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The purpose of this paper is to explore and encapsulate the enablers that can facilitate agility in faculty members of engineering institutions. The paper also aims to conduct a prelim qualitative validation of the enablers and analyze the interplay between them using the total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) approach.

The study adopted the TISM approach to comprehend the interactions and transitivity between the enablers. Cross-impact multiplication matrix (MICMAC) analysis was applied to rank the enablers and classify them on the basis of the driving and dependence power into dependent, autonomous, independent and linkage enablers.

Extensive literature review and expert opinion helped identify 16 enablers that can promote workforce agility. The results indicate “management support” as the most crucial enabler. Rewards and recognition and employee empowerment were among the other enablers that have a high driving force. New capabilities, learning and innovation and the expanding role of faculty members were found to have high dependence power, which makes the enablers dependent on other enablers for activation.

The results of this study would assist the management of engineering colleges and universities to design, adopt and implement policies and practices that would facilitate agility in faculty members. Faculty members shoulder the responsibility of molding the future generation, and hence, it is important that they are competent enough to impart quality education. The policymakers should focus on policies and practices that leverage human resource potential and support an innovative climate that nurtures entrepreneurial activities in engineering institutions.

So far research on workforce agility has predominantly focused on the manufacturing sector. Despite the workforce (refers to faculty members here) being crucial in contributing to the progress of universities and colleges, very little work is done on how faculty members can be made agile. Application of the TISM method in identifying the variables that can facilitate faculty members' agility in engineering institutions in India is a new and original contribution to the literature on workforce agility.

Black Male faculty are severely underrepresented in public universities (Harper, 2010; Li & Koedel, 2017), especially in the department of engineering where they frequently have no representation at all (Nelson et al., 2010). The problem is often attributed (especially by employers) to a pipeline issue, suggesting a lack of a recruitment pool of Black male faculty. However, it is increasingly recognized that turnover and attrition may play a critical role in contributing to the lack of Black engineering faculty (Whittaker et al., 2015). This chapter reports results from a larger national survey of 1,161 engineering faculty at research intensive institutions, of which only 14 identified as Black males (further evidencing underrepresentation). We focus on the responses from the latter group, through a qualitative analysis of their responses to inquiries concerning barriers in their institution for tenure, research, funding, and teaching; diversity concerns; and sentiments regarding their job satisfaction and consideration for employment resignation. Issues identified by participants included feelings of isolation, exclusion and even discrimination at their workplace. Based on these concerns, we suggest talent centered education leadership (TCEL) as a guiding framework to help higher education employers improve the equity and inclusivity of their workspace by creating a more engaging environment for their Black male faculty. TCEL is a recently introduced inclusive talent management framework (Tran, 2022; Tran & Smith, 2020) that emphasizes humanizing the education workplace. Essential to that humanization is creating and maintaining a work environment where all employees feel a sense of belonging.

The purpose of this paper is to establish greater understanding of changes in gender diversity at the undergraduate, graduate and faculty levels for a small engineering discipline, materials science and engineering (MSE), and how it may be related to different cultures across the variety of engineering disciplines.

The paper assesses publicly available data on the demographics of US MSE programs to explore expectations of correlation between increased gender diversity at the graduate level and among faculty versus undergraduate gender diversity.

The number and percentage of women increased substantially in graduate programs and within faculties whereas the percentage of women receiving bachelor's of science degrees in engineering (BSE) in MSE, and nearly all other engineering disciplines, was significantly lower in 2009 than in 2000. Diversity advances at graduate, postdoctoral and faculty levels in the interdisciplinary field of MSE, and likely other relatively young engineering disciplines, have been achieved via a continuous migration of individuals from other science and engineering disciplines as well as from international science and engineering programs.

The paper does not explore cause‐and‐effect, but rather provides a case study of trends occurring within a specific discipline. When evidence for a “leaky pipeline” is found within one generalized context (i.e. engineering), the assumption has been that every discipline (i.e. MSE, biomedical engineering) within that context has leaky pipelines that must be fixed. Given the present data, such assumptions may be inappropriate and perpetuate an understanding of how to improve gender diversity that is not helpful and, in fact, may be harmful to achieving diversity.

The paper provides an assessment of gender diversity for a smaller discipline and explores applicability of conventional pipeline models for career progression.

Unlike many other quantitative characteristics used to determine higher education rankings, opinion-based peer assessment scores and the factors that may influence them are not well understood. Using peer scores of US colleges of engineering as reported annually in US News and World Report (USNews) rankings, the purpose of this paper is to provide some insights into peer assessments by statistically identifying factors that influence them.

With highly detailed data, a random parameters linear regression is estimated to statistically identify the factors determining a college of engineering’s average USNews peer assessment score.

The findings show that a wide variety of college- and university-specific attributes influence average peer impressions of a university’s college of engineering including the size of the faculty, the quality of admitted students and the quality of the faculty measured by their citation data and other factors.

The paper demonstrates that average peer assessment scores can be readily and accurately predicted with observable data on the college of engineering and the university as a whole. In addition, the individual parameter estimates from the statistical modeling in this paper provide insights as to how specific college and university attributes can help guide policies to improve an individual college’s average peer assessment scores and its overall ranking.

Integrating sustainability into an undergraduate engineering program at the University of Technology, Sydney has been a challenging project. The authors of this paper have been participant observers of the integration process. In this paper, they have attempted an analysis of that process, focussing on the dynamics of the network of people and interests, which have shaped the process. Actor network theory was used to provide an analytical framework for the analysis. The interests and experiences of the authors in the process necessarily influence the analysis. All three authors have been active in positioning sustainability as a central theme for the critique and practice of engineering. Paul Bryce and Stephen Johnston have had long‐standing involvement in technology transfer projects in development. Both have published on engineering as a social activity, critiquing the undue emphasis in engineering education on engineering science, at the expense of attention to engineering practice. Their experience and scholarship have given credibility to their efforts in the faculty to press for a new paradigm of engineering practice. Keiko Yasukawa is an educational developer in the faculty who has been working with staff and students to help them reflect on their idea of what engineering is about in their teaching and learning. She has taken a leading role in shaping the new curriculum.

Purpose – In this chapter, we report on the lessons of cross-disciplinary collaborative workshop between sociologists and engineering educators to synthesize what is known about legitimating and disseminating educational reform and to develop a research agenda for what needs to be known in order to spread educational reform and to overcome on-the-ground resistance to change.

Methodology/approach – This chapter is based on a case study of this workshop, describing the “white papers” prepared by participants prior to the workshop and the research agendas that emerged from discussions of them during the workshop and after.

Findings – The workshop resulted in a sophisticated research agenda as well as some modest efforts to create cross-disciplinary links to implement it. However, a one-time workshop did not overcome institutional barriers to this kind of activity.

Research limitations – Since this is a case study of a single collaboration we cannot generalize to all cross-disciplinary collaborations, although it does provide an example of what works to facilitate cross-disciplinary efforts and what obstacles remain.

Practical implications – An advantage to the workshop was the absence of institutional barriers to cross-disciplinary collaboration. Attendees were removed from their institutions, departments, disciplines, and turf battles. However, without increased institutional support for cross-disciplinary efforts, such as this one, the value of the social sciences for diffusing the innovations of science and engineering reform movements may not be realized.

A citation analysis was conducted on publications of the faculty from the University of Florida (UF), Department of Chemical Engineering. The analysis was undertaken to gain a better understanding of the research programs in chemical engineering and to examine how the library aligns its research support through resources and journals to the needs of the department’s faculty. The analysis focused on where the faculty published, their most frequently cited resources, and what growth patterns were evident. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Five years of publications (2011-2015) by the UF chemical engineering faculty were included in the analysis. Web of Science was used to compile a list of the articles published in peer-reviewed journals as well as the citations.

Faculty were found to have published 279 articles in the last five years, with 27 percent of those articles shared by five journals, and with an average impact factor of 3.459. Applied Physics Letters was the most cited journal and Advanced Materials had the highest impact factor of 17.493. The library owned 95 percent of the publications in which faculty published their work and at least 82 percent of the resources cited in their publications. The pattern of the publications was not consistent and the most articles in one year (69) were published in 2013.

Since this study focused on the current patterns regarding where the faculty are publishing and citing, it should be a fairly accurate indicator of their future needs. Therefore, the study impacts decisions regarding future directions by enabling the library to maintain a high-quality collection for the faculty.

The purpose of this paper is to explore a new mentoring and advocacy-networking paradigm sponsored by the National Science Foundation (15-7680) Office for Broadening Participation in Engineering in the USA. The Increasing Minority Presence within Academia through Continuous Training (IMPACT) program pairs underrepresented minority (URM) faculty with emeriti faculty in engineering for career mentorship.

Researchers utilized a phenomenological qualitative research design to explore the influence of the three domains of the mentoring and advocacy-networking paradigm (career development, sponsorship, and coaching) through participant interviews of URM and emeriti faculty. Interviews, grounded by Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), offered an in-depth understanding of the nature, meaning, and ways in which the IMPACT participants perceived the value of the mentoring experience.

Phenomenological findings suggest mentees viewed IMPACT participation as a means for career progression, and mentors saw it as an opportunity to “give back” to the engineering field. Neither believed cultural or generational gaps would hamper their mentoring relationships, as their shared academic interests would facilitate a bridge for any gaps.

This paper identifies new questions related to the expectations and interests of both mentors and mentees who are engaged in a mentoring relationship. A longitudinal approach would offer deeper insight into mentoring as the relationship persists over time.

Evidence at this stage indicates that the IMPACT program has the potential to contribute to the career progression of URM faculty through the inclusion of an often overlooked resource of emeriti faculty.

The underrepresentation of women in engineering has important consequences for meeting the need for a larger, talented scientific and technological labor force. Increasing the proportion of women faculty in engineering will help increase the persistence probabilities of women undergraduate and graduate students in engineering, as well as contribute to the range and diversity of ideas toward innovations and solutions to the greatest engineering challenges. This study aims to examine the association among gender, family formation and post-PhD employment patterns of a cohort of engineering doctorates.

Using the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Doctorate Recipients data, 2001–2010, descriptive and multinomial logit regression analyses are conducted to illustrate the career trajectories of engineering PhDs over a ten-year period.

The career trajectories of engineering PhDs are nonlinear, and transitions between employment sectors commonly occur over the ten-year time period studied. Although women engineering PhDs with young dependents are less likely to be employed initially after PhD completion, they tend to enter the workforce in the academic sector as time progresses. Early post-PhD employment as a postdoctoral researcher or in the academic sector contributes to the pursuit of the professoriate downstream.

While previous studies tend to focus on the early career outcomes of science and engineering students, this study contributes to the literature by focusing on the long-term career outcomes of engineering doctorates. Research findings provide engineering PhD students and PhDs with more information regarding potential post-PhD career trajectories, highlighting the multitude of career options and transitions that occur over time. Research findings also provide higher education administrators and doctoral program stakeholders with foundational information toward designing and revitalizing professional development programs to help PhD students prepare for the workforce. The findings have the potential to be applied toward helping increase diversity by shaping policies and programs to encourage multiple alternative career pathways to the professoriate.