engineering practice. Engineering leadership education is premised on the principle that developing strong leadership competencies is essential to effectively and appropriately enable the contextual application of the traditional technical competencies that are often the primary focus of undergraduate engineering programs. In our 2023 paper entitled Engineering Leadership: Bridging the Culture Gap in Engineering Education [1] we argued that a major barrier to change in engineering education, including the incorporation of engineering leadership into the curriculum, is the culture that exists in our institutions. We proposed that the elements and dynamics of this culture can be examined in the form of co-contraries (or opposites that need each other) and that the relative emphasis in these co-contraries reflects the engineering educational culture in a department, an institution or in engineering education as a whole. Example cultural co-contraries identified include: the power distance dynamic between the student and the professor; the nature of the distribution of effort between teaching and research; and the tension between technical and non-technical content emphasis and delivery. In this paper we aim to look more deeply at cultural constructs associated with engineering education through a targeted literature review and integrative analysis of engineering education culture, the engineering culture of professional practice, the general theoretical constructs of culture and cultural dimensions in societal and organizational contexts with the explicit purpose of developing a foundational understanding of the cultural co-contraries observed and discussed in our 2023 paper. This foundational understanding can then be used to build a model for characterizing engineering education culture and evaluating positive cultural change and resistance to change in engineering education. We believe that capturing and understanding the cultural constructs associated with engineering practice and engineering education will not only be helpful in effecting change in engineering education, it will also support the need for engineering leadership and followership education to be explicitly taught as core concepts at both the undergraduate and graduate level to support the requisite systemic changes in engineering practice and education to address the complex socio-enviro-technical challenges that engineering must address. The paper supports LEAD division priorities of “Inform” and “Explore”.

Citation
Format

Jamieson, M., & Donald, J. R. (2024, June), ASEE 2024 Paper—Examining Cultural Elements to Enable Change Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/46599

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - The future of engineering education requires engineering faculty, schools and programs to enact change in the curriculum to respond to the complex challenges in our world today and to recognize the socio-enviro-technical nature of engineering practice. Engineering leadership education is premised on the principle that developing strong leadership competencies is essential to effectively and appropriately enable the contextual application of the traditional technical competencies that are often the primary focus of undergraduate engineering programs.  In our 2023 paper entitled Engineering Leadership: Bridging the Culture Gap in Engineering Education [1] we argued that a major barrier to change in engineering education, including the incorporation of engineering leadership into the curriculum, is the culture that exists in our institutions. We proposed that the elements and dynamics of this culture can be examined in the form of co-contraries (or opposites that need each other) and that the relative emphasis in these co-contraries reflects the engineering educational culture in a department, an institution or in engineering education as a whole. Example cultural co-contraries identified include: the power distance dynamic between the student and the professor; the nature of the distribution of effort between teaching and research; and the tension between technical and non-technical content emphasis and delivery. 
In this paper we aim to look more deeply at cultural constructs associated with engineering education through a targeted literature review and integrative analysis of engineering education culture, the engineering culture of professional practice, the general theoretical constructs of culture and cultural dimensions in societal and organizational contexts with the explicit purpose of developing a foundational understanding of the cultural co-contraries observed and discussed in our 2023 paper. This foundational understanding can then be used to build a model for characterizing engineering education culture and evaluating positive cultural change and resistance to change in engineering education. We believe that capturing and understanding the cultural constructs associated with engineering practice and engineering education will not only be helpful in effecting change in engineering education, it will also support the need for engineering leadership and followership education to be explicitly taught as core concepts at both the undergraduate and graduate level to support the requisite systemic changes in engineering practice and education to address the complex socio-enviro-technical challenges that engineering must address.
 The paper supports  LEAD division priorities of “Inform” and “Explore”.

AU  - Marnie Jamieson
AU  - John R. Donald P.Eng.
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - ASEE 2024 Paper—Examining Cultural Elements to Enable Change
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/46599
ER  -