What does it take to build an engineering education system where both students and faculty can thrive? In this episode of All Things STEM, host Dr. Frank A. Gomez welcomes Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen, Assistant Professor of Engineering Education at Cal State LA, for a thought-provoking conversation about faculty workload, educational equity, student success, and institutional change. Dr. Bowen discusses the challenges of balancing teaching, research, and student mentorship while examining how traditional educational structures can create barriers for students and faculty alike. The conversation explores innovative approaches to engineering education, including the Eco-STEM initiative, student-led research, and the importance of building more inclusive and supportive learning environments. Together, they consider how higher education can move beyond traditional models to create meaningful opportunities for students, empower faculty, and prepare future engineers to make a positive impact on society.
In This Episode:
Episode Chapters:
Featured Guest
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen
Assistant Professor of Engineering Education
California State University, Los Angeles
Host
Dr. Frank A. Gomez
All Things STEM | Executive Director, CSU STEM-NET
About All Things STEM
All Things STEM explores research, education, innovation, and the people shaping the future of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics across the California State University system and beyond.
Speak audio
Title: September Podcast_mixdown
Created on: 2026-10-09 17:42:32 PM
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:00:00
Hello, I'm your host, Doctor. Frank Gomez, and this is All Things STEM. Welcome to All Things STEM. Today we are joined by Doctor.Corin Corey Bowen, Assistant Professor of Engineering Education at Cal State LA. Doctor.Bowen's work examines how engineering education can become more student centered, equitable, ethical, and responsive to the realities students and faculty face.Her research explores marginalized student experiences, equity gaps, macro ethics and engineering, sociotechnical learning, and institutional change.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:00:34
In this episode, we'll discuss faculty overload, research expectations, student success, and the systems that shape STEM education.We'll also explore why these issues matter, who they impact, and what changes are needed to better support faculty, students, and the future of engineering education. Let's dive in.So Corie, it's great to have you on today.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:00:58
Hi, thanks for having me.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:01:00
Wonderful.So over the past several years, I heard a little bit about you and some of the neat work you're doing, and one thing that I did find throughout the CSU and really across The United States is there aren't really a lot of people doing work in engineering education.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:01:15
So it's really great to have you on today.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:01:17
Yeah, thank you.I mean, I'm in the CSU where there's a lot of emphasis on teaching, so there are a lot of people who are doing engineering education work at Cal State LA, not just at Cal State LA, but in the whole CSU.But I do it in maybe a little more formal capacity than some people do.But I
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:01:36
have Yeah.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:01:37
Well, as we'll talk about, lots and lots of collaborators who do engineering education research, and there's lots of space too for more people to get involved, which is one thing that's cool about it.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:01:47
Great. So tell me a little bit about your journey into engineering education and what really makes us feel different from traditional engineering or STEM education research?
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:01:56
So the people who do work in engineering education, their research is social science research, it's not technical research.I don't go down to the lab and set up an experiment.My experimental focus is on people and how the educational system works or doesn't work or impacts people from their perspectives, which are varied and many.And everybody in the engineering education field is doing this, but from lots and lots of different directions, bringing their own backgrounds and their own interests into that work.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:02:29
Fields like STEM education or science education, while in theory you might think it's the same thing, in academia in The United States, when we use these two terms, when we talk about these two fields, they're coming up as a different way because in, when you, professors of STEM education, for example, are typically housed in engineer...
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:02:51
Sorry. Faculty of STEM education are typically housed in education colleges or departments.So they have education backgrounds, formal education backgrounds typically, and they study education while considering the STEM context or the science context or the math context. Right?Whereas in engineering education, in The United States, typically, it's kind of the other way around. We're engineers. We're formally trained as engineers. Our backgrounds are engineering.But then somewhere over the course of our career as students, as researchers, as faculty members, whatever, we switched either completely like I did or switched some of their effort for some faculty to doing social science research in in, engineering education because they're particular...
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:03:42
And I am particularly interested in understanding as an engineering faculty member how the educational system is working or not working for my students. Right?So it's it's kind of like it's coming from engineering while considering the issue of education within engineering, but really centering engineering, which actually brings a lot of issues about power to the stage.When you have...In academia, you have systems of, majorism where, engineers and, faculty members who, bring in, more grant money than, say, the education college or perhaps arts and humanities already consider themselves more marketable within capitalist academia.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:04:30
And then they approach problems from an engineering side rather than an education side When at the same time, I would say after a few years in this field, the education folks have a lot deeper, and more meaningful analyses than we do in engineering education because they bring in so much much more extensive backgrounds in the study of education.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:04:54
So I learn a lot, for example, from going to, education conferences that are not engineering specific, and I think that the engineering education field needs to engage much better with people in education fields.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:05:07
You know, have to say ditto to a lot of what you just said.I think I've learned more in my seven years at the chancellor's office than I did in my twenty five years as a faculty member in terms of broadening my horizons.Mind you I was quite successful as a more technical researcher in my field and brought in a lot of money.I am fine with saying that I'm a capitalist at heart, but I think being at the chancellor's office and seeing things from the 30,000 foot level has allowed me to view things more from that social capital view, which kind of makes me go to a next question that I have for you.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:05:55
How did engineering education provide you and you alluded to this a little bit this space to remain connected to engineering and to examine dominant STEM cultures.Why is this important to you? And besides yourself, who else benefits from your very nice work?
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:06:14
So for me, I was a graduate student for nearly a decade in an aerospace engineering department at the University of Michigan where I did a master's and eventually a PhD.And after I was working in the doing experiments, being a technical researcher in aerospace engineering focusing on structures for six and a half years, at that point I really wanted to switch to this new field of engineering education because the university I was at was starting a formal program.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:06:48
But I was already six and a half years into a PhD.So the professors in the new engineering education program really encouraged me to just add engineering education to the work that I was already doing.And they were very supportive of me doing that in any way I wanted to.I mean, the field of engineering education is very broad, but what I was particularly interested in was issues of fundamental inequity, issues of systemic oppression.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:07:19
As a woman in an aerospace engineering department, I was having particular issues with this.As a student who was in a lot of student loan debt, which impacted my ability to be able to go to graduate school in the first place.I had issues with this.Coming from a real low income community where I didn't even, as an undergrad, apply to the University of Michigan because I knew that even though school, it was a public school for rich kids, not me.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:07:49
I already had all these systems of power and privilege ingrained.When I learned that engineering education existed, particularly that faculty members and researchers and students were pursuing engineering education from critical perspectives, that opened up a whole new horizon for me to be able to be an engineer in ways that fundamentally challenged existing social and technical systems, which I never realized was an option for me for my career or for my life before that.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:08:24
Switching to engineering education for me meant, finding meaning in what I do. I'm still a worker.I still, take home a paycheck at the end of the day for performing labor.But, I'm very fortunate in in in a capitalist world where I get to do my work in such a way that not only helps me and my family survive, but in a way that I at least feel like I'm contributing in a positive way to changing a system.And I think everyone in the world deserves the chance to be able to do work that is meaningful to them, not only, helps them survive, but makes them feel, like their work itself is life giving.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:09:11
So my challenge as a faculty member is how do I use the power that I have now as a tenure track person?I've I've won the space to do this work. How do I use that power to create space for others to have that as well?So one of the most meaningful things to me in my work that seeks to critically examine dominant STEM cultures and replace them with, liberative systems is empowering students to be able to take on their own projects and things that are meaningful to them.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:09:41
So right now, I have three undergraduate students who are working with me, I just like to share a short version of what each of them is doing because they all made their own projects on topics.They're actually interested to them. They're all self driven and very flexible. The directions change. But the students have all done incredible work.Two out of the three of them have already published. Another previous student is currently working on a journal article.The students have a lot of success, but they get to do work where they're not just like walking into an existing project and doing labor on it.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:10:18
They come up with these themselves.So Brandon Wilson with me right now is studying militarism and engineering education, and theoretical and practical ways to break cycles of the engineering field support of violence and genocide around the world.He's a mechanical engineering student, and this is what he wanted to do. So this is very meaningful work for him.Leo Martin Aragon has been, funded by the Edison program that that your office runs.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:10:51
And he's studying the student experience of instructional student assistance because he was one working with me in a strength materials classroom, but he's looking at what happens when they're elevated to co teaching roles and and challenge the established systems of power and control, challenging those systems.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:11:07
So what happens when undergraduate students who are teaching with me have the power to overrule me and say that, like, no. This is the best thing...Best way we should build the system right now to better support the students, or you don't have the context that we do.And what does that mean when all of a sudden we're all building these systems together, instead of just an instructor doing a top down method?And then, Zandra Correa has been working with me this summer, through the SPARA program, and she's looking at the engineering education system as as a whole in this very macro scale theoretical way and designing change theories that value, like, unique assets of each community.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:11:46
So she's trying to come up with, theoretical models that would be based on the assets that the different actors bring to the table rather than, deficit lens of saying these people aren't good enough to be engineers, for example.And she's trying to, as even as an undergrad, look at the entire operation of the system the way that you would in the chancellor's office.And it's been really, really incredible for me looking at what she's able to accomplish even as a new transfer student into the CSU.So all these projects that these students are working on, and I encourage them and help them get new directions on their work and move them forward, the idea here is to be contributing to systemic change on so many different levels at the same time, where marginalized communities can benefit from new systems that are designed to support them because they have the agency to build them in the first place.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:12:39
So one thing we're dealing with in this country is the issue of who defines what disciplines and degrees are important and relevant now and the shrinking of those non STEM disciplines for example humanities, social sciences, the arts.And you have any comments on that?
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:13:03
Absolutely, I would love to comment on that.So I'm the Engineering Colleges representative currently to the Educational Policy Committee at Cal State LA, which means that I basically engage in a lot of these big picture conversations with my colleagues are representatives from all the other colleges at Cal State LA.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:13:19
And I feel that over the last year, a lot of the debate at the level of faculty governance at Cal State LA and probably also elsewhere has been over the fundamental purpose of education.Is it an effort to count dollars and cents to help where the goal of getting a bachelor's degree is to get a good job, And the success is measured in dollars and cents, where that pathway is very, very, very clear for students, which has the benefit in terms of a social mobility model, for example, of making it very clear to students how to move up the pipeline.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:14:03
But at the same time, at Cal State LA where we have a social mobility system in which less than half of students successfully graduate, then how effective is that model?And coming back to my point about people fundamentally at a human level deserving the right to thrive, not just survive, I want people doing work that's meaningful to them.And I want them to survive and thrive in terms of dollars and cents doing work that's meaningful to them.In that model of education, a more humanistic model of education, the goal is to develop critical thinking. It's in a critical perspective. It's to develop critical consciousness.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:14:42
It's about contributing to systemic change in ways that benefit not only you, but everybody around you and change the system. Fundament...Or I guess, historically, engineers have been on the opposite side of the argument than I am. They have liked to see education treated as a job training program.But I am actually trying to argue for humanist education even in in engineering, and I'm arguing for the protection of ethnic studies of the of the arts and better integration, as well because I believe that the engineering students will be better engineers if they are having interdisciplinary educational experiences.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:15:22
My opinion is that the more we turn engineering education into a job training program, the less we are preparing engineering students to use engineering to do good in the world.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:15:34
Great, great, thank you. So let's chat a little bit about the wonderful CSU.I've been in the system for several decades and faculty overload has been a concern even when I was an undergrad there, even further back, okay.Perhaps it's a throwback to the days when the CSUs were considered just a teaching institution vis a vis a non research institution.What does the workforce challenge look like for, I don't know, a typical tenure track faculty member and especially when they're trying to balance so many things, you know, teaching, research, if they even do that, if they even have time for that, a service, committees, and student support?
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:16:27
Yeah, this is a super important question right now, especially in The US where we have so many questions about labor at large.So what does this look like for new faculty like me, assistant professors, at least at Cal State LA, but I'm also involved at the statewide level with faculty organizing?So I can speak a little bit to what from my perspective this looks like for assistant professors throughout the CSU, is a negotiation between a lot of different options, none of which work well, and all of which lead some kind of moral dilemma as well, and always keep us in this position where we feel like we can't win.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:17:12
So some of our options are: we can positively kill ourselves in terms of workload, to keep our standards high for ourself, to be like, this is how much I'm supporting students.It is with every inch of effort I can have in my body.This is how much I am going to make sure that my research is quality to my own standards and meaningful, and that I'm going above and beyond to create spaces for other people to get involved in that research, and going above and beyond to support my students in the classroom, and going above and beyond to, participate on campus to systemic change efforts, be that through, faculty government, senate, the union, work in your departments and your colleges.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:18:01
You know, we all know people who are working sixty, seventy, a hundred hours a week in order to do it all.And when I first came as assistant professor, that's absolutely what I was in because I was also quite new to my field.I I had only switched to engineering education from doing technical work two years before that, three years before that.And I was still very emotionally high on this idea of, I love my work so much, and if I physically kill myself doing it, I will be happy because I take so much meaning from all these different things.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:18:36
Fast forward a couple years, that's still true. I still love all these different things that I do.But I've had faculty across the country actually have sit me down and say that, Cory, if you kill yourself so you fall asleep at the wheel, then you're not helping anybody because you won't be able to help anybody anymore if you're dead, because you're not sleeping, because you're working too much.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:19:02
Yeah. This doesn't this doesn't help anybody in the long term, a system that in order to do everything well, that you have to do something that's physically impossible.So when faculty negotiate that or smartly some of them say, I'm just not doing that from the beginning. That's also smart.That can often lead to lowering those standards dramatically for their own work, as well as lowering what they expect from their students or what they expect their students to achieve, knowing that they are not going to be able to provide the support to the students.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:19:35
So we just don't provide as much support, so they don't get as much out of it. Okay. In that case, the students don't don't achieve as much...Don't don't, obtain as much, out of their education as well. So it's unfair to the students, and it's unfair, to us.It causes burnout of feeling like you're not you're not doing it, as well as you could be in work that you care about because we all care about our work.Right? We're like, otherwise, we wouldn't do this to be... To begin with.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:20:02
So that's another option, is to just lower what we expect from everybody, which also plays into deficit mindsets about our students, where we say, Well, they're coming from marginalized communities, and they say, Oh, well, their math sucks.So maybe it's their fault that they're not succeeding. Right?We see that a lot on campus directly and indirectly, and I think that that that that deficit mindset coming from faculty and also from administration is play...Is fueled by the workload problem. When the workload is too high, you're always looking at somebody to blame because there's no option here that's gonna magically fix it.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:20:44
Another option might be to keep the standards high for the students, but just lower them for for yourself. Okay. Well, what does that do?If we say that the students have to achieve this in order to move forward, but I I don't have the bandwidth to be able to provide the support, then the students fail.Because deficit mindsets are unfair to students, but educational inequity is real.The majority of the students start at Cal State LA in the engineering program not ready for calc one, even though we tell them this is a four year program, and the four year program requires them to start with calc one.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:21:18
Very few students actually start with calc one. So we systemically lie to them and tell them that this is a four year bachelor's degree, even though there's...It's literally impossible for you to finish this bachelor's degree in four years.But if we keep the standards high in each class that they're supposed to achieve this and then we don't provide the support because educational inequity is real and they need that support, now we've created a system that weeds out students, which is what we see.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:21:43
But we as faculty can still pat ourselves on the back that the few students who get through the weeding process do achieve fantastic social mobility.So does that mean that our system works because it helps a select few?This is a hard moral thing to
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:22:01
Yeah, it doesn't work if only 5% or 10% of them actually get through. I mean, if you want to kind of cherry pick those success stories.So perhaps you can kind of you know look to the future here.We kind of know how it manifests, you know the issues you brought up in terms of you know students leaving the major, students leaving school, you know, etc, etc, etc.What do you feel is the impact kind of more grandiose that's outside Cal State LA for example and you know from the economics of SoCal and those, you know the mindsets of these students when they leave and what the perpetuation of this going forward that's
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:22:52
of That's interest a very good point.I have had students, when I ask their opinion on educational inequity and educational ineffectiveness at Cal State LA, and when I ask them why, many students, not all, be very clear, not all, but many students will say, the students aren't working hard enough.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:23:15
I am, but the other students aren't working hard enough. So then if I... Okay.And then I continue the conversation and start talking about some of the issues facing students and I bring up, well, I actually have several students in my class this semester who are working forty hours a week to ensure that their family can keep their apartment, that they're taking care of their children because they have children, and they're taking classes full time, not part time, while doing those things because you have to be enrolled full time in order to get financial aid.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:23:47
And they can't afford school without financial aid. They need the money to go toward the rent.So does this student need to work harder because maybe they failed my class?And then I ask the student that and the student will say, well, they can't work harder. Okay. Now what? Now what?They're already sleeping three hours a night, which I know because I do time tracking with first year students as they transition to college in the introduction to engineering class.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:24:15
But many, many students are working forty hours a week while going to school full time and taking care of their family members and not sleeping because there's only so many hours in the day.And so the educational system simply doesn't work for those students.And it's true that the students are perpetuating that mindset when a few are able to get through that weeding out process and then spend their careers as engineers.For example, in Southern California, my background is in aerospace engineering. So let's say you go, go work for startup companies. Let's say you go work for Elon Musk.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:24:48
Let's say you go work for Jeff Bezos. Then what is your labor doing as an engineer?You've made it through this system where most of your peers did not succeed in making it through this system.But now the reward for that is that you will do labor 40, but let's get real here, SpaceX requires a base of sixty, sixty hours a week, where your labor is generating profit not for you, for Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, while you work sixty hours a week at lower than average pay for an engineer for the privilege of making Elon Musk money.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:25:24
And at the meantime, you get to say, well, I succeeded. I've done it. I'm here. And the other, my peers, weren't good enough to be here.So this points to a larger systemic, economic, but also social problem of what is it we're training engineers to do and what opportunities do they have to use engineering for a social good?Because when I have critical conversations with engineering students about this, engineering students are concerned about this as well. But they don't see any way around the system.They say, please tell me.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:25:59
How come the engineering college isn't telling me the different jobs that I can do as engineers that are actually going to help my communities get their basic necessities?Because those aren't the ones that are coming to career fairs. That's not what I'm seeing. Please tell me how to use engineering to help my community.So I think that's our job as faculty and as admin is to play our role in changing the system of what engineering education is for.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:26:26
So it sounds like that's a pedagogical issue as well as a lack of vision by, you know, facultyadministrators to really live, need for better words, in the real world, which you know we kind of all know and maybe that's why somebody like me chose to be in academia versus industry that is a and coddled is the wrong word because it is difficult.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:26:53
I mean I know people in industry who said they would never go into academics because it's too cutthroat, but on the flip side I know people in business, however defined, it's not engineering necessarily, who really enjoy it a great deal and people who aren't in education said, oh I don't want to go into the industry because you could lose your job if you lose a contract from the government or something like that.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:27:23
Yeah, unstable. That being said, what is the solution? And I have seen some changes.I think you're one of those people who has that bigger vision and greater mindset that is just not learning chemistry, physics, biology, statics, you know, mechanics of you know, engineering mechanics and all those courses that really tire people out in those first couple years.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:27:53
How do we change the mindset of faculty to be, I don't know if the word is socialized, but more inclusive of the accepting of other disciplines or ideas or thoughts in the the lower division courses.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:28:15
Yes, very much so. So I think what you're speaking to is kind of the goal of the project that brought me to Cal State LA in the first place.Spring twenty twenty one, I was hired as the first postdoctoral researcher on the EcoStem project.It was in the middle of pandemic, so it was remote, of course, at that time.Professor Gustavo Menezes, who is now the Associate Provost of Undergraduate Student Success here at Cal State LA, but at the time he was the chair of the Civil Engineering Department, and he had just gotten this large $2,000,000 National Science Foundation grant that was really based on this theory of transforming STEM education from what the team saw as a factory model of education to what the team saw as an ecosystem model of education.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:29:07
So I was not part of building this framework. I was the first hired help, right?And this grant is now just ending five years later, and has gone through several postdoctoral researchers who worked on it after me, and it has faculty throughout the CSU involved.And one of the main change mechanisms of this grant was actually starting these communities of practice with faculty.One with chairs, one that was, very extensive and open to tenure track and non tenure track faculty, specific workshops for non tenure track faculty recognizing, their precarious positions and difference in, institutional power.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:29:46
We had these different communities of practice where we funded, importantly, and funded participants to have critical conversations about the purpose of education.What do you see happen in your classroom? What power do you have in your classroom?When you go about making decisions in your classroom about what you're doing, how does your model of education cause outcomes?For example, if you're going in viewing engineering education as a factory, then you're going to use a deficit mindset to look at students because you're gonna say, well, these ones didn't have...
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:30:21
Weren't at the input level that I expected when they get on the conveyor belt that is my class.And then they weren't able to gain the knowledge that was needed on the conveyor belt because they weren't ready to be on the belt in the first place.And then they didn't receive the, the uniform output that they're expected to get.But if we instead look at education as an ecosystem and say, what if we didn't expect everybody to be in exactly the same place, get on a conveyor belt, have engineering education teach them the exact same thing, and then have them come off the conveyor belt identical to each other?
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:30:55
Maybe we... The education system would actually be a lot more effective in the first place if that wasn't the expectation.If the expectation was that people could learn and grow in lots of different ways and that the relationships that people had with each other, on campus with other peers and with the instructors was one that was always evolving and reciprocal, that recognized power relations and actually tried to combat that, but tried to build a system that actually works for our students instead of trying to change our students so that they work for our system.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:31:34
How would that change what we do?And what we found is that faculty members, even even ones coming from politically and socially, lots of different backgrounds and ideas, People really resonate with this because that's why they become teachers in the first place is because they they want to build an educational environment that works for the students.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:31:54
So almost near universal response to this, to the EcoStem initiative was, we do like this, we do want to do this, but often change work also takes labor.And when the grant ends and can no longer fund faculty to do change making work, then you jump right back to what you were doing before that was fueling an inequitable system.So it it speaks to how if the institution is going to start acting as an ecosystem and not as a factory, then everything from the social to the business to the, policy to everything would have to start acting as an ecosystem and not as a factory.We're not going to fix the factory because the factory isn't broken.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:32:46
The factory is achieving exactly what it was designed to: the perpetuation of racial capitalism in The United States that pushes out low income students of color like it always has.So if we take a critical perspective that the factory isn't broken, then we stop wasting our efforts trying to fix the factory and we instead try to build something different.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:33:12
You alluded to some of the research projects your students are working on currently under your auspices.Can you comment a little bit more on some of the details of a few of them in regards to equity and student success how do they work towards systemic change?
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:33:29
Yeah, so the EcoStem project that I just mentioned, predominantly with the faculty at Cal State LA, that research in documenting, first of all, documenting more of the inequities that we already know through graduation rates and things like that.But understanding the inequities on the social level and not just on a mechanistic level.For example, documenting how this impacts students who are housing insecure, how this impacts students who have long commutes, or students who have childcare responsibilities.The EcoStem research adds the the level of lived experience to something that would typically previously been just viewed as demographics, right, to understand the...
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:34:17
How our how our system fundamentally fails on the social level. Right?And then in so doing, creates new tools for trying to change the system from the factory to the ecosystem. To healthy educational ecosystem.So one thing we did that's now part of, we've successfully gotten it into the RTP process at Cal State LA, is we've changed the peer observation process for RTP.So the faculty can be giving each other constructive feedback using a tool that the EcoStem team created that is based on community cultural wealth and asset based pedagogies.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:35:00
Faculty choose for themselves which things they want to focus on and create a more formative rather than summative and reflective process for faculty so that they actually get something out of the peer observation so that it's not just a transactional and punitive experience.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:35:16
So that's one example of the kind of, like, mechanistic change to the educational structure that the EcoStem team is working on.The second one we're working on now is changing the student opinion survey process so that it's not just a transactional thing that spits out some numbers at the end of class, but something that's actually giving professors helpful feedback about their classes at the beginning and at the end, and giving instructors specific information about their students' lived experience that will help them tailor their class at...
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:35:47
From the beginning.Building new processes and systems that will help us change the educational system at large, as well as what's happening in individual classrooms so that faculty have control over.So that's the ECOSTEM project. Another one that I have funding for is Macroethics of Aerospace project, and that's, not just at Cal State, but late.That's a a national project in collaboration with one of my engineering education research mentors at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:36:16
And we look at, the social impact of the aerospace engineering field, issues like orbital debris, space junk, the military industrial complex and militarism, the colonization of space, like big picture social issues that aerospace engineers don't really talk about in their classes.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:36:35
They just kind of take as granted and then learn how to do the math. Right?So we've gone around the country and done lots of different aerospace programs, and we've led dialogues and collected data about students' perceptions of these issues, and also worked with faculty who've always thought of themselves as just like technical engineering instructors, to have them facilitate these dialogues in their classes as well to make this just like part of normal engineering education because that's what the research goal is of that project is to fundamentally make not just say micro ethics, like, don't plagiarize and make sure your math is right, as a framing of what ethics is, but to a much bigger, picture view of what ethics is, and what students' ethical decisions and issues are within their fields and make that part of the fundamental educational experience.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:37:29
That's the other funded grant that I've been working on recently.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:37:34
Great, great, thank you. You discussed the importance of moving from individual blame to systemic change.What do you think would make the biggest difference for faculty and students in the CSU?
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:37:48
In terms of the big picture, then I would go back to those fundamental questions of like, what is the purpose of education?Is it just a job training or is it holistic liberal education that actually teaches you to function within and change greater society.Big picture issues like how does the educational system operate as a factory or as an ecosystem. But if we get down to...And so these big picture answers, like, we got down to, like, more specifics of the the CSU, the biggest things I can think of that would change change the system for faculty and for students off the bat, in my opinion, from where I sit, be, giving units to faculty to do research, considering that, if you're a tenure track faculty, research is part of your job in the first place.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:38:45
But on paper, I'm supposed to be 80% teaching and 20% service, so the research is just supposed to magically happen.But I think that for students to get involved in research projects that are actually meaningful to them, then faculty need to have space to do that work and do that work well, especially mentoring student research.So that would be the first thing I'd say, and that's not just on admin.That's also on faculty sentents that I would say made the huge mistake of making RTP processes that required research when we didn't have units to do research.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:39:25
Similarly, the students need the funding to do research. So the vast majority of our students qualify for the work study program nationally.So if students actually had the funding through the Learning Aligned Employment Program in the state of California, the LEAP program, to be able to use their work study funds instead of just doing jobs like I did.I worked in facilities while I was an undergraduate to use my work study funding to have a job.If they could do research with me and projects that were meaningful to me and be paid with their work study money, technically, we had that at Cal State LA for, like, a semester.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:40:03
But the bureaucratic systems here are so complicated that the fact that the thing was only available for a semester meant that nobody figured out how to use it before it was already shut down.So, I think the LEAP program would be getting that back and working, would be the biggest thing for students to have access to doing projects that are actually meaningful for them.And then that last thing speaks to the need to just end the bureaucracy around, around research experiences.A student of mine who I brought to a research conference on the East Coast as he had a first author paper published last month.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:40:40
We were never actually able to go through the travel system at the university to submit his approval paperwork and for his reimbursement because there is no established system to allow students to travel to do research.They've had different systems, they've changed it, and now nobody can figure out what it is.So they actually, after just hundreds and hundreds of emails, had to go in the back way and just, like, give an email approval because they couldn't figure out...Like, literally nobody, fiscal office, research office, nobody could figure out how I could use my own research startup funds to fund a student to go to a conference.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:41:17
Nobody can figure out how to do it. There's so many levels of bureaucracy, and nobody knows how to navigate these.So that would be my third specific thing, be that you need a system that is allowed to be flexible to different people's needs but also be able to function even on a basic level.This is the level of bureaucracy is like a factory on steroids. And I would argue that the education system working well wouldn't be a factory at all.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:41:49
Last point here. We've all seen the attack on higher education since, the current, inhabitant of the White House came in a year ago this past January.What are your recommendations on how to defend the work that we're all doing in higher education?
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:42:07
Yeah. So first of all, defense work is not going to look the same for everybody.So, it would be massively inappropriate for me to be like, well, everybody needs to fight back because, kidnappings in my community, the Frogtown neighborhood where I live in Los Angeles, have have only dramatically slowed in the last couple of months.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:42:31
Before that, they were kidnapping people about twice a week. Many of our students live in this fear. Many of our students' parents live in this fear.The fear of fascism is not spread equally.So when I say that the right response to the rise of fascism is to fight, that is not a suggestion that everybody fights the same.Fighting can also look like protecting members of your community that need it right now.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:43:01
But when we talk about power and institutional power, think about the power of the chancellor's office, the power of, administrators at Cal State LA.I want to see these entities with power not complying in advance, and in fact, complying at all.Even amongst faculty members, because I work with, engineering education researchers across the country and professional development capacities as well, I see people trying to figure out how to get DEI words out of their work.Why?
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:43:32
Nobody told you you had to, and yet you know that it is not politically expedient to put those words in there right now, and so you comply in advance.Who gets hurt as a result of powerful people like me with tenure track faculty power complying in advance?When I'm asked to take the words Hispanic Serving Institution off of a research poster, I'm proud that I refuse to do that.But also, what on earth is gained by complying with those demands? I would argue absolutely nothing.
Dr. Corin “Corey” L. Bowen - 00:44:06
The only way we gain anything in this system is when people who can fight back, and I put myself very much in the position of I have the power to fight back, I must, and other people with power like me must as well.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:44:18
And that concludes this episode of All Things STEM. A heartfelt thank you to Doctor. Corin, Corey Bowen, for bringing such honesty, insight, and urgency to this important conversation.Corey reminds us that the challenges facing engineering education are not just about individual students or faculty.They're about the systems that shape workload, research expectations, student support equity, and success in STEM.At the center of this conversation is a reminder that student success cannot lead to faculty exhaustion.
Dr. Frank A Gomez - 00:44:47
If we want students to thrive, institutions must create time, resources, and structures to support both students and the faculty who serve them.Join us next time for more conversations on STEM, research education innovation, and the future of higher education. Until then, stay curious, stay connected, and keep pushing for meaningful change.