African Diaspora Engineering Education Student Experiences in the US: A Collaborative Autoethnographic Study

The number of students of African origin traveling abroad for postgraduate engineering education has increased over the last 30 years. Studying abroad provides unique experiences and benefits for African students and the host country. These experiences place international scholars in an ideal position to reflect on the different experiences between the practices, attitudes, social diversity, and competency development they find in their new study destinations and hence can make suggestions for improvement in their home and host countries. This paper explores the experience, reflections, and adaptation of African scholars to their international educational context during the COVID pandemic, using a collaborative autoethnography methodology. Elements of the theoretical frameworks of acculturation theory and adaptability theory were used in the collection, analysis, and discussion of the paper to address the following research questions: 1) What are the experiences and perspectives of African Diaspora graduate scholars in undertaking engineering education studies in the US? 2) What improvements are suggested for the study environments in their home countries and in the US? The findings raise provocative thoughts about the culture of and the philosophies behind the present nature of instruction, assessment, student supervision, experiences, and workload in the US and African countries. We argue for a need to disrupt several realities that have become a norm for African diaspora students and suggest how this can be done drawing from our own experiences within these unique environments.