"You choose between TEAM A, good grades, and a girlfriend - you get to choose two!" - How a culture of exclusion is constructed and maintained in an engineering design competition team

Abstract

Engineering student design-build competition teams provide an opportunity for engineering students to practice engineering technical and professional skills. However, as the student quoted in the title states, the opportunity has conditions attached to inclusion and acceptance. Using a case study of TEAM A based on a qualitative-mixed methods design and a cultural constructionist lens, we identify and explain how a culture of exclusion is constructed and maintained in this competition team. Primary data consists of interviews and questionnaire with TEAM A members. Additional data includes competition rules, web sites, institutional and team artifacts. TEAM A's ethos of commitment drives a culture of exclusion and limits broad participation on the team. Core-committed members accrue the status and highest benefits available to TEAM A members. The demands of being core-committed, including an extraordinary time commitment usually precluding employment, social, and other academic activities, limit access to participation. Students who are unable to make these sacrifices are excluded from the advantages of TEAM A membership. No structural conditions were identified that mitigate this culture of exclusion. The lack of opportunity for participation may contribute to inequities that extend into students' professional lives after college. Introduction/Background A key component of undergraduate engineering education is the opportunity for hands-on experiential learning. Student, experiential learning, engineering competition teams (SELECT) provide an opportunity for engineering students to practice engineering technical and professional skills while engaged in competitive, design/build projects. Increasingly, SELECT are fore-fronted as the hallmark of engineering programs and are commonly featured in materials shared with prospective students and donors. Teams, especially successful ones, feature prominently in alumni newsletters, recruiting brochures, outreach and recruiting tours, and promotion of college activities. For example, when a SELECT member interviewed for this project was asked, “(D)o you believe your department, the College of Engineering and the university value SELECT,” the student responded Oh yeah, yeah. For sure, it makes ’em look good. The college always likes to throw out statistics, like, ‘Oh, we're number this or number that,' but even then it is just a way to attract students. It definitely attracted me. It worked. The number of students competing in SELECT has increased over the last 30 years from dozens to many thousands and these teams often garner significant resources from their colleges of engineering and external sponsors. However, in spite of efforts to increase participation of underrepresented populations (URP) in engineering programs, participation rates of URP students in many competition teams are exceptionally low, even when normalized for engineering enrollment. Tellingly, if one examines a sampling of materials featuring successful SELECT, the overwhelming preponderance of student images is white and male. The number and variety of undergraduate engineering student design competitions available a decade ago was documented by Wankat. 1 Numerous publications describe the advantages and disadvantages of SELECT from both faculty and student perspectives on cognitive skills, retention, social/group skills, and communication skills. 2-11 None, however, examine the role of SELECT in providing opportunities for diverse student participation in hands-on experiential learning. In the larger project, of which this study is a part, we seek to identify and explain what factors contribute to cultures of inclusion or exclusion among varied SELECT at our institution compared to corresponding SELECT at other institutions. This case study examines one engineering competition team’s organizational culture at our home institution.