Welcome to Digication Scholars Conversations.
I'm your host, Jeff Yan.
In this episode, you will hear part one of my conversation with Rebecca Thomas,
director of the Pathways ePortfolio program and adjunct assistant professor
of the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Bucknell University more
links and information about today's conversation can be found on Digication's
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Full episodes of Digication Scholars Conversations can be found on
YouTube or your favorite podcast app.
Welcome to Digication Scholars Conversations!
I'm your host, Jeff Yan.
My guest today is Rebecca Thomas, Director of the Pathway ePortfolio Program and
Adjunct Assistant Professor of the Electrical and Computer Engineering
Department at Bucknell University.
Hello, Rebecca.
Uh, so nice to have you here on Digication Scholars Conversations.
You are, um, amongst your colleague, uh, Joe Tranquillo, who was in our season
two, episode 25, um, we had a wonderful, wonderful conversation then, and, um,
I'm glad that you can join us now.
And I know that actually there are a few other Bucknell colleagues of yours that
we'll be talking to as well, cause you're all just doing really incredible work.
Uh, welcome.
Thank you.
So, um, Rebecca, you're, um, the director of the Pathways ePortfolio Program.
Do you want to just right away talk about like what that means?
What's Pathways?
For those who might be listening, may have some idea, but not
really a hundred percent sure what you, what, what that means?
Yeah.
So, um, Pathways is Bucknell's ePortfolio, or University wide ePortfolio initiative.
Okay.
Um, it's a fairly new program at Bucknell.
We've just, it rolled out, um, two years ago.
So we have two years of the program.
Um, yeah, and so it has a lot of goals for students to kind of take
control of their own learning, right?
To integrate all their great experiences that they have when they
come to a school like Bucknell, you know, and think holistically about
They're learning and who they are.
Um, and we focus that mostly in the, in the development of the ePortfolio.
Um, when you say think holistic about, you know, themselves, um, I know that,
I mean, of course, talk, having talked to Joe and for people who haven't,
haven't, um, heard that I highly recommend you listen to Joe's, um, conversation
as well, because he's a master of.
Uh, Metacognition and Reflections, and he comes from this really
interesting diverse background.
Um, and one of the things that I often want to talk to people about is a
lot of people say holistic learning.
Develop as a whole, you know, human and all of this stuff.
Right.
So in your, in your vision of this as a director of this and you, your
vision, what does that really mean when a student, you know, like practically
if I'm a, if I'm a parent sending a student to Bucknell, now you are
telling your, your student, your, your child is gonna be holistically
learning about themselves, right?
And being developed in that way.
What does that really mean in practical terms?
Right.
So, I mean, I mentioned.
Like Bucknell students are, are very involved.
They do a lot of things around campus, right?
Going to classes is just one of them.
Um, so, so part of the holistic experience, right, is that
they're involved in lots of different organizations.
Uh, it's a very residential campus, so most of our students.
live together and, um, uh, work together outside of class.
So, they have all these experiences to bring in.
Um, also, personally, I come from the STEM background where a lot of times,
um, right, the technical part is really focused on and, right, there's this Even
though we know, like, technology has, has human aspects, right, we, we tend to
think we can separate those and ignore the human part and really we can't.
So, you know, coming from STEM, I think not ignoring the human part, also not
ignoring, like, the humanities is really important because, um, right, we're,
you know, we're all trying to solve these Bigger, more complex, relevant
to society problems, and we need a bigger lens, a bigger view to do that.
So, so we need to think about lots of aspects of the problem, not only the
technical, but the human side and how it overlaps with other aspects, the social,
the political, the economic, to come up with real plausible solutions to.
These problems that we're facing.I think that's, that's really, that's really
awesome and really great to see, you know, like, I think that it's been, it's no
secret to many people that if you're going into the STEM fields, you yourself are
in the engineering and, and computer, um, electrical and in computer, um, you know,
engineering department, um, a lot of folks have this, this, um, View that in a STEM
field, you do everything is very black and white, is very right or wrong, you have
the answer, you don't have the answer.
I wish it was like that, it would be a lot easier.
So that's, that's wrong, right?
That's the wrong way to look at it.
So I think that's actually a really, um, interesting.
That's a really interesting thing that you're saying because
I've had so many colleagues.
Of course, I know a lot of my work is involved around portfolio.
Many of the schools that we have worked with, um, I've known these
folks for a long time, and they, many of them have this, um, idea that.
It's much easier to do ePortfolio because it's touchy feely.
It's, you know, talking about reflection and, and that you can
do it easier in the arts, in the humanities, um, but not in STEM.
They think that STEM, you know, Oh, of course, we're not going
to be doing STEM programs.
That's harder.
That's not the low hanging fruit.
What do you say to that?
Because I don't think that that's justified.
Do you?
No.
I mean, and I think, you know, naturally, like some of the historical
ways that ePortfolios have been used and kind of where they started was.
more for the professional programs.
Um, right.
So, like, nursing and education are, um, big fields for you portfolios, right?
And engineering in some sense of a, of what we do is a very
professional, um, professional degree, professional path, right?
We are educating the students that we that we have to, to be engineers, right?
That's, there's a wide variety of engineers you can be, and we're
actually trying to push on and expand that with, with what I'm
doing in my department and what we believe ePortfolios can do for STEM.
majors, right?
But I think you have that traditional view.
So it's interesting at Bucknell, it's, you know, engineers are actually leading
the way with our ePortfolio initiative.
Um, particularly my department in electrical and computer
engineering has already tried it in, I think, six different courses.
Uh, we're looking to Create a new course that we want students to actually
enroll in every single semester.
It'll be a small portion, right?
So it adds up to a whole course over their eight semesters.
But we want students to do this so that they can think about and, and
narrate and document their experience the whole way through their curriculum
and, you know, bring in The other parts of, you know, it won't be, it
won't be a very technical course.
So, so the, the things they're pulling, the experiences they're
thinking about in their ePortfolio should come, you know, from a wide
range of, of what they're doing as, as different parts of their education.
Yeah.
I, I really think that it, it's potentially more important than
what people are even thinking about, because I think that.
Engineers today, and I, I know in the field of, for example, in computer
engineering, and especially in the sort of subfield of the artificial intelligence,
um, this very idea of understanding societal issues, understanding ethics,
understanding values, and how to, how to think empathetically, right?
How to, how to, um, Implement, Respect in society, right?
These are kind of things that an engineer could have tremendous power.
They can wield, they can, the, the things that they, the decisions that
they make, the approach that they take into solving a problem could have lots
of unintended consequences down the road, if they are not careful and carefully.
Thinking through these implications, don't you?
Yeah, um, I think that's definitely, uh, you know, engineers can have a lot of
impact, they often have a lot of power.
Um, right.
But some engineers and some engineering students don't want to think about those
larger aspects they want to, or, well, and sometimes that's the training is like you,
you do what you're told and you don't.
Mm hmm.
Right.
So there's that.
Yeah.
Right.
So there's that, you know, that, that wanting things to
be black and white, right.
You're, your client tells you to do this, if your consultant or your boss tells you
to do this and, and you deliver, right.
You don't ask.
Right.
Why, you know, you don't think about the broader implications sometimes.
Right.
And I think that in, in many ways, um, you know, I, I, I hear this a lot, by the way,
I used to be, um, the school that I used to teach at and there's an art and design
school at Rhode Island School of Design.
And, and I used to hear this a little bit.
This is quite interesting.
I think, um, like we have a film department and a lot of the People
that make films from that department would make films that they don't look
like, um, you know, what you see in the movies because they are very abstract.
Sometimes they're like, what is this like crazy idea?
You know, technically they're not perfect.
You know what I mean?
Um, and.
And I remember talking to someone and going, so do they, do they, they come out
of the school having the skills to go in and make films and they go, and sometimes
you go, well, sometimes, yeah, sometimes now they really need to still then learn
an industry and like learn the ropes.
But what you will find is that there are also some film schools
that are highly technical.
You know, by the time they graduate, they, they just know how to shoot a
film, um, technically, but they haven't explored in how to tell the story.
They haven't explored on some of the more abstract, higher level sort of thinking.
So.
If you then fast forward 10 years, the people that came out having all
of the technical skills are still doing the same job that requires
all of the technical skills.
Actually, our students are the ones that, in some ways, because they
don't have those technical skills.
They kind of have to sort of, you know, go in a path of, we're
just going to make the movie.
We're going to have to hire people to have the technical skills.
And they ended up leading, they ended up becoming the directors of the
movies and the creators of the shows.
Um, isn't that kind of interesting?
Yeah.
And I, I think in engineering, like we, we definitely can't
ignore those technical skills.
We definitely need to equip our students to have those, but right.
We can teach those.
And so let's think about the context, right, and, and think
about integrating them and transferring them more, um, right.
Sometimes in engineering we get so focused on everything has to be technical and
they need to go so deep in the technical, yet, right, the field advances so quickly
and, and the variety of things that students go out to do is, is so wide that
they're going to have to learn some of that technical, Um, Aspects on the job.
So, right.
So a lot of what we're doing.
Right, is, is giving them the skills to, to be able to learn those aspects.
Um, yeah, but we do see kind of the same thing with, you know, engineers
that have these broader skills, right, they're going to be the ones
that move up and they're going to be.
The ones who are, um, kind of supervisors or project managers, they're not going
to stay in those technical jobs, usually.
And do you see in your experience difference between this?
Current generation of students that are from your program because they are
being exposed to these, you know, like the humanities and the purposes of,
you know, in, in the society and so on.
Do you see a difference between them and I don't know, students who haven't been
exposed to that, including perhaps I'm, I'm perhaps making assumptions here, but.
You know, maybe your own personal experience, or, you know, students
that you've seen in your own education experiences, maybe classmates,
when you were a student who may not have been exposed to those things.
Do you see a difference between them?
Um, yeah, I think mostly in kind of what we've talked about in their,
in their kind of longer term path.
Um, and I would like to see it kind of earlier on, right.
But a lot of people still graduate wanting to go to those big programs, wanting to
be at the Google and the Microsoft and, um, yeah, and not, not thinking, I'd love
to see students think even more broadly about, all right, I have an engineering
degree, what, what good can I do with it or what, you know, what can I do with
it too that really interests me and.
It's something that I care about.
Right.
It could be anything from, you know, creating justice in society to solving
impossible problems such as, you know, clean water or, or, um, or, or, or,
or curing, you know, a deadly disease, um, or figuring out how to apply
those skills that you have to mental health and, and things like that.
Right.
You know, so in other words, almost like opening up the.
The possibility.
So it's not, yes, if you get an, if you're an engineer, if you're qualified, you
know, those jobs at Google and Microsoft sounds pretty prestigious, cushy, you
know, like that, that would be it.
Like that, that's when my parents, you know, would be happy.
I think that that's what my parents would have wanted me to do.
When I was, when I was coming up, I didn't do it.
It was a disappointment to them in that regard.
Um, what was your, what was your story like?
Um, I mean, you also studied, you know, engineering and how
did you end up at Bucknell?
Yeah.
So, you know, I think early I went in being an engineer who wanted
to make the world a better place.
Right.
Make, make things better for people.
And I spent four years in undergrad and kind of graduated and didn't
know how to make that happen.
I had no idea.
Where to go from there.
So let me pause for a minute there.
Okay, because I think this is really interesting.
It really is.
So you got a four year undergraduate degree at that point.
Is it right to say that you probably at least feel like you've gained some skills?
You got the technical skills?
So you knew, you knew how to solve a problem.
If someone said, here's a problem, go solve it in your, you know, in your area
of study, but you still feel like that.
I don't know how to get a job that would pay the bills.
I didn't know how to do something that would really be fulfilling.
And that's, by the way, a huge part of this generation.
I think that, I think you're a bit younger than me, but when I was growing
up, you know, like fulfillment was a, a very luxurious thing to have, like,
you don't get to have that and pay the bills at the same time, you know,
you just kind of, you know, get a job.
And you'll get fulfilled in other ways, you know, once you make money,
you know, you, you'll get fulfilled.
Um, but it's not true.
It's not true.
In fact, um, many people have made lots of money and I know a lot of them in Silicon
Valley that they actually, in fact, made disproportionate amount of money, money,
amount of money that they didn't know what to do with and still feel an incredible
sense of emptiness in the sense of.
Depression, some of them.
In fact, they felt like that, now that I've reached the end, I'm supposed
to see the rainbow and the rainbow is nowhere to be found, you know, but yeah,
I decided though, since I didn't know professionally how to, how to change
things that I would educate future engineers that hopefully could then have
more opportunities to, to change things.
Right, and being an educator is a nice place to, like, continually be able to.
Do that to influence the, you know, the next up and coming
engineers over and over again.
Yeah, I think that's, it's, it's, it's amazing.
Cause I think that this is exactly the kind of, um, both the modeling, but
the thought process that allows you to.
Direct a program that has that inherently, you know, built into, into, into the
concepts of how you structure things.
Even just one that you talked about, which is this idea of a cross that's
going to span across eight semesters.
They're going to do a little work every semester, but it's always going
to remind them, hey, where's your True North, whereas you are, where,
what is going to keep driving you as you gain more and more skills, right?
Now, you know how to create something in a database.
Now, you're creating some code.
Now, you can do this logic that you couldn't do before.
Now, you're doing, you know, artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc.
But where's your true North and are you still pointing in that direction?
I think that's amazing.
Yeah.
But, I mean, and there are a lot of students too, like
first generation students.
I was a first gen, right?
So I came in not, not knowing where my north was, not knowing where to go.
Right.
I think it is a balance though of, of guiding the students
who, who need help finding it.
But, but yeah, also kind of continually doing that because you
change a lot in your four years.
Yeah.
are in university.
So, thinking about what it is that you want to do, how, how has that changed?
Is it changing?
Are you still focused on?
I guess I was still focused on my goal to make the world better.
Yeah, but in ways that you didn't think was even a possible
path when you first started.
And I will share that I'm also a first gen college attendee in my family.
And, um, I would say that, um, even forget, I don't know
where the true, true North is.
I didn't even know you were supposed to have a North.
Do you know what I mean?
It's, it's maybe the, the only North for, for me, conceptually
would have just been to survive.
You know, just be like, be, be able to pay the bills.
That was, that was about it.
Get a degree, get a job.
Yeah.
Just a little bit of.
Yep.
Degree, job, and then you can figure it out.
Yeah.
I think that's too late.
I think that it feels too late.
Don't you?
Yeah.
Well, at least not very efficient, right?
You know, you're missing out on a lot of what education can provide
if you're very focused on that.
And I think that this is actually a really good, um, place for me to talk
about sort of just education in general.
Because, um, I have spoken with a lot of folks.
In this very, you know, Digication Scholars Conversations, right?
And they're from different fields and whatnot.
And they would oftentimes have to defend, you know, folks that are in liberal arts,
folks that are in the arts, you know, especially, they have to defend that,
you know, this is a viable path because you're learning to be a better human.
Um, Oftentimes, comparing to if you're an engineer, because like
you said, there is this sort of pre established path that is pretty cushy.
It's, well, I don't, it's never easy by the way, but it seems easier.
It seems more laid out for you, right?
The path is there.
You can follow the steps and if you're, if you're pretty decent, you can do it.
You can do it just like someone else had done and just kind of, that's it, right?
And then you could be in this.
You know, position of a multiple six figure job with, you know, lunch and
dinner covered and, and dry cleaning also done, you know, for you, et cetera.
It's kind of like, it sounds amazing, you know.
Um.
And, uh, but, but I think that, um, like what you were saying to find
a fulfillment, that may not be it.
And that actually, regardless of which field you're going into, that
fulfillment, you still need to work at it and search for it and then, and
then exercise somehow to get there.
Yeah.
And that's not different for an engineer versus, um, you know, a dance major.
Don't you think?
Yeah.
And I think it's probably easier as an engineer to, to not
realize that part's important.
Right.
Because the other path is so, it's, it's there.
It's, it's like, in fact, that's the, uh, dare I say, you know, more the norm,
societal norm, if, if anything, you know.
Um, and cause it's, it's, uh, It's both elusive, but you know, cause it's
there, you can sort of just catch it, but it's also very seductive because
it's like, I want that, you know?
Like if you are a student, you'll be like, that, that sounds pretty good.
You know, having a lot of money, having a lot of resources.
Um, people are taking vacations all the time, you know, what's
not like kind of situation, right?
Yeah.
And having, you know, having the stability, which I think is a,
is a big benefit of engineering.
It does give you the stability to do things, to do the other things you want
with the money that you have and hopefully the time that you have, you know, when
you're, when you're not doing that, but when you're not working, but, um.
But yeah, I still think if you're, I still think you can, you can miss out on a lot.
And I think one other things that, one other thing that, um, a lot of people
have, um, probably the, the, sort of the wrong view of the STEM field and
engineers especially, you know, do, and, and perhaps even engineers themselves,
is that, You know, many people think of engineers are the experts at problem
solvers, you know, you have a problem.
We'll engineer our way out of it.
We'll engineer a solution.
But I think that sort of true to how you were talking about,
you know, if they're exposed to.
You know, societal issues, if they're exposed to what's the most important
things in the world today, um, be it climate change or, you know,
superintelligence, you know, AI, you know, and possible future pandemics that
is even more deadly than COVID, right?
All of these areas, actually, perhaps less.
So then, uh, being a great problem solver, you have to be a great
sort of identifier of problems.
And that's, uh, hugely under, sort of represented part of engineering, I feel.
Um, even, like I said, even to engineers themselves, because many students are
like, I've been trained for 12 years before coming to Bucknell, you know, in
high school and whatnot to solve problems.
I'm really good at it.
Right.
If they come to a school like Bucknell, they're probably pretty good at
whatever they were doing already.
Right.
Yeah.
And so I'm really good at doing that.
I'm just great at solving problems.
But the engineer's field, to me, is very incomplete.
And that's why you don't get that fulfillment if you're also not able to,
to be the one who instigate the problems.
Yeah, and that's a big part of what we do in our design thread
and, and our department, um, especially with senior design, right?
And students get a senior design problem, they, they just want to start
making the solution right away, right?
They've got an idea.
Maybe within five minutes how they're going to solve it and
they want to start building it.
Um, but we make them take almost our senior design is a year long course.
They take it both semesters.
So we make them spend almost the entire first semester actually
going out and figuring out more about what the problem is, right?
We, they have to interview people and talk to people and really.
Define the problem and, and figure out what's all involved before
they're allowed to propose a solution and start working on it.
Yeah.
Um, seems like, uh, you know, what's interesting is that
there's something about.
And I don't know whether I'm, you know, being overly generalizing here, but,
um, I think there's almost something about sort of a, uh, almost a lot of
typical gender, um, differences as well.
A lot of men loves to go into, you know, if they hear a problem, they
want to just go and do the solution.
Right?
Yeah.
You may not be looking for a solution yet.
The one thing we covered in, like, counseling before we got
married is men typically want to, like, solve your problem.
Husbands do.
The wives, like, typically want to be heard and talk about the problem.
Right.
We have to I mean, it's, uh, engineering, especially in a lot of the STEM field is
heavily still today dominated by sort of, uh, you know, by male participants, but,
but to me, it's not just the participants.
It's also the ideas, it's the approach that are very masculine, um, in a,
in a, in a, in a, in a bad way, in a, in a way that doesn't balance
like what you just said, which is.
Hey, look, we got to spend almost, if not the same amount of time on asking
the questions before you just go into the solution, you know, part of this.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, one of the big keys to, to addressing these
problems are to get closer to equity within the field, right?
Have more women representation.
And, and there are lots of other underrepresented groups, not just
women, but, right, um, has, have more diversity and, Have you seen that?
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's definitely a big push here and some departments
do better than others, uh, you know, I think it's, it's just based on kind
of where, where the field is, um, But, yeah, I think, though, you know, we
have come a long way in a hundred years.
Bucknell graduated its first female engineer, um, a hundred years ago,
like, mid May we celebrated that.
So.
So that, that was, that's awesome.
And, you know, there are a lot more women here than there were, but also it's been
a hundred years and like we haven't made as much progress as we should have, right?
We're still maybe 10, 20 percent in some departments.
Um, right.
So, uh, you know, I think we need to.
Think about the framework that we're working in, and, uh, you know, the stories
that we tell in ePortfolios, I, I think it's a good way to, to widen this view
of what is, what is an engineer, right?
It does have this fairly narrow, typical identity that we define to it.
Um.
And if, but if we can think more broadly about who can be an engineer and what
they might do, what they're interested in, right, that they shouldn't think
about the problem and think about the human aspects, um, Yeah, I think those
kind of big changes need to be happening along with, uh, the recruitment and that.