Grant Recipients
Jenny Howcroft, Systems Design and Engineering
Kate Mercer, Library
(Project timeline: January 2026 - June 2027)
Description
Empathy skills are important in STEM as a skill advances interpersonal communication, teamwork, and leadership. In engineering, empathy also supports strong design. Empathy is an increasingly vital and future-proof skill as it is not replicable by GenAI. However, STEM instructors self-identify as lacking the ability to teach empathy, especially in engineering where empathy skill development is not traditionally associated with the field.
This project will evaluate the effectiveness of two empathy workshop formats:
- An instructor-focused empathy workshop to enable instructors to integrate empathy skill development in their own courses and
- A student-focused empathy workshop to increase student empathy skills.
Pre-post surveys will be used to evaluate the workshops. Key indicators of success for instructors would be self-perceived increase in importance of teaching empathy, ability to teach, and interest in teaching. Key indicator of success for students would be an increased awareness of professional benefits of empathy skills.
Research Questions
- Develop and implement instructor-focused and student-focused empathy workshops.
- Enable instructors to implement empathy-focused instruction in their own courses.
- Does participation in an empathy workshop increase instructors’ perceptions of the importance of teaching empathy?
- Does participation in an empathy workshop increase instructors’ ability to teach empathy?
- Does participation in an empathy workshop increase instructors’ interest in teaching empathy?
- Do changes in instructors’ perceptions, ability, and interest depend on their own self-perceived empathy skills as measured through the Interpersonal Reactivity Index or demographic factors?
- Advance students’ empathy skills.
- Does participation in an empathy workshop increase students’ awareness of the professional benefits of empathy skills?
- Does participation in an empathy workshop increase students’ empathy skill development?
- Do changes in students’ awareness and skill development depend on their own self-perceived empathy skills as measured through the Interpersonal Reactivity Index or demographic factors?