NDEW-ChE: National Diversity Equity Workshop for Chemical Engineering Academic Leaders

and heads to work together to improve our culture toward inclusive excellence. The centerpiece of the workshop is a series of breakout sessions to develop solutions collaboratively. 

The field of chemical engineering is at a critical juncture with respect to the inclusion of diverse communities of people within our practice. We have realized steady gains in our community’s diversity, such that the U.S. chemical engineering faculty now includes 19% women, 2.0% African Americans, and 5.0% Hispanics. Yet these numbers are significantly lower than the national population, suggesting that we are missing out on the full range of talent available. Diversity has been shown to correlate with business performance, and thus chemical engineers may make even greater impact when we have full representation.

The goals of the workshop are: (1) to learn effective practices as identified by the research community and as employed in other disciplines, (2) to hear first-hand experiences from chemical engineering pioneers about barriers and challenges to inclusive excellence, (3) to share experiences in improving diversity, equity and inclusion in chemical engineering departments, and (4) to work together as a community to improve inclusion in our discipline.

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