Forbes features Wei LAB project building pathways to inclusion in engineering
May 30, 2024 | By School of Education Communications
Brian Burt is an ELPA associate professor and director of the Wei LAB at WCER.
A project out of Wisconsin’s Equity and Inclusion Laboratory (Wei LAB) that aims to more fully engage women and people of color in engineering was featured in a recent Forbes article that is headlined, “REVIIS and the Path to Inclusive Engineering.”
UW–Madison’s Brian Burt, an associate professor in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis and director of the Wei LAB at WCER, is the principal investigator of the project, titled Raising Equity Values with the Inclusive Professional Framework and ISO DEI Standards for Societies (REVIIS).
Burt and his diverse team of organizational change leaders and engineering professional society leaders recently received a $1.25 million grant from the National Science Foundation for the project, which aims to increase diverse engineers’ access to and inclusion in professional engineering societies and engineering more broadly.
Speaking about why this is important, Burt says, “Disciplinary excellence is only as good as those contributing to the discipline. Engineering has historically been a domain in which a narrow population of people contribute. This myopic lens influences the nature of problems identified and addressed, and how efficiently and effectively problems are solved.”
Notes the article: “The Wei LAB team believes that as the nation and world encounter more challenges, all engineering talent is needed to craft the best solutions.”
As Burt shared, “Standardization of processes that promote engagement by all engineering minds is instrumental for U.S. global competitiveness, and current and future global engineering success.”
To learn more, read the full article in Forbes. Read this for more information about the REVIIS project.
