Hi Jeremy, thanks! Our future plans are definitely evolving - our Week of Action happened just as the COVID pandemic was emerging in the US and we have had to regroup some... the original plan was to build momentum through spring with activities at the CONECD conference in April and with the ASEE Committee on Diversity, Inclusion and Equity using the hashtag in its virtual workshops and other work. Now CONECD is postponed till January. We've been hosting conference calls to discuss inequity in the time of COVID and talking about how we can continue to amplify the work of others in this time. 

Thanks, that is very kind. I knew him too, and it is one of the great privileges of my career to have the title that bears his name - huge shoes to fill.

We did develop a space for sharing lesson plans and other resources that can be found at http://engineersshowup.org - some were developed specifically for the Week of Action and other discussions about showing up as allies, advocates, and accomplices - and others had been previously developed by others and were shared in order to amplify that work and extend those efforts.

For next steps, one of our partners, the ASEE Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is using our hashtag in their virtual programming, and we have activities planned for engagement with the CONECD community (a cross-organizational conference with WEPAN, NAMEPA, and ASEE that was to take place in person last month but is postponed til January). We've had a couple of community videoconference calls to simply be together and talk about what work we need to do now, and we have been chatting about how issues of (in)equity are revealing themselves through this pandemic, and how we can continue to disrupt oppressive systems in this new moment... more to come on that for sure! 

I think engineers crucially need an understanding of power and privilege, and how these play out not only in matters of identity but also in the organizations and institution of the profession. They need empathy and listening skills, and a sense of true solidarity or accompaniment (showing up) in their work with the public and community members. 

Thanks -- those sound like important skills. I wonder about how K-12 engineering education (since there is more and more of that happening) can contribute...

I definitely think there is a lot that happens in K-12 that is formative around these particular skillsets. Learning about difference, and learning about how to interrupt bullying and stand up for one another happens at all ages. Making connections between those lessons and engineering is essential, so science and engineering can't be compartmentalized and cordoned off away from these elements. K-12 offers unique opportunities to integrate or harmonize learning across subject areas - though some of the recent reforms have unfortunately made that more difficult. 

Hi Jameela, I'm part of the research team engaged in this work. Thank you for your inquiry about the important issue of community engagement and engineering issues. 

There are many conversations and offshoots of initiatives that talk about these historic oppressions and work to shift the reproduction of these issues that we hope to highlight as well as foster in this campaign. We have drawn attention via our website and Twitter account to engineering projects and practices that center the needs of different communities, and work with community expertise, knowledge, and needs for community projects and activism – away from extraction and co-optation.

We also hope to foster critical discussion and attention to the issues of how various populations and communities have been oppressed historically, how things might be otherwise, and how engineering education could (and should) shift the narrative. During the February week of action, a panel was held at Drexel University that grappled with these very issues. Participants included a Drexel administrator working on community engagement (who has a background in critically-engaged science and technology studies), professors from political science, peace engineering, and history of technology who all work on historic issues of oppression in these regards (particularly environmental racism), as well as a community activist working on issues of lead in water. This is just one example of ways to give more weight and focus to these historically charged topics within engineering and to expose engineering students and educators to local community needs and efforts. But of course more work can and should be done to more fully and deeply change practices.

Thanks for your work in this area! Very cool! #EngineersShowUp seeks to amplify the work of others and deepen our understandings of relations of power across different modes of oppression. If we can help disseminate some of the resources you are developing within our networks, we'd be happy to do so! 

Engineering's history of facilitating colonization is long and profound, and it infuses everything about engineering's epistemologies and pedagogies. In my own work I've tried to start with raising that awareness, and with exposing some of the colonizing logics inherent in many engineering-to-help efforts that assume that only certain ways of knowing have value, and position certain groups with decision making power while disenfranchising or marginalizing others. 

I've long been a fan of the work at Oglala Lakota College as part of NSF's PEEC program, that centers engineering education within a larger goal of Tribal Sovereignty. They bring engineering into alignment with the tribe's non-extraction commitments, and with the college's and tribe's non-abandonment principles that give every student support and opportunity to learn for as long as they need, and employ pedagogies that align with these commitments. 

I'm also a fan of Deana Burgart's (https://www.indigeneering.com/) intersectional approach and looking forward to her distinguished lecture at ASEE next month! 

That sounds like incredible work, and it is those very kinds of initiatives to which we hope to bring more attention toward, working together to give voice to such endeavors. To reiterate Donna, we would love to share the resources and link to your work as an example of what can be done to further decolonize engineering curriculum. We have also begun collecting other resources and work in that regard – the idea being that we will build a network and connect resources from different communities addressing different forms of oppression within engineering education. We hope to create a mode of sharing and connecting to break down such deeply embedded oppressions bit by bit.

Also as a further FYI: the reading lists, curricula, and lesson modules currently up on our website were created and gathered by a smaller group of participants who were part of the initial week of action and were excited to share their resources for addressing particular oppressions that work to combat such as classism, racism, and homophobia in engineering. It is not exhaustive nor complete, and this section (as well as the whole website really) are intended as a living document – a work in progress that can shift and change with those who are previously and currently a part of the working group. Our regular meetings/calls are also open to any and all who want to take part if you want to join in your voice about the importance of decolonizing engineering curricula.

Thank you for your interest and encouraging words!

The idea and hope is to have this become a continuing conversation at various conferences and certainly beyond the bounding of a week of action even (which was intended as a goal to organize toward and as a jumping-off point for raising awareness towards facilitating deeper change).

However, we also found that having a week of focus where we really drive home the initiative and various actions is powerful. We have yet to set an exact date for 2021 and what it might look like, but we are hoping that it can become a regular happening that generates and grows the conversation and practices in various ways. And if there is enough interest in the community at large, we want it to become a regular, annual happening. That particular week in February following engineering week did feel like it made sense for various reasons.