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The Center for Infrastructure Transformation and Education (CIT-E) is a community of faculty members who share a passion for infrastructure education. Their goal is to transform the way civil and environmental engineering (CEE) topics are taught. In 2021, the co-authors of this poster received an NSF IUSE grant to build the capacity of a faculty community of practice (CoP), positioning it to transform the approach to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) in CEE education. By incorporating DEIJ into their teaching, research, and service commitments, CEE faculty members can be the catalysts responsible for transitioning our nation's inequitable infrastructure into equitable infrastructure. This poster highlights three key assessment objectives, including a review of the literature on re-contextualizing infrastructure education, a SWOT analysis, and team science professional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities with a multicultural workforce positively impact the quality of services in professional development, mentorship, leadership, administration, advising, and the classroom learning environment. These valuable campus elements contribute to crafting students' learning outcomes and growth. The initial work of this paper will explore and synthesize research literature through critical consciousness lenses to continue illuminating the voices spoken by women of Color and making visible their challenges as faculty members. We present transformative, multidimensional, and participatory action research (PAR) approaches for academic institutions to incorporate, encourage, support, and expand women of Color faculty. PAR seeks collaboratively to comprehend social issues and action to bring about social change. Overall, we identify and summarize existing findings from previous research literature in which articles were selected relevant to women of Color challenges and PAR. The significance of this study is to contribute to building multicultural career sustainability with Women of Color in the construction and engineering education profession to bolster the empowerment and strengthen to increase the number of women of Color members, from students to professionals alike. The infancy stage of work will outline the next steps in future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emphasizing socio-political context in undergraduate engineering courses is a complex challenge for accredited American engineering programs as they strive to pivot towards a more equitable future. Teaching engineering problem solving by isolating the technical perspective is the dominant culture, and change has been slow and insufficient. Looking at the complex human circumstances in which engineered systems are situated has significant, and sometimes life saving, benefits. On the contrary, the common de-contextualized approach to teaching engineering has been shown to have significant impacts on how students behave as future engineers. Furthermore, eurocentric teaching practices have been documented as a contributor to the lack of gender and ethinic diversity in engineering. Re-contextualizing civil engineering courses has shown to increase students' motivation, sense of social responsibility, and agency. The ASCE Code of Ethics states that "Engineers ... first and foremost, protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public," a notion that was first added to the code in 1977. In recent years, some civil and environmental engineering (CEE) faculty members and programs have responded to this ethical imperative by re-contextualizing civil engineering education in relation to the communities ("the public") the civil engineer is ethically obligated to protect and serve. To determine the extent of these efforts to re-introduce socio-technical context in CEE curricula, we are conducting a systematic review of the published literature. The objectives of this research are to document, synthesize, and amplify the work of these scholars and to encourage the community of CEE faculty to re-contextualize the knowledge and skills taught in the CEE curriculum. This paper describes the methodology, including search terms and sources examined, reports the preliminary results of the review, and synthesizes the preliminary findings. Future work will propose strategies and structures that could be adapted and employed by civil engineering faculty throughout the U.S. to 1) engage and retain students from groups that historically have been excluded from CEE and 2) better educate CEE students to engineer a more equitable and just future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the differences in student perceptions of academic discipline belonging (ADB) and peer interactions (PI) for students from different citizenship backgrounds and who are also majoring in Civil Engineering and Building Construction programs. A quantitative, causal-comparative study (n = 397) was conducted using the Postsecondary Student Engagement (PosSE) Survey. The survey included participants from sophomore to senior levels. Analysis of the survey data includes two-way ANOVAs. ANOVA results indicated that student citizenship status is a significant factor for ADB and PI. Further, results indicated that permanent residents had significantly more positive perceptions of academic discipline belonging and peer interactions than other groups, while naturalized citizens had significantly lower perceptions. The significance of this study lays on it being one of the few quantitative studies focusing on civil engineering and building construction students' affective engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing successful study abroad programs challenges many higher education institutions. One particular aspect is the development of strong partnerships with institutions hosting the students. This paper provides a discussion of some of the main challenges and lessons learned from a successful partnership between two international universities that have created a study abroad program focusing on sustainable building practices with the aim to prepare students for global sustainability challenges. The program incorporates lectures, guest speakers, field trips, students' presentations, as well as individual and group activities. Also, students have a 2-nightstay with local families and participate in a service-learning project, all of which impact student thinking, cultural awareness, and social connectivity. Having these multiple learning activities posed challenges in the organization and execution of the program. However, students have developed critical skills to communicate with others from different backgrounds. The significance of this paper is to provide lessons learned to help others better understand the challenges of developing a successful partnership among international universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of effective strategies in preventing work accidents in the construction industry is an important topic not only for the industry sector but also for higher education programs. The current literature supports the view that training is a major factor in sustaining and improving safety performance. Particularly, learning is an important dimension of training. Traditional students, due to their youth and inexperience, often believe that they are invincible and that accidents will not happen to them. Construction Management and Civil Engineering programs are faced with the challenge of raising awareness among students about the frequency and severity of construction accidents and increasing their knowledge regarding social responsibility towards safety. In order to raise awareness about construction accidents, student enrolled in a Construction Safety Management course completed two case studies exercises. The first one was an in-class case studies group activity and the second an individual case study report including a presentation. For the in-class case studies group activity, the students were divided into four groups (6 students per group). Each group was required to review four case studies and they were instructed to discuss the physical and psychological effects of the accident on the injured, their family and coworkers. At the end of the activity, the instructor facilitated a general discussion in which the last group that had each case study commented on the answers provided by the whole class. The individual case study assignment examines students' personal experiences with construction related accidents. Students were asked to write a case study of a construction accident that they had experienced or witnessed. Students were also given the choice to interview somebody that had either experienced or witnessed a construction accident. The objective of the assignment was to increase awareness about the magnitude and frequency of accidents among people that they personally know who are involved in construction (co-workers, professors, family members, etc.). The assignment consisted of two parts: a written report and an oral presentation in the class. The interview and written report allowed the students to have in-depth knowledge about at least one construction accident that had involved somebody that the students personally know. After both the group and individual case studies were completed, the students were asked to complete a survey about their perceptions of the assignment's effectiveness in increasing their knowledge of social responsibility towards safety. The results of the survey indicate that students perceived that the second case study was more effective increasing their knowledge regarding social responsibility towards safety. The personal connection in the individual case study is essential for students to understand that accidents can happen to anyone. Also, having to present the results of these cases studies to the class provides more opportunities to students to reflect about the incident or accident. Particularly, students reflect during their oral presentation about incident/accident impact and how it could have been prevented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When attempting to teach the project control cycle, the importance of 'evaluate' is difficult to convey to students yet is critical to students' academic and professional success. This paper represents a qualitative case study conducted with freshman construction management students to convey the importance of evaluating project performance -- regardless if the project was a success or not. According to the course textbook, the hardest step of the project control cycle to implement is the last step of document, report and evaluate. Of these, the evaluation portion is even more difficult for a team to accomplish. In order to instill in students early in their degree program the importance of evaluation both to their academic and professional success, an assignment was developed and implemented with students enrolled in an introductory construction management course. Participation in this assignment was optional. Out of 110 students enrolled in the course, 52 completed the optional assignment. Thematic analysis was conducted on a sample of the students' papers. The preliminary results provide insight into students' evaluation of their success during their first semester, which is a critical semester in students' college careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]