Engineering an Educational Transformation Based on Analogies with Chemical Reaction and Flow Processes1

This white paper presents a new approach, based on parallels with chemical kinetics, that addresses in part the well-known, long-term challenges of attracting, supporting, retaining, and graduating traditionally underrepresented students in engineering colleges and programs. A model based on chemical reactions and flow processes is proposed as a possible means to achieve efficiencies premised on reaching a parity objective and which underscores the need for ownership of the processes by engineering institutions. Institutional ownership of the processes and their accountability for the outcomes will likely lead to diversifying engineering workforces at levels yet to be reached nationally. The model assists in the decomposition of challenges facing higher education (and particularly engineering education) into elemental steps and calls for adapting control strategies as best practices. It underscores the challenges associated with the points of transition from the upstream to the downstream parts of the flow process, where the ownership of the input may be widely distributed, and calls for participation of entities other than the individual engineering institutions who own the various contributions of the process. The model also brings to the fore issues that cannot be accurately captured with simple quantification, such as inclusion, and how those issues may be viewed in the present framework. It further suggests the possibility of alternative ways and platforms that will enrich and enhance traditional university-based educational approaches. 1 A version of this paper was first presented at the ASEE Annual Meeting, Columbus, OH (June 26, 2017). 2 Corresponding author, yortsos@usc.edu. The Pipeline Model: A Useful Analogy with Flow and Reaction Processes The persistent lack of diversity in engineering and technology is well known. The reasons for such persistence are varied and numerous and have been amply described in the literature. But increasing the diversity in the engineering workforce is a profoundly identified need [1], [2]. As in many related such challenges, robust, impactful and lasting changes must recognize the pipeline character of the problem, and the characteristic times and time horizons involved. The following schematic provides a model of a traditional engineering education in terms of a generic “flow diagram” Figure 1: A schematic description of the engineering “pipeline” in terms of a flow process consisting of interconnected control volumes. The overall process consists of individual “control volumes”, denoted in Figure 1 as Pre-college (“P-12”), Community Colleges (“CC”), Undergraduate Programs (“UG”), Graduate Programs (“G”), the “Engineering Workforce”, and Faculty (“F”). The directional arrows in the figure indicate the flow of graduates, with yellow arrows indicating successful transition to higher education and/or the engineering workforce, and with gray arrows indicating flows to non-engineering destinations, as a result of retention losses, change of major, and/or dropping out. Valves denote college admissions controls to the various programs. While the flow process shown does not explicitly capture additional “pathways” or “watersheds” and other ecosystems, these can be encompassed readily using the same logic. The corresponding education is taking place within each of the control volumes: We can view this process as a sequence of “chemical reactors”, following the analogy depicted in the two Figures below. First, we note that education at all levels (whether at P-12 or university levels and whether for engineering or other subjects) can be viewed as a process that augments an individual’s state of knowledge, mindset and skillset [3-4]. We will borrow a chemical reaction formalism to schematically depict this transformation as a “chemical reaction”