Session T29: Fluid Dynamics - Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Teaching incarcerated students: expanding access to education in prisons

The Education Justice Project (EJP) is an education program for incarcerated people in Illinois, hosted in the College of Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The program offers for-credit courses, tutoring, extracurricular activities, and re-entry into society services for incarcerated people at Danville Correctional Center, a medium-security men's state prison about 45 minutes from the University campus. In this talk, we will describe our experiences tutoring in the prison environment through the Writing and Math Partners program and participating in math-focused summer programs, including a pre-calculus preparation course and a tiered math learning program where more mathematically advanced incarcerated students teach basic math to less mathematically advanced incarcerated students. The challenges and rewards of teaching in a prison environment will be discussed and future plans for quantitative assessment of programing outcomes will be outlined.   

Inclusivity in undergraduate STEM course syllabi: A mismatch between student needs and faculty practices.

The timing, use, and versatility of course syllabi allow instructors to set the tone of a course with (or without) an eye towards inclusivity. Syllabi design and content influence learning for all students but affects particularly students from marginalized groups as they navigate STEM courses. As we strive to attract and retain students with diverse backgrounds to fluid dynamics, syllabi can be a key way to make our courses more welcoming and inclusive. We report a study about inclusive practices in course syllabi at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a private four-year STEM institution in Massachusetts. We consider Identity Safety Cues (ISCs) as a measure of inclusivity and evaluate whether syllabi: (a) list instructors' pronouns, (b) utilize readings and materials authored by women and gender minority scholars, and (c) contain inclusivity statements. We report and compare perspectives on these three aspects from two data sets: 163 syllabi analyzed based on a well-defined rubric and results from an undergraduate student survey. The two complementary data sets provide a way to benchmark whether there is a link between student and faculty perceptions of syllabi use and desired content. We find sharp differences between students' expectations and actual syllabi content for all three ISCs of interest, with students wanting inclusive practices at the forefront of course development regardless of subject, and faculty lagging behind. We also find strong correlations between instructor gender and rank and the inclusivity of their course syllabi. We provide suggestions on how to incorporate inclusive practices in syllabi design and propose further questions to explore.   

Education and Inequality in India: Addressing Disparities to Foster Inclusive Growth

Education plays a pivotal role in shaping a nation's future and driving socio-economic progress. In India, a country with a rich cultural heritage and a rapidly growing economy, access to quality education remains a critical challenge, perpetuating existing inequalities and hindering the nation's full potential. This paper explores the complex relationship between education and inequality in India, analyzing the factors contributing to educational disparities and proposing strategies to foster inclusive growth.

The Indian education system is characterized by significant disparities across various dimensions, including regional, socio-economic, and gender disparities. Rural areas, especially in economically disadvantaged regions, suffer from inadequate infrastructure, poorly trained teachers, and a lack of essential resources, resulting in lower educational outcomes. Additionally, marginalized communities, including Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes, often face discrimination and limited access to educational opportunities, further exacerbating inequality.

In conclusion, this paper underscores the urgent need to address education and inequality in India to achieve inclusive growth and sustainable development. By ensuring equal access to quality education for all, India can unleash the full potential of its human capital and pave the way for a more equitable and prosperous future.   

DEIA Initiative in the Aerospace Systems Directorate

In 2021 the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Aerospace Systems Directorate (RQ) initiated an internal Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) initiative to support 2600 military, civilian, and contractor personnel across three geographically separated RQ worksite locations in Ohio, Tennessee, and California.   RQ DEIA is led by an Executive Level Officer and is supported by passionate employees from each of the Directorate’s 11 Divisions, forming the RQ DEIA Council.  RQ’s DEIA mission is motivated by a commitment to identify and remove systemic and institutional barriers, committed to empowering a welcoming and respectful learning and working environment where everyone feels they belong. Engaging the organization at all levels, representing diverse perspectives and empowered to institute organization-wide DEIA impact, examine all components of our framework, working through discomforts and delivering a sustainable, measurable and attainable action that directly and positively supports the RQ mission.

The DEIA Council currently hosts 4 Action Committees supported by diverse and passionate employees:  Equity and Accessibility, Physical and Psychological Safety, Recruitment, and Retention. The DEIA Council Action Committees are tackling institutional barriers such as, WWII era infrastructure that is not equitable and accessible, recruiting a diverse work force, retaining highly qualified personnel, improving workforce understanding and access to reasonable accommodations, increasing developmental opportunities, and much more.

Recent successes from Allyship and Mental Health First Aid training have started to affect the RQ culture in positive ways, showing immediate impacts on retention and workforce morale. These efforts are only the beginning. The Aerospace Systems Directorate is dedicated to engraining equity and accessibility throughout the workplace, driving diversity, increasing inclusion, and opening opportunities for authentic belonging. Our work has just begun.

    

CFD x DEI: Technically Rigorous Opportunities to Highlight Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Computational Fluid Dynamics

In this talk, we highlight two opportunities to engineer a virtuous cycle that simultaneously elevates technical rigor and respect for the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion, specifically in the context of computational fluid dynamics education: (1) identifying physical and mathematical concepts that are value-neutral in the abstract yet have significant justice-related implications in practice (e.g., in the context of record statistics or Karhunen-Loève expansion); and (2) deeply integrating the history of science and mathematics to highlight technical contributions from diverse individuals (e.g., in the context of numerical methods for fluids simulation). We emphasize throughout that there are numerous ways in which technical rigor and social-justice-oriented pedagogy can mutually enrich each other.   

Women in Physics in District Swat Khyber Pakhtiunkhwa76th annual meeting conference paper, November,19-22,2023Auther: Naeem Ullah

The Conference paper aims to explore all inferences of female education in the wake of Physics in District Swat. The study explored the hurdles faced by women in the attainment of science education particularly Physics education in District Swat. the paper also reveals the current status of women Physicists in district Swat- an underdeveloped and far-flung area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. To flourish as a growing nation and to get more and more female enroll in science education particularly in Physics, Pakistani setup needs a change in society, where women need to be given equql rights in the field of science education. This study will also give a brief discription of factors due to which female students face hurdles for higher education in Physics. Mingora city and adjacent areas were selected for conducting the study and data were collected from fifteen respondents, five from university, five from colleges and five from higher secondory schools. Several factors were found responsible for preventing women to go into science education particularly in Physics. Some of these are socio-economics socio-culture and religeous constraint.   

Empowering Underserved Students in STEM: The Willamette STEM Fellows Program

The Willamette STEM Fellows Program was launched in 2018 with initial funding through the NSF’s S-STEM program. Over the past five years, it has provided comprehensive support to underserved students in the sciences and gained substantial institutional backing. The program provides four years of structured co-curricular supports, including living-learning communities, cohort-specific classes for the first two years, dedicated advising, funded research and leadership positions, and individualized career planning, as well as gap-filling scholarships. One particular focus has been the introduction of “embedded tutors” to help improve student retention through supplemental instruction in classes often perceived as barriers to success in the STEM fields. This model has since been expanded to our lower-division Physics courses, across the entirety of the Chemistry curriculum, and is increasingly being used throughout our institution. Following the graduation of our second cohort of students in Spring 2023 and with our sixth cohort starting in Fall 2023, we present an overview of our successes, challenges that we have encountered, and alterations that we have made to the program over the past 5 years.