Mission and Vision
Mission
Educational innovation and culturally responsive teaching are already happening in engineering at Hispanic-Serving Institutions. These institutions are redefining “servingness” of diverse populations in higher education, particularly Latinx students. We believe that instructional faculty in engineering are central to "servingness", innovation, and culturally responsive teaching at HSIs. Our goal is to amplify and further develop engineering instructional faculty (EIF) as leaders in student-centered educational innovation at the undergraduate level.
Towards this goal, we leverage principles of human-centered design, empathy building, and action research to provide EIF opportunities to share their passions, ideas, and innovations and participate in the development of one another through a collaborative, supportive learning community. Ultimately, we seek to collaboratively foster multicultural and student-centered approaches to engineering education at HSIs that empowers and celebrates its diverse educators and students.
Guiding Principles
To guide our work as we seek to achieve our mission and vision, we aim to uphold and promote the following guiding principles in our actions and decisions:
- Foster a multicultural and student-centered approach to education at HSIs, and undergraduate engineering programs specifically.
- Empower and amplify people and approaches that are already working.
- Recognize their value and contributions, acknowledge their needs, and celebrate what faculty at the margins are accomplishing.
- Base our research and programing activities on design thinking principles, leveraging and sharing evidence-based knowledge, practices, and tools.
- Give and hold space to explore opportunities for change and invest in a community of co-creation.
- Pursuit of lasting engineering educational change is collaborative and emergent, requiring the voices of students, faculty, staff, and administrators be heard.
- Define and embrace inclusive leadership identities in educational change.
- Integrate sustainable practices in the environmental, societal, and economic aspects of our program to positively impact current and future generations.
- Share research results and educational innovations widely to support learning and growth across HSIs and education communities