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Title:
Broadening Participation in Engineering Education for Learners with Disabilities

Abstract:
As the world faces unprecedented technology-dependent developments in which engineers play critical roles, the National Science Foundation reports a critical talent crisis in the US in engineering fields that are of high importance to national interests and initiatives. This shortage demands the urgent expansion, diversification, and strengthening of the engineering workforce to take on today’s complex problems. My research tackles this shortage at the engineering education level. In particular, I explore and develop technology-based educational tools, assessment frameworks, and teaching practices to broaden participation in engineering education for minoritized learners and advance engineering pedagogy to meet contemporary engineering challenges.

During my talk, I will present my work on improving the accessibility of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) education to blind and low-vision (BLV) learners, highlighting (1) an autoethnography study that uncovered the inequitable barriers faced by BLV learners in ECE, (2) pedagogical and institutional support mechanisms that I identified to improve BLV learners’ experiences, and (3) the 2.5-year long co-design process of a novel, BLV-accessible electronic circuit simulator with the BLV community, along with a tool demo. Additionally, I will present my work on developing the CARE (Challenging and Rewarding Experiences) assessment methodology that has informed improvements to the introductory ECE pedagogy at Stanford University. Finally, I will conclude with a brief overview of ongoing research projects, including work on the evolving role of AI in engineering education.

Bio:
Aya Mouallem is a PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering and a MA candidate in Education at Stanford University. She is advised by Professor Sheri Sheppard and supported by the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program and the Stanford DARE and RAISE doctoral fellowships. She conducts research at the intersection of engineering education, accessibility, and human-computer interaction. Her research supports and sustains inclusive pathways in engineering education for learners of all backgrounds and abilities through developing technology-based educational tools and learning-centric interventions. She has also co-authored research on engineering career pathways, engineering education in international contexts, and AI use in engineering education. Her research has been presented at ASEE, ACM ASSETS, and ACM CHI and received several awards at ASEE and CHI. She also founded an award-winning initiative called All Girls Code in the Middle East.

Citation:
A. Mouallem, M. Mendez Pons, A. Malik, T. Rogando, G. S-H Kim, T. Kulkarni, C. Chong, D. Fan, S. Nirav Patel, L. Aquino Shluzas, H. L. Chen, and S. D. Sheppard. “IncluSim: An Accessible Educational Electronic Circuit Simulator for Blind and Low-Vision Learners,” in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25), New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2025, Article no. 338, 1–18. doi: 10.1145/3706598.3713437