ALICE PAWLEY|research

Research in Feminist Engineering (RIFE)

Our research group investigates:

1. •Engineering epistemologies: what are enduring stories in engineering that faculty use to describe what they do?  Why and to whom are these stories compelling?  What stories are not included as engineering?  (With ENE graduate student Shawn Jordan, Dr. Robin Adams, and Dr. David Radcliffe.)
   

2. •Gendered disciplines: how do we use gender theory from sociology, and women’s studies to understand engineering as a gendered discipline?  How does this change how we understand men’s overrepresentation in engineering?
   

3. •Engineering identities in transition: engineering undergraduate students learn what engineering “is” and how to “be” largely from their experiences as undergraduates.  When they begin work in industry, how do their identities shift?  Do they have to generate new definitions of what engineering is?  What about students who work as engineers in gendered technologies?
   

4. •Pipeline and chilly climate model checking: To what extent are women’s career pathways into and through academic faculty levels in STEM disciplines accurately modeled by pipeline or chilly climate ideas? An explicit and critical component of this study is to determine the applicability of these models to women of different ethnicities. This study will be completed through interviews and surveys, and both quantitative and qualitative analyses.
   

5. •Alternative model development: other models than pipeline and chilly climate (such as boundary model conceptualization), that provide other explanations of career pathway decisions experienced by women STEM faculty members of different ethnicities at Purdue.  This study consists of an institutional ethnography applied to the colleges of Engineering, Science and Technology to explore the impact of Purdue’s organization and rules through the experiences of people, particularly women, who work within them.  We use interviews, discursive analysis of texts, and participant observation to understand the institution structure and organization by exploring how real individuals negotiate the “everyday world” (lived realities in a particular institutional location).
   

We currently run projects associated with ADVANCE-Purdue and the Purdue Research Foundation.

The RIFE research group currently consists of:

Dina is a post-doctoral research in the RIFE group beginning in May 2009.  She just completed her dissertation in Sociology at Purdue.

Lindsey is a graduate student in Engineering Education.  She graduated from Boston University with her bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering.  In trying to gain knowledge about teaching and learning within an engineering context, Lindsey pursued some graduate study in mechanical engineering and shifted to teaching high school physics.  As an active member of the American Association of Physics Teachers, she developed an interest in curricular innovations.  Combining her interest in curricular innovations with a passion for social justice, Lindsey hopes to expand the boundaries of engineering education to include sustainable international development strategies.

Katie is a undergraduate student in Aeronautical Engineering. As a member of the Society of Women in Engineering, and a participant in the Women in Engineering Program at Purdue University, she took interest in feminist engineering research. She is particularly interested to learn how women balance an engineering career and a family as well as the transitional phase as graduating engineers enter industry.

Saranya Srinivasan, Ph.D

Saranya is a new post-doctoral researcher working with ADVANCE.  She just graduated with her PhD  in the Special Education program at Purdue.

If you’re interested in exploring these ideas with us, or have other ones you want to work on along similar lines, don’t hesitate to contact Dr Pawley.  Send your thoughts and comments, and a CV if you like.  We’ll work together to find out whether Purdue might be a good fit for you.