Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Dr. Reed Miller

Faculty Interview Transcript – Dr. Reed Miller and Jayson Heim

Courtney Harding 00:01
I wanted to thank you again for agreeing to this interview opportunity; We are very excited about the
addition of CIE 412, Engineering Decisions, to the WGS course electives!
My name is Courtney Harding. I’m the Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Department intern for fall
of 2024 and the Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program began a new department Partnership
Initiative in fall of 2022 and the initiatives aimed to build partnerships with departments across the
university that include faculty who bring gender studies lenses to their research and teaching, or who
would like to department partnerships are helping to open the WGS minor and double major to students
who would likely otherwise not have a space to bring a gender studies perspective to work in a primary
field of study. We are delighted to report that WGS now has a growing list of electives and other
departments and increasingly in STEM related fields like nursing and biology. One of our newest electives
is civil engineering, 412, or engineering decisions, taught by Dr Reed Miller, assistant professor of civil
engineering. And if you both would like to introduce yourself.
Dr. Reed Miller 01:15
Hi, Courtney. Thanks so much for having me. My name is Reed Miller, and yeah, I’m an assistant
professor here at UMaine in Civil Environmental Engineering. I joined in June of 2023 so I’m just starting
my second year.
Courtney Harding 01:28
Awesome. Thank you.
Jayson Heim 01:30
My name is Jayson Heim. I got my master’s degree in English at UMaine in 2023 and now I work at the
Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at UMaine. Thank you.
Courtney Harding 01:42
Dr. Miller and Jayson, I understand that you are the first UMaine faculty member in the School of
Engineering to count a course as a WGS elective. WGS electives have traditionally been in fields
like English, History and Sociology, for example, the humanities and social sciences and civil
engineering may seem like a non intuitive fit. What in your view, does gender, sexuality, race and
other identity markers have to do with the field of civil engineering?
Dr. Reed Miller 02:11
Yeah. Thanks. Courtney, so if we look to a report from ASCE, the American Society of Civil Engineers,
they did a comparison between the 2020 US workforce and the 2020 civil engineering workforce. Note
here that while our department includes Civil and Environmental Engineering, this is just looking at civil
engineering, and they found that they just looked at gender from a binary perspective, but in the US
workforce, it’s 53% men, 47% women. Back in 2020 but for civil engineering, it was 86% men and 14%
women. And then when we look at race and ethnicity, for instance, the US workforce is 12% black folks,
18% Hispanic Latinx folks. But in the civil engineering workforce is 6% black folks, 8% Hispanic Latinx
folks. So we can definitely see that the civil engineering workforce isn’t reflective of the US workforce. And
so that’s that’s a real issue, in part, because the infrastructure that civil engineers and environmental
engineers are designing is going to have a long, lasting impact on society, and so it’s really important t from all walks of life, if you will, representative of variety of identities and cultures in our society are
involved in these decisions as the engineers themselves, but also are proactively engaged as
stakeholders in the decision making. And then also civil and environmental engineering is a challenging
and rewarding and well paid occupation. So it’s important that these opportunities are available to
everyone, including historically excluded communities. And then, when we think about how you get to
become a similar environmental engineer, it requires, pretty much, that you need to have a bachelor’s
degree from an accredited university, like University of Maine. And then again, when we look at those
statistics, it’s 25% women, 75% men getting bachelor’s degrees. The number goes up a bit when we talk
about masters. It’s a smaller pool of people, but it’s 36% women versus 64% men. But then when we go
to PhD degrees, it’s 9% women versus 91% men. And I think that’s a real issue, because if you want to
be a professor, you tend to need a PhD degree. And. Kind of perpetuates itself in terms of who people
see in these roles, and who can they envision rather? Do they see role models as their professors? And
there are several women in our department, which is wonderful, but I think across the board, in
engineering, that’s an issue that needs to be addressed. And getting a PhD is quite a commitment. It’s a
multi-year commitment. It’s not very well paid. It does have a payoff, but that’s something that needs to be
addressed as well. So I think for all these reasons, it’s really important to have a lens in terms of gender,
race, sexuality and other identities, in terms of Civil Environmental Engineering.
Courtney Harding 05:53
Thank you. Yeah, I think especially I can relate to everything you said as I’m a double major with women’s
studies and psychology, who’s also looking to go into a PhD program someday. So that speaks to my
situation as well, and also Jayson, I forgot to mention earlier, but if you would like to add anything to these
questions as well, from your perspective, I would love to hear from both of you.
Dr. Reed Miller 06:14
Thank you. Okay, sounds good. Thanks.
Courtney Harding 06:21
Building off the last question, would you say you bring WGS related perspectives or approaches
to your own research or work in civil engineering, and if so, in what ways?
Dr. Reed Miller 06:35
Yeah, I certainly try to. One of the things that I do on campus is I’m the College of Engineering and
Computing representative to pace, which is the provost Advisory Committee on equity. And that’s given
me an opportunity to see how these strategies work. That committee is particularly focused on academic
strategies and primarily focus on faculty, but be able to see how equity at the institutional level is
implemented, and be able to influence things there and then. In terms of my research, I get involved in a
lot of research grant proposals and a lot of them go to the Department of Energy, which has as an
important requirement of the bulk of their proposals, community benefits plans. And community benefits
plans have three components. One is diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. Two is energy equity,
and the third is workforce implications. And I think it’s really wonderful that the Department of Energy is
requiring folks to not just be doing the technical work, but thinking about, okay, how does this work going to, as it says, benefit communities and through the federal government’s justice 40 plan, the strategic objective there is to have this technical research, directly or indirectly support, as they call disadvantaged communities.

So that’s an area that I think is really important, and it’s a challenge, because often grant
proposals have about a one month turnaround from when you hear about them until when you have to
submit the concept paper. And then if you’re encouraged to submit a full proposal, it’s again, like six
weeks. So you have to pull together all of the technical information, plus this plan. So I’m starting to work with folks at the Office of Research Development and others around campus who are far more
experienced than I, such as folks at the Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, to really think
proactively about how can we develop these plans and have a strategy in place so that while we Do have
a short turnaround. We’re not just doing one off pieces of work. We are actually continuing to build on
relationships that exist with communities and ensure that there is interest. And often, part of these plans is to support the recruitment of graduate students from historically excluded communities, but making sure that if we are able to recruit folks, maybe from outside of Maine or other parts of the US, that when they come to campus, they’re able to thrive and not feel tokenized, and not feel like they’re really just here to fill some sort of quota, but they’re really able to enjoy and get the best out of all things that you main has to offer. So those are some ways that I try and bring it into my own. Work. Awesome. Thank you.
Courtney Harding 10:05
What, in your view, makes engineering decisions a particularly good match for the WGS elective,
and do you teach other courses that also could be good fits? And if so, which ones?
Dr. Reed Miller 10:21
Yeah, so I really enjoy teaching engineering decisions. It’s a course that’s been around for a long time in
our department. It’s for seniors, and it covers a lot of bases. It’s a writing intensive course. It covers the
ethics requirement, and then it also prepares students for the engineering economics section of their fee,
or fundamentals of engineering exam, which they need to take in order to go on to become a professional engineer. And the lens that I try to teach it from is just again having folks recognize that the work that they’re doing is going to be really impactful in society. And I think that’s a lot of why students come into this field, recognizing how critical infrastructure and managing pollution and the natural environment is. So they already have that bent. But it goes beyond seeing safety, and it goes beyond calculations and having folks consider themselves as leaders and people who don’t always just say, well, the boss told me to do it this way. So this is the way we’re going to do it, but to recognize, okay, it, for instance, in one of our assignments, we look at infrastructure and equity, and we look at case studies in the US of is transportation equitable across the US? Is housing? What about exposure to lead poisoning via lead pipes and walls? Look at Flint, Michigan, look at clean water, and through that, have folks form their own opinions of what’s really going on here. Has infrastructure in the US always been constructed in such a way that supports equitable communities? Or are some communities? You know, our highways built through low income communities of color, for instance, and and then we come together as a class and do a lot of small group discussions around those topics to So, rather than me standing there and lecturing and saying, This is what’s happening, and sort of folks exploring this information and and coming to their own conclusions. Then we also do a section of professional ethics that looks at diversity, equity, inclusion and engineering. So talk about some of the statistics that we just went through, and have students read part of this report from the Society of Women Engineers called climate control. That was a survey back in 2016 about experience having the profession and talking about various biases that, as a survey reports disproportionately, are faced by women and people of color, and also at the intersection of women of color. So needing to prove it again, so yes, you already got your degree. You’re already here, but when you’re sitting at the table, you have to go above and beyond in order to say, like, no, I really earned my place here, whereas white men might not need to do that as much, and also talk about the maternal wall, so barriers to career goals due to a tendency for society to place child raising activities on women. And so that was really nice to have an in class discussion around that after folks did that assignment, and after they did some implicit association tests and read through some debate prompts from the National Society Professional Engineers back from a 2020, blog post they had made around quotas, presumably, and what is affirmative action, and number of women in the class shared experience that they have already had as engineering interns, where they haven’t been treated with the same respect on the job site, and just having that conversation in the class setting, and for the men in The Room to also hear like, Oh, this is happening to my women colleagues, and encouraging folks to not be a passive bystander, but to really think about, okay, what can you do whenever the opportunity presents itself, or to find opportunities to be a change maker and not just sit back? And let the status quo persist.
Courtney Harding 15:18
Have you taught the Engineering Decisions course prior to this fall? And if so, what if any
changes did you make to the curriculum or your approach? Any specific examples you might
offer would be great.
Dr. Reed Miller 15:38
So this is my second time teaching engineering decisions, and it’s evolved. I think there’s been several
different teachers over the past decades who have put their own spin on it. One thing that I was excited to do this semester, the format of the class has changed. I taught Monday, Wednesday, Friday last year and Tuesday, Thursday this year, and I wanted to just have some more time in each class session, to be able to dig in. And one thing that we did differently is we went and visited the Hudson Museum, which is like on the second floor the Collin Center for the Arts. And that was a really nice opportunity to actually engage and look at indigenous artifacts from Maine and from around and as engineering students to appreciate the ingenuity, for instance, of the canoes, which are the designs, as I’ve recently understood, that have influenced the way that Old Town canoe has built their canoes. And just to appreciate and recognize that the land that we’re on has been taken from indigenous people, and they’re all doing group projects, and they’re looking at complex engineering decisions. So we then went to full blue library, library and two librarians there guided the students both through the special collections and the stacks, just to recognize that in particular, we were looking to find information about the Native American communities, Native American communities that do, currently or previously, had existed, where their engineering projects they were exporting took place, and to look at, okay, you might not find this information on internet. It might be in a book. It might be in some document. What were the perspectives, or what are the perspectives of the Native American communities pertaining to these projects, were they sought out? Did they have a voice?
And I think it’s incredibly important for folks who are going to be practicing engineering in Maine to
understand that the Wabanaki nations are important communities to be aware of and to build
relationships with, so that whatever projects that you may be doing are really taking their perspectives into consideration. Okay, another thing, I’ll note just not a change, but one thing that we do at the start of every case this year and last year is that students give what I call a global news report so they’re looking at a recent engineering project that’s taken place in another country, and reflecting on what are the issues at play from a social, environmental and economic lens that’s really fascinating to sort of set the stage and say, okay, there was a flood in Northern Africa, and here’s the income per capita here, and here’s how it was dealt with. And then another student will show like they’re building an underground tunnel in Northern Europe. And just like recognizing how disparities in income globally really impact how engineering projects are managed. So trying to have that not just a US centric perspective as well.
Courtney Harding 19:40
How, in your view, has new material or approaches to course content enhanced student learning
or interest in the course, and if so, in what ways? Again, feel free to share any specific examples,
and both of you are welcome to comment as well.
Dr. Reed Miller 20:03

One thing I like to do in class is have small group discussions as much as possible, and throughout um
pause frequently to ask for folks’ perspectives. We also do a variety of activities where folks are jotting
things down, coming up to the board, mixing around. I’ve really benefited a lot from participating in the
Course Design Institute from the Center for Innovation and teaching and learning. And so with their
advice, trying to not be a stage on the stage, as you will, but trying to provide activities that allow folks to
really engage in the material. And as this is an intensive writing course, really grateful to have Jayson’s
support on this course where we’ve designed activities or assignments together that involve a lot of
reflection, so we grade based on completeness and clarity and not based on did you get the right
answer? Did you get the right opinion? Because we want folks to be reflecting on these materials and in
engaging with it, and then they come into class and discuss with their peers about what they came up
with.
Courtney Harding 21:49
As a WGS and psychology double major, I’ve seen firsthand how these two fields overlap with
each other, and throughout my undergraduate education in WGS, I’ve also come to know just how
it overlaps with several other majors and minors as well. How would you describe to an
undergraduate student community the interaction you see between civil engineering and
Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies?
Dr. Reed Miller 22:23
Yeah, great question. So when I think back to when I was in high school, I was really debating between
going into sociology or environmental engineering, and I had taken some tech classes. I liked math, I liked science, and I ended up going with environmental engineering, in part because I met a woman who was doing nonprofit work in Haiti related to drinking water treatment, and she kind of took me under her wing alittle bit, and that kind of gave me a nudge over the edge to keep going in that but I really benefited from taking elective courses throughout my undergraduate and also engaging in a lot of student groups. Was involved in students getting sweatshops and a variety of different organizations that largely where I’ve been involved in grassroots activism for a really long time, and I think those perspectives have really shaped how I come into the work and I feel like an undergraduate degree is a really wonderful time to get to. This is cliche, but expand your horizons. There’s such a concentration of a diversity of thought here that’s harder to access once you’re out in the world, and being able to do something like take a minder in winter Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies will really provide you with different ways of thinking and seeing the world that will be valuable throughout your life. So that’s something that I think would be, yeah, a really valuable opportunity for our Civil Environmental Engineering undergrads, and I think for women in gender studies students who might want to take my course, I think they would find it interesting to look at things from an infrastructure perspective. And from, you know, from environmental engineering, we deal a lot with air water, water and soil pollution. And. And start to think about how the frameworks that they’ve studied could apply in this technical space, and having that crossover could be really interesting. The other thing I wanted to to add from from a prior question, which I forgot to mention, is that I’m very involved in the International Society for industrial ecology, and I’ve served on our career committee and our now I’m on the Education Committee, and one thing so I’m in the field of industrial ecology, which is a
trans disciplinary field that is related to environmental engineering and environmental sciences, but tries
to take a systems level perspective on how society interacts with production and consumption in the
natural environment. And what we’re trying to do on the Education Committee is provide open resources
for folks that are engaging in this field around the world. And when I was part of the student committee, I
was really interested in advocating for ensuring that we had global representation on our in our student
chapter, and making the opportunities of the society, which right now are predominantly based in North America, Europe and East Asia, open to folks in developing countries. And those are initiatives that we’re
continuing. And I think that’s another way that this interacts with this field.
Jayson Heim 26:43
Yeah, I can just add to that a little bit. I just wanted to note that I think it’s great to see that there’s a lot of
overlap between WGS and different fields that you made, because in my bachelor’s degree it really kind
of reminded me of talking about your own. They were very separate. I majored in English literature, and
then I minored in WGS. And within that circle, it was very obvious that WGS impacts a variety of fields,
but it didn’t extend past that major or minor. There was no sort of integration into other fields, it was very
separate. So I just wanted to note that I think it’s very helpful and productive that this is expanding into
different fields, because obviously it is very impactful to all fields. So I just wanted to note that the efforts
are much appreciated to see, you know, all around campus and all the different majors and minors and
that that’s being expanded.
Dr. Reed Miller 27:46
And I think probably the last thing I’ll add is, I think another lens for me for this course, as a member of the LGBTQ community, and someone who’s helping coordinate a new affinity group on campus for faculty and staff who are part of the LGBTQ plus community. Is trying to create space in the class where folks feel like they can bring them whole, bring their whole selves and hopefully that will be something that they continue into their professional lives. We started at the beginning this semester about sharing pronouns, and there was a little bit of pushback to that, so that’s something that we’ll need to work on more. But, yeah, I get the sense, especially with my current group of students, that they are very thoughtful and welcoming and kind people. And it’s, yeah, it’s a real privilege to get to teach this group of folks.
Courtney Harding 29:06
Thank you both. Yeah, I also agree with what you both said, especially with the undergraduate
perspective. Given electives, if I had never taken a women’s studies elective, I enjoyed it so much when I
first took it my sophomore year, and then I learned how it interacted with my other major and then a few of my roommates majors as well. And then it kind of like opened my eyes to a different perspective and lens where I was like, Oh, I didn’t, I didn’t know that it could relate to so many other fields. So I think to get to the discussion going and like, really continue, like the interview right now is it’s absolutely great, because I think it’s a lot of undergraduates don’t know just how much like women’s studies interacts with other fields, so it’s definitely a point of interest for me as well. Alrighty. So then the last set of questions I have mainly directed to Jayson.
I understand that you hold a Master’s from humane and writing studies, and that. As an assistant
to Dr Miller, you help create and assess writing portions of the class pertaining to topics of equity,
and that you also work at the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center on campus. Does your
educational and professional background overlap with Dr Miller’s emphasis on equity related
issues? And if so, how?

Jayson Heim 29:10
Yeah, I think it’s had a great impact on how I approach grading the assignments and assessing the
assignments. A major part of that was my focus in writing studies, because I think it really helped me
understand how writing is influenced by social, cultural and historical context, and which leads into equity
based analysis, and that that has a place in all kinds of work, not just specifically writing or WGS. It
expands to all fields, especially engineering, where they have to consider how their work is going to
impact the communities that they’re involved with on any given project and the larger implications of the

writing and the decisions that they make. And of course, the course is a writing intensive course, and it’s,
you know, major goal is to get them to engage with technical writing skills, which I noticed even teaching
composition for two years in my during my graduate degree, that students were even having a hard time
understanding that how technical writing is even involved with their major. So we had a few, you know,
people looking into engineering and different, you know, varying fields. And they were like, well, I don’t
really write. I don’t really do that. So a lot of it was even then sort of like, well, you know, you’ll have to
write memos, even emails. So different parts of things that they don’t think about as writing is writing. So
that is sort of a major, I wouldn’t say disconnect, but a major thing that they come to understand, or that
we hope for them to understand through their composition course, is that they, all of them, are writers and all the right, in some type of way, and that’ll have, you know, major impacts. And now seeing and helping Dr Miller and with the writing and the memo projects that they do a large amount of writing, you know, I never really had experience in, you know, exactly what kind of writing, to the extent that they do with the memos. So once I started helping Dr Miller, that really opened my eyes to, well, they, they do a lot of writing, and they, you know, they engage in a lot of different things. And, you know, so it was, it’s
interesting to see how, a few years after being able to engage with engineering students and sort of see
firsthand what I was trying to emphasize, teaching composition, I think it’s, it’s also important for them to
learn that their written work and their careers as a mode of, you know, expressing and shaping their
identities and their perspectives and their experience, the same way that their writing impacts the people
that they’re going to be working with or the communities that are involved and sort of paying attention to different power dynamics and representation and marginalized voices and really paying attention that
their choices, and even with the memos the communities that you have to pay attention and you have to
listen to what the communities are saying, you can’t just make these decisions, decisions that you think
are right without sort of looking at the implications of them on like a small and a large scale. So I don’t
know if you want to add anything. Read,
Dr. Reed Miller 31:29
Yes, Jayson, your support for the course has been wonderful. And I think another thing I’ll note that I
really enjoy about the course is having guest speakers, and so we’ve had chief engineer, Joyce Taylor,
from the Main Department of Transportation come in each year, and her perspective is just great, as she’s
a humane alum herself from chemical engineering and has has been really honest with the students
about what it’s like to make tough decisions in crises, and like how she engages with communities and
what her own career trajectory has been and encouraging them and really being a role model. So yeah, I
completely agree with you about them realizing, Oh wow, I’m going to be doing a lot of writing in my
career, and your lens on it has really helped shape the writing assignment so that they become more
meaningful. So I’m grateful for you. Thank you.
Courtney Harding 32:49
In your assessment of student work, what is your sense of how students are interacting with the
new material? Introduced in the course, and have there been any surprises?
Jayson Heim 33:05
Yeah, I think they’re actively engaging with the material, and they’re working on trying to understand and
implement them in the memos and Reid mentioned earlier, the reflection assignments. I think those have
been really helpful in having them really think about how they think about or feel about certain things and why, and not just sort of like answering a prompt and saying, Oh, I agree with this, or I don’t agree with this, and not really providing an explanation, or not really thinking about why they feel that way to begin with. So I think those assignments have really been helpful, and I think especially with their work, with the memos they’ve really taken up the equity based considerations in a productive way. As far as surprises, I haven’t really seen any. Haven’t had any surprises. I don’t think, yeah, yeah, I think they’re doing great. I think that’s probably majorly attributed to Reed’s teaching in class and things that I don’t necessarily see anymore. I was there in person last year. Now I work remotely, so not there, you know, in person to see the first hand teaching, but I know from last year that the class based discussions on the writing and the memos is I think, really helps them. And you do really in the span of a short semester, see the growth and how they understand things and how they write about things in such a short amount of time. And I think that’s largely with the structure of the writing and the structure of the class. It really pushes them to do what they need to do, and, you know, work to understand the different aspects of the class.
Courtney Harding 35:54
Great, thank you. Is there anything you’d like to add, Dr. Miller?
Dr. Reed Miller 36:07
Yeah, I would just say I’m proud of the students for as Jayson said, really pushing themselves to interact
with these concepts. And you know, we talk about it, it’s not always comfortable to talk about race and
gender. They’re kind of third rails topics in the US and so it is. It is kind of a form of bravery to be able to
engage in these topics and not just turn a blind eye. So it makes me feel hopeful that our students are,
you know, wrestling with these complicated issues. And, yeah, I’m grateful to the folks in women and
gender studies for taking a proactive lead and building bridges across campus.
Courtney Harding 38:56
Awesome. Are there any additional comments either of you would like to add?
Thank you both very much for participating in this interview. It is my first faculty interview for this
internship. I’m very grateful for hearing your perspectives, and I look forward to keeping in touch!
Dr. Reed Miller 39:21
Thanks, Courtney, you did great!