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Research

We categorize our research into four strands:

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  • Academic well-being in engineering faculty

  • Professional shame

  • Quality in interpretive research

  • Personal identities in professional settings

 

All of these strands are designed to achieve an in-depth understanding of the personal and often hidden experiences of professionals, students, and faculty. By understanding the whole person in professional education and workplaces, we better equip them to facilitate care toward themselves and others in their professional contexts. We also advance the culture of education and workplaces to better facilitate positive personal experiences. 

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Advancing academic well-being in engineering faculty

Engineering faculty are powerfully influential to students as they come to understand what it means to be engineers. While numerous studies in engineering education research have provided recommendations for faculty, rarely do we understand the human experiences of faculty themselves. In this National Science Foundation CAREER project, we are driven to answer the following research questions:

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  • How do faculty individually experience professional shame? How do faculty behave in ways that might affect the shame experiences of students?

  • How do localized cultures of engineering education interact with and influence shame experiences?

  • How can university leadership facilitate practices that promote healthy emotion regulation?

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Related Research Grants: 

  • CAREER: Advancing academic cultures of well-being by understanding professional experiences of engineering faculty. NSF Award #2045392

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Professional shame

Professional shame is "the painful emotional state that occurs when one perceives they have failed to meet socially constructed expectations or standards that are relevant to their identity in a professional domain" (Huff et al., 2021). It is an emotional state that we all encounter and are driven to keep beneath the surface of our interactions with others. While professional shame is a normal emotion that every professional experiences, we may cope with the emotion by acting out in ways that work against our own well-being and the well-being of the cultures around us. By understanding how we manage this common emotional state, we may better understand how to advance personal well-being and equitable and just cultures in engineering professions and beyond.

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Our work began by understanding how engineering students have experienced this emotional state, but we continue to expand our understanding by studying the lived experiences of other kinds of professionals, such as pre-professional accountants and engineering faculty.

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Related Research Grants:

  • CAREER: Advancing academic cultures of well-being by understanding professional experiences of engineering faculty.
    NSF Award #2045392

  • RFE: Inclusion, exclusion, and socialization in engineering programs - Investigating key affective socio-psychological mechanisms in professional formation.
    NSF Award #1752897

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Select Publications:

  • Huff, J. L., Okai, B., Shanachilubwa, K., Sochacka, N. W., & Walther, J. (2021). Unpacking professional shame: Patterns of White male engineering students live in and out of threats to their identities. Journal of Engineering Education, 110(2), 414-436. https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20381

  • Secules, S., Sochacka, N. W., Huff, J. L., & Walther, J. (2021). The social construction of professional shame for undergraduate engineering students. Journal of Engineering Education, 110(4), 861-884. https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20419

  • Kamanda, H., Walther, J., Wilson, D., Sochacka, N. W., & Huff, J. L. (2022). Professional engineering socialization at the intersection of collective constructions of expectations and individual shame experiences. Studies in Engineering Education, 3(1), 1-27. http://doi.org/10.21061/see.83

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Quality in interpretive research

Our work is primarily informed by interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), a highly in-depth qualitative research method designed to guide researchers as they understand the personal, lived experiences of individuals. In IPA, we walk alongside those who participate in our studies to organize our thinking about complex psychological experiences.

 

From an IPA perspective, we regularly produce publications and conduct workshops that guide researchers into upholding qualitative, interpretive research methods with a commitment to excellence.

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Related Research Grants:​

  • CAREER: Advancing academic cultures of well-being by understanding professional experiences of engineering faculty.
    NSF Award #2045392

  • Collaborative Research: Understanding and Improving Design Activity Engagement in the Engineering Capstone Experience.
    NSF Award #2138106

  • Inclusion, exclusion, and socialization in engineering programs - Investigating key affective socio-psychological mechanisms in professional formation.
    NSF Award #1752897

  • From Dualism to Integration: Investigating Development of Engineering Students' Social and Technical Perceptions
    NSF Award #1329225

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Select Publications:

  • Brooks, A. L., & Huff, J. L (2023, June 25-28). Evaluating the quality of interviews with a process-based, self-reflective tool [Paper presentation]. American Society for Engineering Education Conference, Baltimore, MD, United States. https://peer.asee.org/43453

  • Huff, J. L., Walther, J., Sochacka, N. W., Sharbine, M. B., & Kamanda, H. (2020). Coupling methodological commitments to make sense of socio-psychological experience. Studies in Engineering Education, 1(2), 1-13. http://doi.org/10.21061/see.29

  • Kirn, A., Huff, J. L., Godwin, A., Ross, M., & Cass, C. (2019). Exploring tensions of using interpretative phenomenological analysis in a domain with conflicting cultural practices. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 16(2), 305-324. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2018.1563270

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Personal identities in professional settings

People are complex and have robust lives that go beyond what they do at work or school. When we study the identities of individuals who take part in engineering professions, we regard them as whole people who are making sense of identities that lies beyond their professional domain. In this strand of research, we consider how peoples' engagement with the question of "Who am I?" may affect how they think, feel, and behave in professional settings in ways that are surprising.

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Related Research Grants:

  • Collaborative Research: Understanding and Improving Design Activity Engagement in the Engineering Capstone Experience.
    NSF Award #2138106

  • From Dualism to Integration: Investigating Development of Engineering Students' Social and Technical Perceptions
    NSF Award #1329225

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Select Publications:

  • Huff, J. L., & Ross, M. (2023). Advancing an integrative perspective of identity in engineering education. In A. Johri (Ed.), International Handbook of Engineering Education (pp. 183-198). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003287483-11

  • Huff, J. L., Smith, J. A., Jesiek, B. K., Zoltowski, C. B., & Oakes, W. C. (2019). Identity in engineering adulthood: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of early-career engineers in the United States as they transition to the workplace. Emerging Adulthood, 7(6), 451-467. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167696818780444 

  • Ross, M. Huff, J. L., & Godwin, A. (2021). Resilient engineering identity development critical to prolonged engagement of Black women in engineering. Journal of Engineering Education, 110(1), 92-113. https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20374

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