Inclusive Engineering Outreach with Kathy Renzetti

This episode is a conversation with Kathy Renzetti, Executive Director of DiscoverE. Just in time for Engineers Week 2022, we speak about the need to remove barriers so ALL students have the opportunity to engage in engineering, the impacts of having STEM professionals engage in K-12 outreach, and flipping the script on the questions we ask regarding student success.

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Transcript

00:01 ANNOUNCER: 
Welcome to Engineering Change, the podcast designed to help REDEFINE engineering by: RE-imaging, who we see as engineers and what we see as engineering, DE-siloing academic programs, research and problem solving and FINE-tuning academic and workforce culture and climate so people from all backgrounds and identities can succeed. Each episode will leave you with strategies to put into practice wherever you are in the process of engineering change. And now here's your host, Dr. Yvette E. Pearson.

00:35 DR. YEP: 
Decades of research have shown that many children are tracked out of engineering and STEM careers before they even reach middle school. This is especially true for girls. For students from historically marginalized racial and ethnic identities and in particular our young Black and Latinx women. And students with disabilities - most times they don't even come up in conversations related to STEM outreach and engagement. This episode is focused on outreach to all students from all identities in pre-K through 12th grade to foster their interest in and their awareness of, as well as bolster their self-confidence to pursue STEM degrees and careers. Beyond that, we discuss equity and the need to focus on fixing our broken systems so young people don't face these barriers to engaging in STEM. Today's conversation highlights the efforts of DiscoverE, an organization that has a dual mission of celebrating the accomplishments of engineers and engaging K-12 students in engineering. DiscoverE is the backbone organization behind National Engineers Week, Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day, World Engineering Day, the PERSIST Series and the Future City Competition. Our guest today is executive director of DiscoverE. She leads a growing coalition of corporate, nonprofit and academic partners to create over five million shared STEM experiences with engineers, educators and students knowing it can transform the world, especially as they drive and amplify conversations about equity and inclusion in engineering, education and workforce development. So, I invite you to grab a latte and join us as we dive into Engineering Change with Kathy Renzetti.

03:08 DR. YEP: 
Kathy, it is so great to have you here with us today. Thank you for joining us.

03:14 RENZETTI: 
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to have this conversation

03:18 DR. YEP: 
And very timely too starting season four in the middle of Engineers Week and to be able to have DiscoverE here. To me, I mean, that's just phenomenal for me.

03:30 RENZETTI: 
Yeah, we should give a shout out Happy Engineers Week 2022.

03:34 DR. YEP: 
Happy Engineers Week, and I always like to start these conversations just by sharing with the audience how we connected. And for us, we actually connected just in time for this call. So thanks to Dr. Mike Smith, who is a team member with me, with my company, The PEER Group. And he's also on the DiscoverE board of directors. And although I'm just having the opportunity to connect with you, Kathy, I can say I've been connected with DiscoverE for a very long time. I find that the resources and the efforts that you all launch toward engineering and introducing young people to engineering in a very innovative and exciting way. It's been something that's been very longstanding and I certainly enjoyed engagement over the years.

04:31 RENZETTI: 
I'm so glad to hear that because we've, you know, we work really hard to be available for people like you or people in corporate America, our students or teachers with open access resources. So I'm glad that you use our resources a lot.

04:46 DR. YEP: 
Absolutely. So for those who might not be familiar, why don't you just tell us a bit about what DiscoverE is and why it exists, how long it's been around?

04:58 RENZETTI: 
Sure. So DiscoverE? So the E Stands for engineering, so DiscoverE, is it all about discovering engineering? And we have been around since the 90s and more than 30 years, but our history actually goes back more than 70 years. It is all tied to actually national engineers week. And the reason we exist. One of the reasons we exist is because there is a need for an understanding about engineers who they are and what they do. And if you look at the statistics of the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the demand for STEM professionals is going to outstrip the supply in 2025 by more than a million jobs. So we'll be well, we need engineers and unfortunately, it's not something new, and that is why DiscoverE exists. Back in the early 90s, the national say professional engineers had a PR person who is pretty sophisticated and she is my predecessor, the executive director, before me at DiscoverE, and she recognized the opportunity that they had with national engineers week in the early 90s because so many people weren't aware of what engineers do and the importance of that career. She thought, You know, this is such an opportunity to bring all the engineering societies together. There are so many of them Yvette, you know this there's like pages and pages of acronyms of the type of engineering that you could be civil engineer, mechanical engineer, electrical, biomedical. There's so many. And that message of what an engineer is and what we do got why. So she thought, let's focus on what we call the Big E, just engineering in general, bring all those societies together and start talking about how engineers at their core are problem solvers. And she recognized if we could introduce students early on and get them excited about it, then we wouldn't be in this situation where people weren't aware of what they do. So she kind of, through that thought process, created this Discover Engineering Coalition, and the first chart of the coalition was to get engineers and professionals and technicians and technologists into classrooms and start talking early about what they do and get kids excited about it. And over the years, that's what we learned work that is sort of that magic formula of if you reach kids early and that's what we do, get in as early as kindergarten and you get it and you talk with a student, their teacher, and you have that professional, that engineer, stem professional, and they're around a fun, engaging activity. It's parks in Kansas, complete with transformational experience for them. And so we kind of realized early, that's the secret. That's the magic of getting people excited about engineering.

08:26 DR. YEP: 
I will say I remember when the organization was Discover Engineering as opposed to DiscoverE. So I do go back pretty far and I'm probably dating myself a bit here. But hey, I don't care. But I wanted to say, and you brought it up just now. This is one of the first places where I really heard the mantra repeated and really reinforced, and that is that engineers are problem solvers. I think it was an eight week theme one year back in the 90s, and that was one that really stood out to me. Engineers are problem solvers, and I've adapted that a bit more recently in my work to say we can't forget about the rest of that sentence. And that is, we solve problems for people, and if we're doing it well, we solve problems with people. And so that's one of the reasons why I think what DiscoverE has been doing over the past several years. And I would say even going back a couple of decades with the first introduce a girl to engineering efforts all the way till now, where you're really strongly emphasizing the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in engineering. So providing resources to help teachers to teach more inclusively, but also to think about the impacts of engineering, design and the need for. For justice, equity, diversity and inclusion in engineering design, so I guess I want to talk about that a little bit, and I don't know if that might be within the context of this year's theme, which is reimagining the possible. And I always love the themes. I don't know where you'll come up with these. Maybe that's a whole nother conversation, but just on your home page. And if anybody's interested, they can go to discover E dot org and see a bunch of information there. But right there, front and center on the home page. Diversity, equity and inclusion. Together, we can achieve great things. So tell us a little bit about the DiscoverE, approach and commitment to DEI.

10:46 RENZETTI: 
Absolutely. When we really started this, one of those things we recognized early on was that this is, you know, this is a big problem and it's not something that one organization is going to solve. There's 15 million students in public schools today, just in the US, and that's just students from K through 12. And we're also talking to professionals and we're talking to higher ED. So we believe this is sort of a coalition effort. We all have to work together to be reaching these students. And the other side of that is we believe in open access. One of our objective is to reach within the next three years 10 million students, and we really want to be reaching all students that are underrepresented, underserved everyone. That's that's a big commitment, and we recognize that we need to work collectively as a coalition. And that's what makes DiscoverE a little bit different. So we work with the Society of Hispanic Engineers. We work with the National Society of Black Engineers. We work with the Society of Women Engineers. We also are working with civil and mechanical societies and corporate companies that are really focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. So we try to bring everyone together so that we're really moving that needle and getting kids interested early and then supporting them throughout their educational career and then their professional lives. 

12:26 RENZETTI: 
One of the things that we hear a lot is that when we talk to women, especially women of color, and they're already in their professional career, well, we're asking them, so, you know, how did you get there? It's that's a hard journey. There's probably 22 percent women represented in engineering, and when you get to women of color, that gets even smaller. So we wanted to know, how did you actually get there? And I would say probably 100 percent. Every single one talks about something that happened early on, probably in grade school. And they had this amazing experience. Sometimes it was in the classroom. Like I said, they had some engineers came in and did some fun things with them or it was after school or it was one teacher or one parent just said, you know, you should pursue that or you should pursue engineering. And that resonates over and over and over. And even when I was on a call the other day talking to somebody who was young in her career, she was asking me questions about DiscoverE. And I said that same story and I could see on her face. She immediately thought of her one story of one thing that happened to her. She thought of her teacher or her friend or her engineer that came in the class. And I could just tell immediately that everyone has that story. And that's so important. And we've we talk about that a lot when we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion to really think about how can you be that role model? How can you be that mentor or how can you be that ally for an underrepresented or underserved population? And we also want to make sure everything is accessible all the time. So everything on our website, because you did just mention our website is completely free and accessible and we want people to use it.

14:27 DR. YEP: 
Absolutely. And I'm glad you brought up women of color in particular and what a lot of our experiences have been. And you're right, I can, as you were talking, I thought back and I've shared this a number of times to how I ended up in engineering because it certainly wasn't my counselors or my teachers encouraging me to do so was my mom, Geraldine Jackson, who who said, You know what? You should try this engineering. And then I had great faculty members like Huey Lawson and Edgar Blevins. At Southern University, who wouldn't let me give up when I went to their office crying because it got so doggone hard some time and and just just the myriad of things there were that felt like they were coming against me, that, you know, I thought, Oh my goodness, how am I going to get through this? I remember Professor Blevins letting me come in his office, handing me a Kleenex, letting me cry it out. And then it was like, OK, so now what are you going to do? And so I went and literally would not let me quit. And it takes a lot of times and not all the time, but it takes sometimes having those really strong people and strong supports in your corner to be able to do that. And the other part that you said is how we can all be mentors. One thing that I've built my career, my efforts on is How can I be Geraldine Jackson for someone else who does not have Geraldine Jackson at home telling them what they can do instead of what they can't do? Letting them know that there's nothing that's outside of their reach. If it's something that they want to do and really looking at how we can bring out for people and with people the assets that they bring to the table. I think so many times when folks see people of color or women of color or, like me, a wheelchair user or somebody that's quote unquote different, that there's this perception that there's something lacking and it couldn't be further from the truth. And so really getting away from this deficit, framing around difference that doesn't align with the quote unquote norms that I'm using air quotes here, not on camera, but I'm still using my air quotes here. But things that don't align with the norms are things that we perceive as different. We've got to get out of this mentality is viewing them as deficit and really recognizing that everybody brings assets to the table. And while it is wonderful and I love being a woman of color who's also a disabled engineer and I love being able to mentor people who look like me, people who identify as I do, we have to also recognize that it's not all on us to do all this mentoring. It's not all on us. You know, we all have to be able to pull our do our part and to to pull our weight in this space. And that's regardless of identity. And again, it's not about trying to save anyone or fix some deficit that they have. It's about making sure our academic environments are workplace environments are equitable and inclusive so that everybody has a fair chance to succeed and do well and to really shine like so many of us do. But it's often just really dampened. So I really love that you do that. And then the accessibility part accessible in terms of your open access resources, which I've loved from the very beginning. I used to do a whole lot of hands on outreach activities from very early in my career until very recently. And so just being able to say, you know what, I need an environmental engineering type project because I'm going to go talk to some kids about environmental engineering being able to have that resource that I don't have to try to figure out what I'm going to say, what I'm going to do, how many of this will I need and how much of that will I need? Somebody thought about it and packaged it neatly and presented the context in a way that makes sense for a sixth grader or a third grader, or what have you. And so I love those resources,

18:54 RENZETTI: 
You know, and I think you bring up a really good point. People want to help. They want to be allies. You're right, I shouldn't rest on one certain group like you were saying, you know, I'm a I'm all of us should be out there doing it, and you brought up a really good point. A lot of people are saying, Well, how do I do it? I hear you. I want to do this, but I don't know how. And that's another way that DiscoverE can come in and sort of help with that process. Because, you know, our website, if you are going to go to DiscoverE that word, we have a whole section and it's on volunteering and it walks you through, OK, here's how you talk to teachers. Here's how you meet them. Here's how you can go in a classroom. And like you said, what grade level are you going to? And then we have all these activities based on you can store it. You can filter by agreeing or how long you have or materials and all the materials and our activities are things you can pretty much find at home. It's not expensive. We didn't want any barriers with the things that. We were providing we wanted anyone to be able to do exactly what you said and go, I mean, you don't even have to be an engineer or a sound professional, you could just be, as we call it, an enthusiast and just go in and bring these activities to the kids and you'll be amazed when you see their faces. It's just like, Wow. Because it's not even an engineering. We use that term because we know where where these activities can lead. But it's really that engineering design process and it build confidence. It's this idea. I owe this problem. We're not we're not showing them how to do it. We give the kids a problem, right? And and we're like, here, build this racecar out of popsicle sticks, or here's aluminum foil and ice cube and some other supplies out of your closet. How do you keep the ice cube from, you know, not melting. It's and kids are like, Look at you at first and you're like, what? And then when they actually start trying to figure it out, you know, first, they might get frustrated and sometimes they get mad at you. But then they're like, Oh my gosh, I can do this, I can figure it out. And then that light bulb goes off and they realize I just solved this huge problem and and it goes from there in their academic career, all the way up into college.

21:24 DR. YEP:
 And that creativity, I think so often we stifle creativity. And I know when I taught freshman engineering courses, I should say first year engineering courses. I stressed to students that when we're trying to articulate a problem, we can't throw a solution out in the middle of the problem statement. That's that's not good design. What is the problem at the very root level that we're trying to solve without trying to make any assumptions at this point, without throwing any solutions in the mix? What is it we're trying to do? And I remember doing an activity. I think it was middle schoolers. I can't remember what the problem was, but I know that they had to design something that would go across the room and do something. I can't remember what it was, but it would involve paper and I can't remember what other supplies we we gave them. At the end, there was a student who basically balled up their sheet of paper and did something else. And when it was their turn to go, they threw it across the room and whatever. It was the simplest thing, but it did what it was supposed to do. Everybody else was trying to figure out all of these overly complicated contraptions and cut this and fold this and do this and that. And they were like, Well, you know what, if I just ball up this piece of paper and I do this, that and the other it I can do, but and they met the requirements. So it's that sort of thing. How do we think differently? And it's always very exciting because you get to see, first of all, there are different approaches to things. There's no one right answer. You know, everybody can be right and have completely different approaches to things. And so it is very exciting to see those light bulbs go off, as you described. 

23:20 DR. YEP:
 So I do want to go back before we get too far away from it because you said something earlier about you don't have to be an engineer to do what we're talking about here. And that's one thing I find interesting about you. You're not an engineer yet. You have this phenomenal role with this phenomenal organization. Make the connections for us. Connect the dots for us. How did you get here?

23:47 RENZETTI: 
Yes, we are. We know places we didn't expect, right? Yeah, my background is not engineering. I know my father was is a retired civil engineer. My mother is a retired school teacher. So, you know, when I took this job, my sister was, she's like, Oh, it'll be like our kitchen table.

24:04 DR. YEP:
 I was about to say, You're combining your parents!

24:07 RENZETTI: 
Right? Yeah. No. And what's thrilling about Discover Engineering and what we are doing is that it is exactly what you study that I am fascinated with reaching kids, reaching them early and building their confidence. I think it's it's so inspiring. I've always been in nonprofit work, most in my years prior to DiscoverE was in health care, though. But then in my personal life, I got involved with an organization that funded programs that were supporting girls and women in STEM. So that was kind of my nonprofit life with my volunteer life kind of merged together in this job. Plus, my personal life was, you know, growing up with an engineer and then having a mom who was a schoolteacher. So it all kind of. Came together, and the other part that I love about this job is that there's so much opportunity in a STEM career, even if we don't do the STEM career just to being able to think like an engineer provides the competence in kids and adults. But speaking specifically, if, if, if kids are introduced early and it's it's early in kindergarten and they're interested and have that support network all the way through their academic career and they stay in STEM and and go get an engineering degree, you know, we're really focused on reaching those underserved, underrepresented students in engineering careers on average pay more than any other job. So talk about a way to get kids out of low income and get them into a higher income profession. I mean, that is a huge opportunity. And a lot of times, you know, the number one reason you hear that people didn't go into engineering is they weren't aware of it, that they didn't know it existed right or they did it and someone telling them, Hey, you should pursue this. And you know, one of the statistics we have is that like eight out of 10 teachers say that they don't have an opportunity to bring a STEM professional or an engineer into the classroom when they are able to do it. Between eighty five and then the low 90 percent of students say it did change their idea of what professions they might pursue, and they and they are much more interested in engineering. So it's so powerful, but we need more opportunities. And that's why Engineers Week is so important because it millions and millions who google it and see how many people celebrate engineers week. It's in the, you know, it's millions and that's what we need. And we we kind of use that week as sort of a rallying cry to get more people out there in those classrooms talking to kids because that's what's transformative is just that introduction. It could be so simple, but it's that early on, an introduction can change the trajectory for a student's life.

27:33 DR. YEP:
 Absolutely. And you mentioned that a large fraction of teachers say they don't have the opportunity to bring engineers into the classroom. Tell me a bit more about that. Is it because of not being connected to engineers? Is it a limited time? I know a lot of teachers have to kind of be forced to teach to a test practically. So is it a lack of time and flexibility? Is it lack of access to engineers? What what are you seeing there?

28:01 RENZETTI: 
It's all of the above. So a lot of tools that are out there, DiscoverE, we're not the only one. There's so many now do recognize the importance of all the activities or the programs that they put together, depending on, you know, the school districts across the US to make sure it meets standards so that the teachers don't have that hurdle. But you're right, they need to be connected to the engineering community and finding engineers and companies that will partner with them and then having having the time. So we've been talking a lot about that as well. How do we support as DiscoverE teachers who are trying to implement these programs and maybe a stipend? Or is it connecting them to companies? They're trying to figure out where those barriers and how can we be supporting them for us? Early on, we recognized funding is a barrier, so that's where everything on our site is completely free so that you can download it. And and we, you know, we try and like you said, package, it's so simple and easy to follow so that they can if they've got that extra 20 minutes in the class and they can do an activity. The other thing that we do is chat with changemakers. So I don't know if that's relatively new. I'm not sure if you've been able to participate or have seen it so that we do. We have a high school student out of Houston, Texas, who interview, Yeah, she's out of Texas where you are, and she interviews an engineer. We do it live monthly at short and then teachers. We have over 300 classrooms. We'll tune in live and they can ask. The students can ask questions, and Tiffany will lead off the interviews. So we'll interview. I think our most popular one was, of course, as an astronaut. So a female astronaut and. I mean, that was our most popular, but then they also were recorded, so you can watch them on demand. But at the end, so it's like a 20 minute conversation and then students can send in to Tiffany their own questions. And so some of the questions are like, what's your favorite cereal? It was fun and entertaining. And then the engineer at the and we'll do a challenge activity, so we record ahead of time. She picks the activity she wants to do, and then she challenges students at the end. So after they watch it, then in their classroom, at home, they can go and do that same activity. So it's fun. So there's ways to do it where we can reach students and teachers that aren't even directly in, you know, physically in the classroom, which the pandemic is kind of why I tracked the change makers came about because we had to figure out how to be creative, how to be a problem solver and be in the classroom virtually. And that was one of our solutions.

30:58 DR. YEP: 
Yeah. And what a creative solution. And I'm sure anytime you say space or astronauts, it gets to be really exciting. I know I hosted an outreach event during the time the movie Hidden Figures came out. We got a license to do a showing of it and we brought in middle schoolers and this was when I was in Houston. And so it was very easy for me to connect to NASA there. And so one of my colleagues at NASA was able to coordinate us having folks who had actually worked on the International Space Station. And we we got a chance to have these, these middle school students who were mostly black and Hispanic or Latinx, and they were able to speak to other black and Latinx engineers and women of color engineers. And really, like you said, those light bulbs, again, it's while this I could see myself in this and just to, you know, see the videos in the of the computers and all of this stuff that goes into that and then to tie it in to something that folks were learning about for the first time, many folks about the engagement of people of color and in particular, black people in the space race, it's something that, you know, having those stories and all of those bits of inspiration. So I love that you're doing the chat with changemakers and certainly being able to pivot right because we haven't been able to do a lot of in-person outreach over the past couple of years. So having this really exciting way to engage folks and pivot to engage the teachers and the classes, I think is awesome.

32:54 RENZETTI: 
I think you've hit on something and we've been talking about it, you know, in our conversation is storytelling. And I think that's really what is so powerful about chats with changemakers. And that's the, you know, that we're reaching out to students. And you're right, we're very intentional about who we present to these students and we want to make sure they see their diversity. So, you know, the win for this week for Introduce the Girl to Engineering Day is Margaret. Dominique was from Martha and Stephanie Hernandez from Northrop Grumman, and they're two women who worked on the James Webb Telescope. And it's just, you know, I think it's so important for for people to hear their stories and they can see themselves saying, Oh, you know, if she can do it, I can do it, I think. 

33:47 RENZETTI: 
Another thing you touched on, I was on a call and we were talking to you about the issue of diversity, equity and inclusion. And it was another woman and she has a disability and she always brings that up because people forget about the disabled community and something she said really does with me. And she said, you know. The people in the disabled community, whether it's hidden or visible, are inherently innately problem solvers. They have to solve problems every single day and that is why engineering is such a good career for them. And she is she is a huge advocate. And I just had never thought of it the way that she presented it, and it was her story that really resonated. And I think that's so key for everything that we do is really sharing our own stories so that kids and even adults, you know, we we need to hear that and it makes us realize, wow, if they can do it, I can do it.

34:54 DR. YEP: 
Absolutely, and I've written and said that very statement tons of times over the years, again being disabled myself because, you know, just getting dressed in the morning for me is problem solving. So just some of the very basic things that people take for granted every day. You know, how I get my computer from one room in the house to another is a problem solving challenge when you have limited mobility in both your upper and lower extremities. So she's very correct. And like I said, that's something that I've really screamed from the mountaintops. It's how we need to be more inclusive of people with disabilities in engineering and get away from whether it's people with disabilities, people of color, women or whomever get away from it. Being a box checking exercise, recognizing that having different experiences, different backgrounds, different perspectives engaged in problem solving is critical to good engineering. And that's why when I went back to that week theme from decades ago about engineers are problem solvers, and having added to that more recently to to say that we solve problems for people, and if we're doing it, will we solve problems with people? It's recognizing that the work we do as engineers has huge societal impacts, and we cannot do a good job of it if we're only solving it with a singular lens of what the solution? The solution with my air quotes again that over here without a camera. But if we have a narrow focus on what the solution looks like because of the narrow spectrum of problem solvers, we're not going to be doing our best job for society. And so we when when I think of things, just basic things related to accessibility. 

36:59 DR. YEP:
 One of my soapboxes as Quincy likes to call it one of my soapboxes is compliant is not accessible. So just because it checks all the boxes for the ADA. or whatever your local requirements are for accessibility doesn't mean it's accessible, it's compliant and checks those boxes. But it doesn't mean that it's truly accessible. And how do we make sure that it's accessible? We engage engineers. We engage in users who have different abilities and different needs for accessibility, and that way we get those perspectives included in the problem solving. And so I mentioned in the trailer for this season how so many people look at DEI as something that's feel good. When it's not about that, it's about quality engineering design. It's about quality of life. In a lot of cases, it's life and death if we have these disparities in our society because of inequities in engineering. Sometimes people lose their lives because of it. And so we can't say we're good engineers. If we're not inclusive engineers, we can't say we're good engineers, if we're not equitable in the way that we work. And so it carries over in the thread runs throughout so many aspects of what we do as educators and as co-workers in academia and in practice and in our design and how we work with communities to have the outcomes that we need to see in society. So I've gone off on another box here. But that's definitely one. And I mentioned physical disabilities because that's the space that I live in. But as you acknowledged, there's so many invisible disabilities. And so when we think about resources, websites and things like that, everything from choice of colors to how text is presented to making sure things are screen reader friendly to making sure that text is optimized and used in a way that minimizes cognitive load. You know, there's so many things to think about with accessibility. And so I'm happy to hear you talk about how your resources are accessible in that way. And I guess one question I have is as you provide guidance for folks who are using your activities. Is there also guidance for how you make sure that those activities when they're carrying them out, that they're inclusive of all the students? Whether or not they know ahead of time if they have people with different disabilities in the room?

39:59 RENZETTI: 
Right, right. So what we do is we do work with an instructional designer, but we also have an advisory and diversity council. So the members of that council include it's, you know, we have a woman from four engineers for visible and invisible disabilities. They include groups like National Society of Black Engineers, the Hispanic Engineers. So we have a group that we turn to because, like you said, we need to be talking to the end user, the person who knows what they need and make sure that we are being inclusive in how we're designing things. So yes, we do take that into consideration and and we're really, you know, sometimes we stop and we're like, OK, we're going to go ask the Marine if we're doing this right? You know, it's sometimes of stopping and really thinking through. And as you were talking, you have so many different topics. You know that just when you're talking about the compliance and, you know, checking the box that reminded me of, I mean, it was the chief engagement officer always speaking. I think it was with Microsoft now trying to recall her name, but she was talking about that and she had a I think she's considered legally deaf. And so she was saying, we have to have at every meeting someone who is doing sign language and someone made a comment about the budget in the line item in the budget. And she and she said, I thought, this is the best comment she's like. It should always be in the budget because we are trying to reach everybody. And there are people with hearing disabilities and in that everybody says if we want to reach everybody. It's not a line item in the budget, it's just in your budget all the time. You know, it's like it's not a check box, it's just you want to engage and reach everyone and it's going to, you know, and I think our point here was, we're a major company. If we can't reach everyone, then what are we doing here?

42:20 DR. YEP:
 Exactly, exactly. And the other thing that I point out to people and I remember having this conversation when ABET was having listening sessions that were about whether or not to include aspects of DEI into the criteria that they use to evaluate engineering programs. We're having a discussion about where it should be, if it should be, how it should be and so forth. And one of the points I made during that time was disability is something that can happen to anyone at any given moment of time. There, I think, is a misconception that a lot of folks have not everyone, but a lot. A lot of folks have the misconception that people are always born with disabilities. And while there are people like me who are, there are numerous people who have disability onset at different points in life. So age of onset of disability can vary. And so what I was stressing to this particular group was that disability is something that can happen to any of us at any time. God forbid it does, and also to any of our loved ones that I ask them to stop and take a minute to think about how satisfied they would be with their opportunities to engage being limited or If you think about your children or anybody that you care about, how much would you want their opportunities to engage to be limited because of a disability? When somebody can do something to make sure it's accessible and it really shed it shed a different light on things because a lot of times.

44:02 RENZETTI: 
Yeah, that's very powerful. Yeah.

44:05 DR. YEP: 
Because when you haven't had somebody close to you that's impacted in this way or you haven't been impacted in this way, sometimes the disconnect is there and it's hard to see. But when you take that time to reflect and you know, that goes into the whole conversation around empathy, just being able to reflect and say, OK, what if it was me? What if it was somebody I cared about? Then what?

44:30 RENZETTI: 
And I think that's one of our efforts is again, going back to storytelling and conversation is we do have on our site we recorded and I actually Dr. Mike was the one who sort of facilitated the conversation. It was about how do you create diversity, equity and inclusion and how do you create that in the workplace for engineers? What does that look like? And we had on three different engineers talking about their experiences. One was Latinx, the other was African-American and the other had a hidden disability. And again, a lot of them talked about having someone in their lives in grade school that encouraged them to pursue, and others also had mentors and allies when they actually were in their career. Mm hmm. Because you're right, it's tough. It's really it can be really hard when you feel like you're quote-unquote doing your aircraft, right?

45:34 DR. YEP:
 Yeah, exactly. And you know, I talked about this a bit on our last episode of season three with a good friend who has an invisible disability. But if we could just get people to understand that being different is just normal. It's just different. It's not, you know, it's not some, you know, I remember in my childhood just being othered so much because of my disability kids not wanting to touch my hand because, you know, I can't open my right hand. So the kids, if they touch my hand, they thought I was going to that they were going to not be able to open their hand like I was contagious or something. And it was so hurtful to me as a child, and I know a lot of people say it's really taboo to ask people about disabilities. But one of the things I love is, you know, a lot of times if I'm just sitting behind a desk or at a table or something, adults don't even recognize that I'm disabled, but somehow kids notice everything. I remember I was volunteering when I was in college, I was volunteering at the clinic where I used to go for therapy as a child and I wanted to just give back. And so I was sitting at the desk putting together some kind of little, creating some little games or something for the kids, for for their therapy sessions. And I remember this little, this little kid walking in and saying, what's wrong with your hand? And most times adults would never even recognize it, but kids see everything. And you know, when I was at NSF, I lived in a in an apartment building and there was a little kid. I remember his name so well, Dominique, I don't know if Dominique's parents are listening, but he was a little kid and he used to just be fascinated by me being on my mobility scooter. And he used to say, You know, you want to race, I can beat you and you know. And I just thought, Let's have our races in the lobby. Yeah, let's go for it. And at first, his mom was like, Oh, don't Dominique, don't say that, but I'm like, No, I want to have these conversations with kids, because maybe they won't be the bullies that I experienced when I was growing up. And so if they understand at a young age that this is just different and it's OK, you know, it's OK that somebody has to use a wheelchair and maybe not be able to walk like me, it doesn't make them less than me or are something else. It's just different. And so being able to teach it when you're talking about the DiscoverE lessons and having lessons that are created in a way to include kids with all kinds of disabilities and differences, I think is not only inclusive of them, but I think it can help to exemplify what equity and inclusion look like so that the next generation of kids coming up sees different as normal. Mm hmm.

48:52 RENZETTI: 
Right. So it's sort of I think of it as like seeing two sides of the coin right. Like if you're only going to see one side, you're missing out on the other side and say sometimes like, we have to flip things and be like, Oh, yeah, I didn't think of it that way. You know, we just have to sort of sometimes step back and get out of our own narrow perspective on things and just broaden it a little. You know, one of the things that we did and that was, you know, there's so much conversation focused on why on why girls, why women aren't pursuing STEM. And it was always on that one side of the coin and we were like, Well, let's flip it. Let's look at the ones who are pursuing it, who are taking the classes, the girls who are doing it, and the women who are staying in their careers past five years and ask why. So it's kind of that like that kid, the curiosity. I asked the why, but let's also flip it to the other side of the coin and go in that direction. You know, I think about this a little bit differently and news and you can learn so much. So why? Yeah, it's kind of like, why shut down when you see somebody who's different and be like that little boy and be curious and learn. And then you just have a broader perspective on everything

50:18 DR. YEP: 
And have a race in the lobby

50:21 RENZETTI: 
And you have to race in the lobby.

50:23 DR. YEP: 
Yes, yes. But you know what something else you said about flipping the way the questions are asked and it goes back to what I was saying before about the deficit framing around difference. And that is, we're always trying to figure out how to fix people because something's broken. So let's figure out what's broken so we can try to fix it. And when we focus that on people, we miss it. What we need to do when we're looking at, we need to look at what's broken and fix it. We need to be looking at our organizations. We need to be looking at our policies, our practices, our systems. On the flip side, we need to do exactly what you're saying. We see a whole bunch of folks who are successful. Let's figure out what, what work, what is it, you know, so that you're looking at the assets. Look at these black women engineering PhDs, look at these disabled Ph.D. engineers, or practicing engineers or what have you and find out what's behind your success. And again, not in a way that we don't expect you to be successful because I've I've heard that too are I've gotten those looks. If somebody ask you, what do you do when you say I'm an engineer, they look at you and you're like, OK, what part of my identity surprises you when I give you that answer? So I'm not saying do it in that way, but let's look at our systems as the things that need to be fixed and not the people.

51:57 RENZETTI: 
Right? You're absolutely right. And I think, you know, I'm hoping that people are now starting to see things. Frankly, I think we chatted prior to the show about the George Floyd murder and how that really opened a lot of people's eyes and, you know, at DiscoverE, where equity and inclusion was kind of baked into everything we were doing. And when that happened, we realized, Wow, we need, we need to even up our game like we were. We saw it too, as a way to leverage and really speak out more. But we were feeling it's always been in our DNA because I've always thought we trying to do. But I don't know. We were talking about that earlier that it just seemed like it was a turning point, and I really hope it is the turning point. We feel it is because it's such an opportunity for us to really now change things at that system level. Because that's where it has to start happening, right?

53:02 DR. YEP: 
And again, to get it away from box checking to say, OK, yeah, we're going to have more efforts to bring in more women, more minorities, more people who are LGBTQ, more people with disabilities and so forth. But to recognize that it does no good to bring in people who are different if your system is going to take them, if it's going to drive them out, if it's going to destroy them physically, mentally, emotionally and otherwise. And so again, it goes to how can we make sure that our organizations, our academic institutions, our companies our places that are equitable, inclusive, that are conducive to everyone's success. And the hope is that it's not about checking boxes to say, Yeah, we have a Oh, I'll use myself. I like using myself an example, so I'm not talking about other people. So we have Yvette so we can check three diversity boxes. So we're good. You know, it's it's getting beyond that. And again, going to recognize, yes, we do want identities present that are representative of society. But it goes beyond that because what's important is that we have those perspectives present because we're going to have better societal outcomes from our work if we do things in the right way.

54:38 RENZETTI:
 So I think, you know, you hit on a really good point, and it's that idea of, okay, well, just, you know, we need more diversity, we need more women. We're going to put everybody in there and stir and think it's going to be good

54:52 DR. YEP: 
 Right.

54:52 RENZETTI: 
And then the statistic the data shows, you know, women leave within five years. Engineering careers can still bring them all together. It doesn't, doesn't work. You know, since we're talking about women, it's also fascinating. Melinda Gates' book talks a lot about that and having more women in in the decision making in the workforce, in politics, making policy has shown, and this is in the data that everyone benefit more. So it's really fascinating when you see this in the data. So it's not like it's anecdotal. So it is in everyone's best interests for us to have a diverse workforce and to think about things differently. I mean, what the United States is, the only one that doesn't have paid family leave kind of makes you wonder, right? So everyone benefits when we have diversity and everything that we're absolutely in.

55:51 DR. YEP: 
The same thing goes with when we're talking about making teaching and learning more accessible. It's not just benefiting the students who have disabilities, it's benefiting everyone. And so it's not about, you know, I've heard people go so far as to say, well, it's not fair for a student with a disability to get an accommodation. It's not fair to the other students. And I'm like, What are you even thinking? You know, it's like, what twisted world do you live in to even have to be to be able to process something in that way? It's just, Oh, that's why we do this podcast. We're trying to help open some eyes in cases where the eyes need to be open, shed some light on some things from the perspective of folks who have various identities and also to really shed light on. OK, now I now I see there's a problem now. What do I do and how can I do better? And I think DiscoverE is a big part of that and being able to help folks to engage in a. Meaningful way in an equitable and inclusive way with hopefully will be generations of future engineers, so we're almost out of time is hard to believe, but I do want to. I know we've mentioned the web site DiscoverE and on our engineering change website, we're going to have some links to your resources. But I want to just give you an opportunity to share with folks because you've mentioned a number of different stakeholders and regardless of what stakeholder identity they represent, I want our audience to know how they can connect with DiscoverE if they want to be sponsors, if they are practicing engineers looking to have outreach or if their students are faculty in college looking for outreach activities. Are there their K-12 stem teachers looking to try to connect with engineers are engineering students for outreach. How do they how do they get involved with DiscoverE?

58:10 RENZETTI: 
The website is the best way we just relaunched it and November of 2021. And so there is so many, there's so many resources and you can join the coalition that way. But whether you know, whether you're a volunteer or a teacher or student, the site kind of walks you through. So it's pretty easy to figure out where you should be on the site. So if you're looking for activities to go in a classroom or if you're if you're at home as a as a kid and you want something fun to do, they're all there. And then everything that we've talked about how to be a volunteer is on there. There's a whole section for teachers and educators and sort of how to how to teach the engineering design process. Not something that that you can just pick up and know in an engineering design process. You can walk you through it step by step. So it doesn't seem so overwhelming. Just there's just lots of ways to interact on that site and you can email us to. There's ways to reach out to us and ask us questions. That's why we built the site. We designed it that way. We want people to use it. We've had organizations take our activities and create a whole summer camp programs around them. So it is really designed. Yeah, it is really designed for turnkey. There's packages there you can just grab and use immediately. So that's I'm hoping that people will go and really dig in and find whatever resources they need. That's why it's there.

59:43 DR. YEP: 
Awesome. Well, Kathy, I thank you so much for taking time to be with us today to kick off season four. Happy engineers week to you and to your team. And we just look forward to great things to come and hopefully we can connect again in the future.

01:00:03 RENZETTI: 
That'll be great. Thank you so much for having me Yvette I really enjoyed it.

01:00:06 DR. YEP: 
Same here. Take care.

01:00:09 ANNOUNCER: 
Thank you for joining us for Engineering Change. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to our podcast and visit engineeringchangepodcast.com to connect with the people and resources mentioned on the show. Until next time, remember the best way to change engineering is by Engineering Change.