In January, eight faculty representing five departments became WPI’s second cohort of EMPOwER faculty fellows, generously funded for a second year by the Women’s Impact Network (WIN). Each fellow proposed a project to create more inclusive, engaging, and empowering environments for traditionally underrepresented students in our STEM classrooms.
In C and D Terms each faculty fellow will work on their project with support available from a faculty member, a librarian and a dedicated WPI graduate student. They will also meet as a peer group throughout C and D terms to share work on their projects. WIN grant funding is also supporting student staff assistance for several fellows.
This year’s fellows include:
Laila Abu-Lail, Assistant Professor of Teaching in Chemical Engineering & Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering. Professor Abu-Lail will be creating a new graduate course in Environmental Health & Engineering. She will be building a library of free, accessible OERs including non-textual resources, and she will adopt and adapt these while focusing on addressing social justice through redistributing, recognizing and representing expertise in marginalized communities and including diverse views and experiences of scientists and researchers. Her hope is to increase student engagement and appreciation of the field while decreasing students’ costs.
Tharindu DeAlwis, Post Doctoral Scholar in Mathematical Sciences. Dr. De Alwis will explore OER materials in applied statistics courses that engage students in research with a goal of publication. Providing students with a process and platform to showcase their research and presence in a STEM field, his work aims to motivate students on a research project and publish it early in their academic endeavors. This project is inspired in part by work done in 2022-2023 by EMPOwER fellows Lou Roberts and Natalie Farny.
Alireza Ebadi, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Mechanical and Materials Engineering. Professor Ebadi’s project is to develop a library of instructional videos on using CAD software – these videos are used not only in courses but in personal and educational projects outside the classroom. Few videos available now represent female students, and Prof. Ebadi’s goal is to expand the presence of women engineers in educational, instructional, and promotional content, in order to further support the presence of women in high-demand areas such as CAD modeling.
Achirri Ismael, Assistant Professor, Social Science and Policy Studies. Professor Ismael’s project is motivated by the absence of a comprehensive interdisciplinary course text for Introduction to Environmental Studies that intersects with the goals of diversity and inclusivity, or that represents the high level of concern for environmental issues reported by minorities in the US. With low enrollment by students of color in environmental courses, his goal is to design a collection of introductory course materials that draw in and retain minority students through intentionally designed and curated course materials.
Nadeesha Jayaweera, Post Doctoral Scholar, Mathematical Sciences. Dr. Jayaweera's project is to create new Open Educational Resources (OER) customized to support WPI's statistics curriculum. The materials, which will include detailed lecture notes covering key statistical concepts, real-world examples, extra practice problems with solutions, quizzes, labs using popular statistical software, and interactive online modules, aim to create a dynamic and inclusive learning experience catering to diverse learning styles and backgrounds. Some of these resources will be utilized to support a new case-study project, enabling students to apply theoretical content to real-world activities.
Robert Krueger, Professor and Department Head, Social Science and Policy Studies. Professor Krueger’s project is to develop a three-module course, Artificial Intelligence 101 for Development Practitioners, open not only to WPI students but to development students and professional across the globe, The course addresses a gap in training among development professionals about AI and the benefits and challenges AI can bring to their work. Course materials will be developed to demystify AI tools and bridge policy and program evaluation with AI. The project also acknowledges the underrepresentation of women in international development leadership roles, and that this type of training may help women in the field assume those leadership roles.
Pradeep Radhakrishnan, Associate Professor of Teaching, Mechanical and Materials Engineering. Professor Radhakrishnan’s project will create OERs for Introduction to Dynamic Systems, an important course in several engineering fields: Mechanical, Robotics, and Aerospace Engineering. Textbooks currently in use tend to be static, and do not offer interactive elements, animations, or simulations that would make the material more accessible for many students. His goal is to create OER materials that address this gap, designing short videos and applications that will better explain the links between concept and applicability to mechatronic systems. By engaging women and BIPOC students in helping to create and audit these materials, he also hopes to provide students with confidence to work on complex projects, increasing their participation and retention in STEM.
Shubbhi Taneja, Assistant Teaching Professor, Computer Science. Professor Taneja’s project addresses the challenge of integrating learning about parallel and distributed computing, in an already crowded CS curriculum. She proposes to go beyond computer-based examples and programming-based assignments to develop unplugged activities that teach parallel processing through real-world analogs. Her project will pilot and assess these approaches, building on her previous work on K-12 education advancing gender and racially inclusive computing.
For more information about the WIN EMPOwER grant and its goals or about OER at WPI, please see these resources, or contact the EMPOwER team: gr-oer@wpi.edu
- 2023-2024 EMPOwER grant announcement
- 2022-2023 EMPOwER grant
- OER website and blog
- Library guide on OER
- OER collection in Digital WPI
- Centering Diversity and Inclusion in Courses When Adapting Existing OERs
