I'm going to do my best to summarize this talk I was able to attend last week, by Dr. Julie Martin Trenor (Clemson University) , on social capital. It relates to engineering education in my opinion as another form of including diversity. I know in the US there is a big role of "who you know" and how it helps to determine the mobility of your career. I never thought of it in terms of my decision to choose engineering as major.
In Nigeria, as I have said before, there is a bit of a taboo on not choosing to pursue a degrees within engineering, law or medicine. Ironically there were not many people who knew what engineering was and for me I don't think there were any immediate members in my network employed as an engineer. Growing up most people were doing something in the medical field or law. I recall being asked several times by some family friends when would I expect to complete my nursing degree during my undergraduate education.
But I guess having that taboo gave me some social influence from the Nigerian community we lived in to pursue engineering. I also had my parents , teachers who made science fun and a family friend who help me to complete my first science project in seventh grade: The effect of light intensity on plant growth.
For those who were unable to come maybe you too can reflect on the social capital you had in influencing your decision to become a engineer.
It was a very interesting talk and I am glad I was able to participate. Most of the information below was provided in the Facebook site I highlighted above.
What is social capital:
Social capital is defined in this work as “an additional pool of resources embedded in the social networks of individuals, which can help to achieve individual goals in conjunction with, or instead of, personal resources” (Van Der Gaag, 2005).(1)
There can be strong and week ties:
Strong Ties: Are people you have a close relationship with and are probable in regular contact with
Weak Ties: Are individuals that you interact with and exchange information with but do not form any personal bonds too.
Both types can be considered an asset to an individuals social capitol.
Questions that she had us review:
1. List the tope three people who were influential in your decision to become an engineer and how long have you known them.
2. If you think further can you think of incident where someone was helpful to helping with at engineering concept, getting related material etc.
These questions where given to us to help us understand what types of individuals were influential in helping people understand engineering and deciding to become engineers. The second question is to probe further to see if there are additional individuals that do not immediately come to mind with asked to list people who immediately come to mind with the first question.
Why understand this:
"The specific goals of this project are to (1) build a conceptual model for understanding how engineering undergraduates develop, access and activate social capital in making academic and career decisions, (2) identify and characterize the potentially distinct mechanisms by which under-represented students utilize social ties that link them to resources related to engineering studies and (3) implement an education plan that provides research-to-practice training for university engineering outreach, recruitment, and retention practitioners using webinars and workshops as learning forums" (2)
(1) van der Gaag, M. (2005). Measurement of individual social capital, F&N Boekservices.
