Abstract
AbstractThe lack of diversity in engineering is a persistent problem with few signs of pending improvement. Efforts to promote diversity in engineering schools have produced modest gains. Based on a commitment to be a change leader and fueled by recent updates in ABET criteria to include diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEI-J) as tenets of engineering education, the biomedical engineering (BME) community needs to find new ways to address the issues of DEI for all groups in our curricula. In an attempt to redesign engineering departments to be more inclusive of all student populations, institutions of higher learning are reviewing programs, policies, and the ways they engage students. This paper provides BME programs with some thinking about the integration of DEI into areas of curriculum, assessment, faculty practice and faculty support, infrastructure, and climate for change. This study reports on curricular innovations attempted to date in order to serve as a resource for biomedical undergraduate engineering curricula. The authors have collected critical resources and literature related to integrating DEI into courses and content as well as assessment and evaluation approaches. Sections include resources for BME design, diverse anatomy and physiology, person-centered language, ethics, and assessment and evaluation approaches to measuring climate, faculty, and student impacts. In addition to providing resources, we propose that the ABET DEI framework is missing a critical component: justice. We feel that justice should be emphasized, particularly in biomedical engineering programs because our field has the unique opportunity to promote awareness of injustices and racial disparities in the design, development, and delivery of healthcare and medical technologies. While this paper presents examples of integration in several course types and across different topics, it is intended to inspire additional efforts by the BME community to make more concerted changes to promote DEI in our educational programs.
Graphical abstract
Graphical abstract demonstrating main themes and connections between different themes in the DEI-J framework presented in the paper. Created with BioRender.com.
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
General Arts and Humanities
Reference93 articles.
1. Abdul-Raheem J. Faculty diversity and tenure in higher education. J Cult Divers. 2016;23(2):53–6.
2. Accessibility and accommodations: making opportunity accessible to all. Family Voices. 2006. https://familyvoices.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Accessibility-and-Accommodations.pdf. Accessed 15 Oct 2022.
3. Accreditation Criteria & Supporting Documents. ABET, Inc. https://www.abet.org/accreditation/accreditation-criteria/. Accessed 9 Jan 2023.
4. Ambekar A, Ward C, Mohammed J, Male S, Skiena S. Name-ethnicity classification from open sources. In: Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGKDD international conference on knowledge discovery and data mining. 2009, p. 49–58.
5. Amos JR, Hunter CD, Clancy KBH, Tillman AS. Race, inclusion, and science: things that really do go together. In: 2015 ASEE annual conference & exposition. 2015, p. 26–1299.