Oregon State University Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Student Experience StoryCorps Collection, 2023

Title: Oregon State University Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Student Experience StoryCorps Collection, 2023

ID: OH 053

Primary Creator: Cate, Rachael.

Extent: 1.52 gigabytes. More info below.

Arrangement: The collection is organized into one series: 1. Interviews, 2023

Date Acquired: 00/00/2023

Languages of Materials: English [eng]

The EECS Student Experience StoryCorps Archive Project (SESAP) was created in the 2022-2023 academic year and led by Dr. Rachael Cate, Senior Instructor and Educational Program Researcher in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Oregon State University. The project collects the experiences of undergraduate and graduate students in EECS who self-identify as members of historically underserved communities, based on race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, first-generation college student status, gender identity, sexual orientation, and/or disability. In each interview Cate provides introductory remarks, after which time narrators share their stories drawing on guiding prompts including: individual identity, community and cultural background, intersectionality, their strengths as Engineering students, and recommendations for how the academy and industry can better support students from underserved communities.

The collection is comprised of 20-30 minute recorded Zoom interviews structured as autoethnographic testimonios. In their project documentation, the SESAP organizers describe this approach as follows: "The term auto-ethnography designates the agency exercised by each of the participants appearing in the archive as the authors of their own stories that center on their experiences of culture, identity, and power. The term testimonio further designates the type of narratives offered here as accounts that bear witness and testify about events, including injustices, that have powerfully impacted the lives of individuals and communities."

In addition to Zoom recordings saved as *.mp4 files, the collection consists of narrator biographies, signed permissions forms, and administrative documents. The raw video of each interview is available online.

Electrical Engineering was established as a department at Oregon Agricultural College in 1897. In 1973, the department broadened its scope to include Computer Engineering. A year later, Computer Science was added as a discipline within the School of Engineering. The College of Engineering at Oregon State University was established in 1983 and, in 2003, a new School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science was created under the college's umbrella. By 2023, EECS had become home to more than 4,800 undergraduate students, 500 graduate students, and 100 faculty members attracting about $14.5 million in annual research funding.

SESAP project director Rachael Cate holds two degrees from Oregon State University -- an M.A. in rhetoric and composition (2011) and a Ph.D. in higher education and leadership (2016). She joined the faculty of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2016, focusing primarily on instruction, research, and program development related to engineering education and social justice pedagogies.

Brief biographical sketches of each narrator who contributed a testimonio to this collection are included in the container list for this finding aid.

More Extent Information: 9 video files

Statement on Access: Collection is open for research.

Physical Access Note: All interviews described in this collection are available online.

Acquisition Note: Collection materials were donated to SCARC by Rachael Cate in July 2023.

Related Materials:

SCARC is home to multiple oral history collections that document the experiences of OSU students from historically underserved communities. These include the Voices of Oregon State University Oral History Collection (OH 009), the Oregon Multicultural Archives Oral History Collection (OH 018), the Oregon State University Cultural Centers Oral History Collection (OH 021), the Oregon State University Sesquicentennial Oral History Collection (OH 026), and the OSU Queer Archives Oral History Collection (OH 034).

SCARC is also the repository for the Electrical Engineering Department Records (RG 121), the Computer Science Department Publications and Newspaper Clippings (RG 214), and the Computer Science Department Photographs (P 240). Finally, the Student Club and Organization Records (RG 276) include materials documenting the activities of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Graduate Association, among other student groups connected to the College of Engineering.

Preferred Citation: Oregon State University Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Student Experience StoryCorps Collection (OH 053), Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon.

Cate, Rachael.

Engineering students--Oregon--Corvallis.
Minority college students--Oregon--Corvallis.
Oregon Multicultural Archives
Oregon State University. School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University History

Born digital.
Oral histories (literary genre)