On values, role models, and the importance of being me

The recent National Position Paper for Women in Engineering in Australia identified shared explicit values as the basis for a new vision of engineering education, moving away from the existing themes of isolation and exclusion to the preferred themes of inclusion and integration. In this paper, we explore our own experiences and values as women engineering educators and researchers. We connect these personal explorations to prevailing theories about the disconnection between engineering and society and the myth of engineering and scientific objectivity. We then describe various initiatives we have developed within our research and our teaching which enable our student engineers, women and men, to discover their own values, and to live those values within the profession of engineering. Our belief in the importance of role models and having a commitment to living our values provides the link between our own values and these programs.