Engineering Societies’ Activities in Promoting Diversity and Inclusion

As part of its ongoing project on the Engagement of Engineering Societies in Undergraduate Engineering Education, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) held a workshop to explore the role of engineering societies in promoting diversity and inclusion in the engineering profession. The workshop took place on June 4 at the University of Cincinnati.

The workshop examined societies’ programs and activities, provided an opportunity for them to share promising practices, and investigated possible collaborative actions. A key feature of the workshop was a report on the preliminary findings of an NSF-sponsored project examining and documenting diversity and inclusion issues facing members of engineering societies and other STEM professional organizations. Building on those findings, participants shared information about their programs/activities and discussed promising practices for efforts by engineering societies to support diversity and inclusion. The Proceedings-in Brief summarizing the discussions is available online at https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25323/.

The workshop is one of a series of meetings on topics prioritized at a national NAE workshop in 2017. The other meetings considered the design of a joint societies’ student competition focused on the Grand Challenges for Engineering, the role of societies in defining “impact” on the engineering profession as a criterion for assessing faculty success, and how engineering societies can help better align academia and industry. For more information, please contact Ken Jarboe, Senior Program Officer, at KJarboe@nae.edu.