Last December, Elizabethtown College’s School of Engineering, Math and Computer Science (EMCS) was honored by the American Society for Engineering Education’s (ASEE) Diversity Recognition Program. Etown won the award for inclusive excellence in the bronze category. Only nine institutions nationwide won the award, and Etown was the only college or university recognized in Pennsylvania.

This prestigious award is given annually to a small number of schools. According to the ASEE website, “Inclusive excellence is both about doing things right (achieving a competitive advantage as well as reflecting demographic imperatives), and doing the right thing (achieving social justice goals).”

There are multiple levels of criteria that the ASEE considered while choosing institutions to get the bronze award. This includes the Dean signing the ASEE Deans Diversity Pledge, the college having a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion plan with an implementation timeline, a set of goals set for demographics of both students and faculty and the college being dedicated to measure the goals of plan implementation.

As of December 2021, Etown EMCS has met all of these criteria and achieved Bronze Status. The School of EMCS’ bronze status will be valid until December 2024, at which point the College can apply to move up to the silver level. After three years at the silver level, the school can then move up to the gold level, which is the highest level of recognition and the hardest to achieve.

“At the Bronze Level, it means that we intentionally implement known best practices, and that we have a good foundation, good momentum and a good plan for benchmarking, monitoring and improving in areas of diversity and inclusion, but we are not where we ultimately want to be. We need to do better, and we have a plan for how to get there,” School of EMCS Dean and associate professor of engineering Dr. Sara Atwood said.

Previously, the School of EMC only had a department chair, and was not eligible to join the ASEE’s Engineering Dean’s Council. However, since the school has recently switched to Deans, Atwood was able to join the council. Around two weeks before the deadline, Atwood got an email about the award, and knew that Etown met the criteria. She worked together with Dean of Students and Executive Director of College Diversity, Equity and Belonging Nichole Gonzalez and pulled together the application before the deadline.

Much of the application was able to build off of the school’s Strategic Plan and CIC plan. There was a lot of data from the past three years that needed to be reported, such as the percentage of individuals from marginalized groups included in students, faculty and staff in the school. Graduation rates of marginalized student groups were also compared to the majority group’s graduation rate.

The School of EMCS has also decided to include five items to measure belonging on the end-of-course IDEAs as additional questions. All of these efforts are unique, and helped the School of EMCS achieve Bronze Status.

Atwood said, “As a woman in engineering, I’ve certainly experienced some of the challenges of being a historically marginalized identity in the field, so it means a lot to lead a School where we are committed to creating a culture of belonging, and be recognized for it… It’s truly unique that our faculty in EMCS are so diverse, with a much larger percentage of women and Latino faculty than is typically seen in our fields. I hope our presence provides strong role models for our students.”

In late February, there will be a recognition ceremony in New Orleans for all schools that achieved bronze status.