The vitality of the innovation economy in the United States depends on the availability of a highly educated technical workforce. A key component of this workforce consists of engineers, engineering technicians, and engineering technologists. However, unlike the much better-known field of engineering, engineering technology (ET) is unfamiliar to most Americans and goes unmentioned in most policy discussions about the US technical workforce. Engineering Technology Education in the United States seeks to shed light on the status, role, and needs of ET education in the United States.

This innovative work critically studies the contemporary problems of one segment of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. The lack of a diverse U.S.-based pool of talent entering the field of engineering education has been termed a crisis by academic and political leaders. Engineering remains one of the most sex segregated academic arenas; the intersection of gendered and racialized exclusion results in very few Latina engineers. Drawing on cutting-edge scholarship in gender and Latino/a studies, the book provides an analytically incisive view of the experiences of Latina engineers. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation through a Gender in Science and Engineering grant, the authors bridge interdisciplinary perspectives to illuminate the nuanced and multiple exclusionary forces that shape the culture of engineering. A large, multi-institution, longitudinal dataset permits disaggregation by race and gender. The authors rely on primary and secondary sources and incorporate an integrated mixed-methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative data. Together, this analysis of the voices of Latina engineering majors breaks new ground in the literature on STEM education and provides an exemplar for future research on subpopulations in these fields. This book is aimed at researchers who study underrepresented groups in engineering and are interested in broadening participation and ameliorating problems of exclusion. It will be attractive to scholars in the fields of multicultural and higher education, sociology, cultural anthropology, cultural studies, and feminist technology studies, and all researchers interested in the intersections of STEM, race, and gender. This resource will be useful for policy-makers and educational leaders looking to revitalize and re-envision the culture within engineering.

The only source that focuses exclusively on engineering and technology, this important guide maps the dynamic and changing field of information sources published for engineers in recent years. Lord highlights basic perspectives, access tools, and English-language resources—directories, encyclopedias, yearbooks, dictionaries, databases, indexes, libraries, buyer's guides, Internet resources, and more. Substantial emphasis is placed on digital resources. The author also discusses how engineers and scientists use information, the culture and generation of scientific information, different types of engineering information, and the tools and resources you need to locate and access that material. Other sections describe regulations, standards and specifications, government resources, professional and trade associations, and education and career resources. Engineers, scientists, librarians, and other information professionals working with engineering and technology information will welcome this research

Although more women than men participate in higher education in the United States, the same is not true when it comes to pursuing careers in science and engineering. To Recruit and Advance: Women Students and Faculty in Science and Engineering identifies and discusses better practices for recruitment, retention, and promotion for women scientists and engineers in academia. Seeking to move beyond yet another catalog of challenges facing the advancement of women in academic science and engineering, this book describes actions actually taken by universities to improve the situation for women. Serving as a guide, it examines the following: Recruitment of female undergraduates and graduate students. Ways of reducing attrition in science and engineering degree programs in the early undergraduate years. Improving retention rates of women at critical transition pointsâ€"from undergraduate to graduate student, from graduate student to postdoc, from postdoc to first faculty position. Recruitment of women for tenure-track positions. Increasing the tenure rate for women faculty. Increasing the number of women in administrative positions. This guide offers numerous solutions that may be of use to other universities and colleges and will be an essential resource for anyone interested in improving the position of women students, faculty, deans, provosts, and presidents in science and engineering.

"Interdisciplinarity" is perhaps the most used keyword in describing changes in current patterns of Federal funding. However, it is not a new idea - the interdisciplinary theme has been tried for over forty years. Yet, until now, involved or the performance has been. This book is the report on the "Interdisciplinarity Revisited: Materials Research as a Case Study" Conference, convened on August 31-September 1, 1999 at the Pennsylvania State University. The contributors included the world's leading practitioners in the field of interdisciplinary thrusts in other areas, from Science, Technology and Society to medicine, were represented by senior practitioners. The key findings include the following: - The entire research enterprise demands and is moving increasingly toward "interactive research." (Interactive includes inter-disciplinary, inter-institutional, and inter-sector research.)-The university world has, by and large, failed to organize itself to respond to this new reality. -Specific hindrances to I3R are the traditional peer review process and academic intellectual property practices. - New directions proposed include: funding based largely on past performance and matching fund strategies." is perhaps the most used keyword in describing changes in current patterns of Federal funding. However, it is not a new idea - the interdisciplinary theme has been tried for over forty years. Yet, until now, involved or the performance has been. This book is the report on the "Interdisciplinarity Revisited: Materials Research as a Case Study" Conference, convened on August 31-September 1, 1999 at the Pennsylvania State University. The contributors included the world's leading practitioners in the field of interdisciplinary thrusts in other areas, from Science, Technology and Society to medicine, were represented by senior practitioners. The key findings include the following: - The entire research enterprise demands and is moving increasingly toward "interactive research." (Interactive includes inter-disciplinary, inter-institutional, and inter-sector research.)-The university world has, by and large, failed to organize itself to respond to this new reality. -Specific hindrances to I3R are the traditional peer review process and academic intellectual property practices. - New directions proposed include: funding based largely on past performance and matching fund strategies.

Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty presents new and surprising findings about career differences between female and male full-time, tenure-track, and tenured faculty in science, engineering, and mathematics at the nation's top research universities. Much of this congressionally mandated book is based on two unique surveys of faculty and departments at major U.S. research universities in six fields: biology, chemistry, civil engineering, electrical engineering, mathematics, and physics. A departmental survey collected information on departmental policies, recent tenure and promotion cases, and recent hires in almost 500 departments. A faculty survey gathered information from a stratified, random sample of about 1,800 faculty on demographic characteristics, employment experiences, the allocation of institutional resources such as laboratory space, professional activities, and scholarly productivity. This book paints a timely picture of the status of female faculty at top universities, clarifies whether male and female faculty have similar opportunities to advance and succeed in academia, challenges some commonly held views, and poses several questions still in need of answers. This book will be of special interest to university administrators and faculty, graduate students, policy makers, professional and academic societies, federal funding agencies, and others concerned with the vitality of the U.S. research base and economy.

This book is aimed at engineering academics worldwide, who are attempting to bring social justice into their work and practice, or who would like to but don't know where to start. This is the first book dedicated specifically to University professionals on Engineering and Social Justice, an emerging and exciting area of research and practice. An international team of multidisciplinary authors share their insights and invite and inspire us to reformulate the way we work. Each chapter is based on research and yet presents the outcomes of scholarly studies in a user oriented style. We look at all three areas of an engineering academic's professional role: research, teaching and community engagement. Some of our team have created classes which help students think through their role as engineering practitioners in society. Others are focusing their research on outcomes that are socially just and for client groups who are marginalized and powerless. Yet others are consciously engaging local community groups and exploring ways in which the University might 'serve' communities at home and globally from a post-development perspective. We are additionally concerned with the student cohort and who has access to engineering studies. We take a broad social and ecological justice perspective to critique existing and explore alternative practices. This book is a handbook for any engineering academic, who wishes to develop engineering graduates as well as technologies and practices that are non-oppressive, equitable and engaged. It is also an essential reader for anyone studying in this interdisciplinary juncture of social science and engineering. Scholars using a critical theoretical lens on engineering practice and education, from Science and Technology Studies, History and Philosophy of Engineering, Engineering and Science Education will find this text invaluable.