Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

My commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in higher education is one of the biggest motivators for pursuing a faculty career. As a queer undergraduate student at an engineering focused university, I often felt isolated in engineering spaces. I doubted my ability to succeed in engineering, and I questioned if I would ever be able to bring my full self into my work and be valued for it. I knew very few queer students at my university, and even fewer openly LGBTQ+ faculty members, which only added to my feelings of isolation. Eventually, the literature surrounding LGBTQ+ people in engineering helped me see my experiences were actually common, and that there was nothing wrong with me or my queerness. The ways in which higher education, and engineering in particular, reflect larger societal biases inspires me to be a force of change in engineering, to make things better for future students, and to become the openly queer role model I never had.

Attending a university in Texas, a state actively dismantling DEI programs in higher education, I have seen first hand how years of work can be undone in a matter of days. It has been difficult to watch crucial programs be cut and dedicated employees be fired. In fact, many of my prior efforts are now illegal to continue here. From this, I see how we must rethink our approaches to DEI, making the central values of equity and inclusion so fundamental to our institutions that they cannot be removed so easily. This is something I seek to do every day in my work in academia.