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My scholarship currently focuses on applying liberative pedagogies in engineering education, leveraging best practices from women's studies and ethnic studies to engage students in creating a democratic classroom that encourages all voices. In 2005 I received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation to support this work, which includes developing, implementing, and assessing curricular and pedagogical innovations based on liberative pedagogies and student input at Smith, and understanding how students at Smith conceptualize their identities as engineers. I seek as an engineering educator to be part of a paradigm shift that these pedagogies demand, repositioning concerns about diversity in science and engineering from superficial measures of equity as headcounts, to addressing justice and the genuine engagement of all students as core educational challenges.

I currently teach traditional courses in the areas of chemical and environmental engineering, as well as elective courses on Engineering and Global Development and Technological Risk Assessment and Communication. I seek to revise engineering curricula to be relevant to a fuller range of student experiences and career destinations, integrating concerns related to public policy, professional ethics, and social responsibility, de-centering western civilization, and uncovering contributions of women and other underrepresented groups. I am interested in preparing a future course that explores the intersections of gender, race, and class with science and engineering.

In EGR 330 (Engineering and Global Development), we critically evaluate past and current trends in appropriate and sustainable technology. We examine how technology influences and is influenced by globalization, capitalism, and colonialism, and the role technology plays in movements that counter these forces. Gender is a key thread running through the course in examining issues of water supply and quality, food production, and energy.

I remain active in technical research that interweaves social science and engineering, developing approaches for behaviorally realistic exposure assessment related to consumer chemical product use. This work includes a project on folk and spiritual uses of mercury in Latino and Caribbean communities, and a project on mothball use in Western Massachusetts.

Selected Publications
Riley, D. and Sciarra, G.L. `You’re all a bunch of fucking feminists’:  Addressing the Perceived Conflict between Gender and Professional Identities using the Montreal Massacre. Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference, October 28-31, San Diego, CA (2006).

Riley, D., Ngambeki, I. and Rua, A. Sojourns and Pathways: Personal and professional identity formation and attitudes toward learning among college women. Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference, October 28-31, San Diego, CA (2006).

Riley, D. M., and Claris, L. Power/Knowledge: Using Foucault to promote critical understandings of content and pedagogy in engineering thermodynamics. ASEE Annual Conference Proceedings, June 18 - 21, Chicago, IL (2006).

Riley, D. and Armstrong, E. Common Ground: How a course collaboration between engineering and women’s studies produced fine art. ASEE Annual Conference Proceedings, June 12-15, Portland, OR (2005).

Chesler, N. and Riley, D. “The Art of Engineering: Using fine arts to discuss the lives of women faculty in engineering.” ASEE Annual Conference Proceedings, June 20-23, Salt Lake City, Utah (2004).

Riley, D. “Employing Liberative Pedagogies in Engineering Education.” Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 9(2): 137-158 (2003).

Camp, L. J. & Riley, D. “Bedrooms, Barrooms, and Boardrooms: The Failure of Media Types in Cyberspaces,” Interconnection and the Internet: Selected Papers from the 1996 Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, Gregory Rosston, David Waterman, eds. Mahwah, NJ: Lea Publications, 1997.

Riley, D. “Sex, Fear, and Condescension on Campus: Cybercensorship at Carnegie Mellon University. Wired_Women: Gender and new realities in cyberspace. L. Cherney and E.R. Weise, eds. Seattle: Seal Press, 1996.