Preparing a Diversity Statement - An Introduction to Diversity Issues for Future Faculty

While the diversity in engineering classrooms strives to mirror the diversity of the society at large, our future engineering faculty are not explicitly prepared to deal with it.Using a mixed data approach, this paper describes how a writing exercise (preparing a diversity statement) and the associated peer-review discussion expanded the definition of diversity and the plans to address it in academia for two groups of participants in the Engineering Teaching Portfolio Program at University of Florida.Results of a follow up interview four years after graduation are also presented.Overall, the exercise proved to be an effective but low-cost modality of introducing future engineering faculty to issues of diversity in the classroom.