Graduate Specialization in Engineering Education

How do engineering students' understandings of their profession evolve as they complete their studies? How can we develop engineering students' critical understandings of technology and society? We are working collaboratively with researchers from York University, Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Waterloo to study the development of engineering students' thinking about the relationship between technology and society as they move through their degree programs. We use the Tech Stewardship Practice Program as a site to study students' developing understandings of the technology-society relationship and of their identities as engineers.

What are the experiences of engineering outreach facilitators and how does their work contribute to development of their STEM identities? How do their actions, dialogue and decisions lead to the success of these programs? In partnership with WISE Kid-Netic Energy, we are using qualitative interviews and observations to understand the impacts of working as an outreach facilitator in settings across Manitoba, with particular focus on how it relates to facilitators' ideas about what "counts" in STEM and their own sense of belonging within STEM. 

Are Canadian access programs making space for Indigenous students in STEM post-secondary education? We work in partnership with Indigenous students to better understand their experiences being enrolled in an engineering post-secondary access program and their perspectives of engineering education and culture. This is being done to explicitly bring Indigenous ways of knowing and being into post-secondary education, to improve and diversify learning environments, and increase Indigenous attraction, retention and representation.

What does it mean to incorporate Indigenous land-based pedagogies in engineering education? We work in partnership with Indigenous land-based educators at the University of Manitoba and beyond to explore how Indigenous land-based pedagogies live within(in) colonial university institutions and structures. This is being done to dream ways forward for bringing land-based learning into engineering curricula.

What do students and faculty need to learn before they can appreciate Indigenous knowledges and worldviews and critically consider how these knowledges relate to engineering? We explore how incorporating Indigenous Knowledges in engineering education may require students to cross ontological and epistemological thresholds. This is being done to help prepare instructors and students for learning from and with Indigenous Elders, Knowledge Keepers, educators and leaders, and to decolonize engineering education.

What are the emerging topics, issues and methodologies in engineering education research? We explore the journeys, motivations, barriers, challenges and supports of students and faculty in, or entering, this field. Our current work in this area includes employing collaborative autoethnography to study how we, as interdisciplinary early-career faculty members in EER, cultivate a sense of belonging within the field.