Building Trust, Experiential Learning, and the Importance of Sovereignty: Capacity Building in Pre-Engineering Education - a Tribal College Perspective

American Indians are among the most under-represented groups in the engineering profession in the United States. With increasing interest in diversity, educators and engineers seek to understand why. Often overlooked is simply asking enrolled tribal members of prime college age, "Why don't more American Indians become engineers?" and "What would it take to attract more?" In this study, we asked these questions and invited commentary about what is needed to gain more engineers from the perspectives of enrolled tribal members from South Dakota, with some of the most poverty-stricken reservations in the nation. Overall, results indicated that the effects of poverty and the resulting survival mentality among American Indians divert attention from what are understood to be privileged pursuits such as engineering education. The study's findings indicated American Indian interviewees perceived the need for consistent attention to the following issues: 1) amelioration of poverty; 2) better understanding of what engineering is and its tribal relevancy; 3) exposure to engineering with an American Indian cultural emphasis in K-12 schools; 4) presence of role-model engineers in their daily lives; 5) encouragement and support from their peers, families, teachers, Elders, and tribal governments to value science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, particularly engineering fields; and (6) the embedded perceptions of math as a barrier to engineering studies.

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“…) Despite (Boyer, n.d., ca. 2012 andKant et al, 2014a and2014b;Sawyer et al, 2014;Tinant et al, 2014).…”

Section: South Dakota Set Apartmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Don’t More American Indians Become Engineers in South Dakota?

Kant

Thunder

Burckhard

et al. 2015

IJESJP

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“…) Despite a reputation for extreme poverty, there are many places of hope (Boyer, n.d., ca. 2012 andKant et al, 2014a and2014b;Sawyer et al, 2014;Tinant et al, 2014).…”

Section: South Dakota Set Apartmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Don’t More American Indians Become Engineers in South Dakota?

Kant¹,

Thunder²,

Burckhard³

et al. 2015

IJESJP

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American Indians are among the most under-represented groups in the engineering profession in the United States. With increasing interest in diversity, educators and engineers seek to understand why. Often overlooked is simply asking enrolled tribal members of prime college age, “Why don’t more American Indians become engineers?” and “What would it take to attract more?” In this study, we asked these questions and invited commentary about what is needed to gain more engineers from the perspectives of enrolled tribal members from South Dakota, with some of the most poverty-stricken reservations in the nation. Overall, results indicated that the effects of poverty and the resulting survival mentality among American Indians divert attention from what are understood to be privileged pursuits such as engineering education. The study’s findings indicated American Indian interviewees perceived the need for consistent attention to the following issues: 1) amelioration of poverty; 2) better understanding of what engineering is and its tribal relevancy; 3) exposure to engineering with an American Indian cultural emphasis in K-12 schools; 4) presence of role-model engineers in their daily lives; 5) encouragement and support from their peers, families, teachers, Elders, and tribal governments to value science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, particularly engineering fields; and (6) the embedded perceptions of math as a barrier to engineering studies.

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“…Articles about the OSSPEEC summer camp experience from the perspective of partner collaborating schools include Sawyer et al 6 and Tinant et al 7 , in this same proceedings. While those two articles and the current article only concern the summer camp aspect of OSSPEEC, other descriptions of OSSPEEC are available in the following articles: Fick et al [8][9][10] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increasing Diversity in Engineering: Capacity Building Matters

Kant

Burckhard

Kilts

et al. 2014

2014 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference: Engineering Something More

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In an effort to prepare more Native American engineers, counting the numbers who complete the educational task is important. More often overlooked, however, is that capacity building is another key measure of success, since reaching critical mass to obtain the numbers may take considerable time. In this paper, the co-authors are both the researchers and the research subjects. We are four engineers and/or scientists with advanced degrees with key roles in a multiyear collaborative pre-engineering education initiative between a tribally controlled college and two mainline universities. From our perspectives at one of those two mainline universities, we each wrote an essay reflecting on pre-determined questions. We briefly present our qualifications and then assess capacity building related to the summer camp experiential learning aspect of the initiative. We qualitatively analyze the essays and present persistent themes, along with consensus and divergent opinions. Four common themes dominated the essays including the importance of: (1) using experiential learning pedagogy, (2) building lasting relationships and networking, (3) including cross-disciplinary connectivity, and (4) taking advantage of positive but unintended consequences. We provide a recommended bibliography for faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduate student interns to provide a shared base of knowledge to improve collaborative cohesion.

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Building Trust, Experiential Learning, and the Importance of Sovereignty: Capacity Building in Pre-Engineering Education - a Tribal College Perspective

Cited by 7 publications

References 18 publications

Why Don’t More American Indians Become Engineers in South Dakota?

Why Don’t More American Indians Become Engineers in South Dakota?

Why Don’t More American Indians Become Engineers in South Dakota?

Increasing Diversity in Engineering: Capacity Building Matters

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