Using diversity statements to promote engagement with diversity and teaching

For many engineering educators, the topic of diversity can be frustrating and difficult. Writing and sharing individual diversity statements represents one strategy for empowering educators in their efforts to address diversity in their teaching. In this paper, we present the results of an empirical study in which graduate students (future engineering educators) prepared diversity statements as part of a teaching portfolio program. We focused our analysis on the discussions associated with diversity statement program sessions and found the talk during these sessions to be characterized by a variety of teaching and diversity ideas, an interweaving of teaching and diversity ideas, and equitable contribution among participants. We believe these results suggest that the diversity statement exercise has promise while also illustrating that graduate students are capable of tackling this complex issue with some success.