The 2024 William Elgin Wickenden Award, which recognize the author(s) of the best paper published in the Journal of Engineering Education (JEE), went to the article “Is Carla grumpy? Analysis of peer evaluations to explore microaggressions and other marginalizing behaviors in engineering student teams.” Written by Purdue School of Engineering Education faculty Stephanie Masta, Alice Pawley, and Matthew Ohland along with colleague Darryl Dickerson from Florida International University, the paper was published in the 2024 volume of the JEE, the scholarly research journal for the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). The paper’s authors were honored at the 2025 ASEE Annual Conference in June.

The paper emerged from Professor Alice Pawley’s National Science Foundation-funded I-MATTER (Identifying Marginalization and Allying Tendencies to Transform Engineering Relationships) grant that aims to develop a theoretically and empirically grounded framework and tool to help instructors of large classrooms identify teams engaging in marginalizing behaviors.

“'Is Carla Grumpy?' examines how peer evaluation comments can unintentionally reflect and reproduce marginalizing behaviors in team-based engineering education. Through a close analysis of qualitative peer feedback and the use of quantitative data from CATME, we reveal how subtle language choices can perpetuate bias and exclusion, particularly for students from underrepresented groups,” said Masta, the I-MATTER grant’s principal investigator, an associate professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Purdue as well as courtesy faculty in Engineering Education. “This important work highlights the need for more equitable practices in team assessment and offers critical insights for educators aiming to create inclusive learning environments in STEM.”