Workshop Motivation and Goals
This workshop is designed to help you think through the process of considering how topics of anti-racism, diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice play into the broader field of engineering and eventually your research. The workshop presents relevant background and communities guidelines, breakout rooms, and case studies to create a space for respectful discussion and learning independent of experience with this topic. Within this website we have put together all of the resources described above so that you can work through as you think about how to:
- Define related terms and connections between anti-racism, diversity, equity, inclusion, and research justice.
- Explain how research and technologies in STEM impact marginalized communities through case studies on various research areas.
- Analyze the impacts of your own research on marginalized communities and actions you could take to move toward research justice.
The workshop outcomes are as follows:
- Use connections made about the connection between research and DEI during the workshop to make changes to daily research practices that help move toward research justice.
- Continue engaging in conversations about these topics to deepen your understanding of and engagement with them, using this workshop as a launching point.
Workshop History and Success
We originally created and hosted this for the graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, staff, and faculty in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE) at Northwestern University in the summer of 2020. The workshop was a great success! Development of the workshop spawned the creation of the NU ChBE Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ARDEI) Committee, and the workshop has since become an annual part of the NU ChBE Department Retreat. Participants consistently report that the workshop left them feeling more prepared to engage in research justice going forward and with a desire for more DEI related discussions and events in the future. We published a paper for the 2023 ASEE Annual Conference that details the workshop development, implementation, and impact. If interested, please see our paper, “Designing and implementing a workshop on the intersection between social justice and engineering” (link to ASEE page with paper). This paper was subsequently awarded Best DEI Paper at the conference, and we hosted the workshop through ASEE’s CDEI workshop series in November, 2023. We also wrote an Op-Ed for ASEE’s CDEI blog, “Contextualizing your Research Workshop: An Approachable First-Step in Considering Research Through a DEI Lens” about our experiences running the workshop and changes we’ve made over the years since publishing the paper. Given the workshop’s success and benefits, we wanted to make these resources available for the larger community. Thus, we created this website to provide free access to the workshop materials to anyone interested.
Workshop Usage
We would love for you to host the workshop at your institution or place of work and/or use the case studies as instructional materials, such as in courses. If you do so, please credit us as the content creators. Thank you!
Workshop Publication Citations
K. Chintam*, A. N. Prybutok*, W. Brenneis, J.M. Chan, J.D. Green, R. Li, M. Olsen, S.L. Ramesh, C.E. Ramirez, D.R. Vemulapalli, J. Cole. (June, 2023). Designing and implementing a workshop in the intersection between social justice and engineering. 130th ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. *co-first authorship. Best DEI Paper Winner. Retrieved from https://nemo.asee.org/public/conferences/327/papers/37870/view
Chintam*, J. Cole*, M. Olsen*, & A. Prybutok*. (December 11, 2023). Contextualizing your Research Workshop: An Approachable First-Step in Considering Research Through a DEI Lens. American Society for Engineering Education Commission on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Guest Blog. *co-authorship. Retrieved from: https://diversity.asee.org/deicommittee/2023/12/11/contextualizing-your-researchworkshop/
Workshop Access and Website Navigation
You can use this website to complete the workshop on your own by navigating to the Workshop tab. We welcome folks to complete this workshop either alone or with a group of peers. We also welcome others to host the workshop at their own institutions.
If you’d like to learn more about us, the workshop creators, please navigate to the Workshop Creators tab! Our contact information is available if you have any questions or would like to collaborate.
Finally, if you’d like to learn more about other ARDEI initiatives being done in ChBE at Northwestern University by the other members of the ARDEI Committee, please navigate to the ARDEI in ChBE at Northwestern tab!