TY - CHAP A1 - Steuer-Dankert, Linda A1 - Sharma, Mamta Rameshwarlal A1 - Bleck, Wolfgang A1 - Leicht-Scholten, Carmen ED - Farn, C. K. T1 - Innovation through Diversity - Development of a Diversity and Innovation management concept T2 - International Conference on Innovation and Management : IAM23017S : Date: July 4-7, 2017, Osaka, Japan N2 - Acknowledging that a diverse workforce could be a potential source of innovation, the current research deals with the fine details of why diversity management is central to achieving innovation in heterogeneous research groups and how this could be effectively realized in an organization. The types of heterogeneities addressed mainly include gender, qualification, academic discipline and intercultural perspectives. The type of organization being dealt with in this work is a complex association of research institutes at a technical university in Germany (RWTH Aachen University), namely a 'Cluster of Excellence', whereby several institutes of the university work collaboratively in different sub-projects. The 'Cluster of Excellence' is a part of the 'Excellence Initiative' of the German federal and state governments German Research Foundation (DFG) and German Council of Science and Humanities, with the ultimate aim of promoting cutting-edge research. To support interdisciplinary collaboration and thus the performance of the cluster, the development of a diversity and innovation management concept is presently in the conceptual phase and will be described in the frame of this paper. The 3-S-Diversity Model, composed of the three elements: skills, structure and strategy, serves as a basis for the development of the concept. The proposed concept consists of six phases; the first two phases lay the ground work by developing an understanding of the status quo on the forms of diversity in the Cluster of Excellence, the type of organizational structure of the member institutes and the varieties of specialist work cultures of the same. The third and the fourth phases build up on this foundation by means of qualitative and quantitative studies. While the third phase deals with the sensitization of the management level to the close connection between diversity and innovation; the need to manage them thereafter and find tailor-made methods of doing so, the fourth phase shall mainly focus on the mindset of the employees in this regard. The fifth phase shall consolidate the learnings and the ideas developed in the course of the first four phases into an implementable strategy. The ultimate phase shall be the implementation of this concept in the Cluster. The first three phases have been accomplished successfully and the preliminary results are already available. Y1 - 2017 SN - 2218-6387 SP - Panel C PB - Kuang Hui Chiu CY - Osaka ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Leicht-Scholten, Carmen A1 - Steuer-Dankert, Linda A1 - Bouffier, Anna T1 - Facing Future Challenges: Building Engineers for Tomorrow T2 - Conference proceedings : new perspectives in science education : 5th Conference edition, Florence, Italy, 17-18 March 2016 N2 - Future engineers are increasingly confronted with the so-called Megatrends which are the big social challenges society has to cope with. These Megatrends, such as “Silver Society”, “Globalization”, “Mobility” and “Female Shift” require an application-oriented perspective on Diversity especially in the engineering field. Therefore, it is necessary to enable future engineers not only to look at the technical perspectives of a problem, but also to be able to see the related questions within societies they are developing their artefacts for. The aim of teaching engineering should be to prepare engineers for these requirements and to draw attention to the diverse needs in a globalized world. Bringing together technical knowledge and social competences which go beyond a mere training of the so-called “soft skills”, is a new approach followed at RWTH Aachen University, one of the leading technical universities in Germany. RWTH Aachen University has established the bridging professorship “Gender and Diversity in Engineering” (GDI) which educates engineers with an interdisciplinary approach to expand engineering limits. In the frame of a sustainable teaching concept the research group under the leadership of Prof. Carmen Leicht-Scholten has developed an approach which imparts a supplication-specific Gender and Diversity expertise to engineers. In workshops students gain theoretical knowledge about Gender and Diversity and learn how to transfer their knowledge in their special field of study and later work. To substantiate this, the course participants have to solve case studies from real life. The cases which are developed in collaboration with non-profit organizations and enterprises from economy rise the students to challenges which are inspired by professional life. Evaluation shows the success of this approach as well as an increasing demand for such teaching formats. KW - Diversity KW - Engineering Education KW - Gender KW - Higher Education Y1 - 2016 SN - 978-886292-705-5 SP - 32 EP - 37 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Steuer-Dankert, Linda A1 - Leicht-Scholten, Carmen T1 - Social responsibility and innovation - Key competencies for engineers T2 - ICERI 2016: 9th International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation: Conference Proceedings : Seville (Spain), 14-16 November N2 - Engineers are of particular importance for the societies of tomorrow. The big social challenges society has to cope with in future, can only be mastered, if engineers link the development and innovation process closely with the requirements of people. As a result, in the frame of the innovation process engineers have to design and develop products for diverse users. Therefore, the consideration of diversity in this process is a core competence engineers should have. Implementing the consideration of diverse requirements into product design is also linked to the development of sustainable products and thus leads to social responsible research and development, the core concept formulated by the EU. For this reason, future engineers should be educated to look at the technical perspectives of a problem embedded in the related questions within societies they are developing their artefacts for. As a result, the aim of teaching engineering should be to prepare engineers for these requirements and to draw attention to the diverse needs in a globalized world. To match the competence profiles of future engineers to the global challenges and the resulting social responsibility, RWTH Aachen University, one of the leading technical universities in Germany, has established the bridging professorship “Gender and Diversity in Engineering” (GDI) which educates engineers with an interdisciplinary approach to expand engineering limits. The interdisciplinary teaching concept of the research group pursues an approach which imparts an application oriented Gender and Diversity expertise to future engineers. In the frame of an established teaching concept, which is a result of experiences and expertise of the research group, students gain theoretical knowledge about Gender and Diversity and learn how to transfer their knowledge into their later field of action. In the frame of the conference the institutional approach will be presented as well as the teaching concept which will be introduced by concrete course examples. KW - diversity KW - innovation KW - social responsible engineering KW - engineering education Y1 - 2016 SN - 978-84-617-5895-1 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.21125/iceri.2016.0353 SN - 2340-1095 SP - 5967 EP - 5976 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Steuer-Dankert, Linda A1 - Berg, Tobias A1 - Leicht-Scholten, Carmen T1 - Breaking the habit – new approaches in engineering education T2 - Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education N2 - Within the framework of the project a genderand diversity-oriented teaching evaluation and modern, media-supported blended learning approaches were used in order to achieve the intended goals. First research results of the literature and status quo analysis were already implemented and tested in newly designed teaching approaches, for example in a multidisciplinary introductory lecture of civil engineering at RWTH Aachen University. KW - teaching KW - engineering education KW - gender and diversity KW - best practice Y1 - 2015 SN - 978-2-87352-012-0 N1 - Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education , Orléans , France , SEFI , 2015-06-29 - 2015-07-02 ER -