This NSF RAPID project (award number 2333393) addresses the recent influx of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Khanmigo, Midjourney, etc.) available to the public. Many of these tools have potential uses and misuses for educational purposes and can have applications as new and existing tools in classrooms. It is important for both researchers and AI tool developers understand kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12) teachers’ perceptions of AI use in the classroom. Namely, how do K-12 teachers perceive AI tools in education and the impact of AI on the workforce?

Our team developed a novel survey developed from Biesta and Tedder’s (2007) ecological agency model, Bronfenbrenner’s (2000) ecological systems theory, and preexisting teacher agency subscales (Liu, et. al; 2016). This survey included 44 Likert-type questions, three open-response questions, and 14 demographic questions. We collected 1,000 complete, unique, and verified responses from K-12 teachers in the United States and territories. Analysis included descriptive statistics, open-response thematic analysis, exploratory factor analysis, linear regression modeling, and comparative analysis across subpopulations.

In general, teachers endorsed items suggesting AI tools could be valuable (e.g., 78% agreed that AI tools could help support them with key challenges), however they also endorsed items suggesting ethical and learning concerns with AI tool use (e.g., 85% had ethical concerns about students’ AI use). Open response results indicated that teachers saw potential AI applications for creating lesson materials, supporting students with different learning needs, grading, managing large data, detecting cheating, and communicating via writing (e.g., routine communicating with parents). Teacher concerns included student cheating, teacher use, not being developmentally appropriate for younger grades, unreliability, and ethical concerns. Opinions about AI tools being helpful in the classroom were statistically different between high, middle, and elementary school, with high school teachers expressing more belief of AI tool utility in the classroom. Linear regression modeling described explicit school support (e.g., allowing or encouraging AI tool use, technology resources in schools) as predicting an increase in the impact of teacher AI tool use across all grade levels, with the impact being the strongest for elementary school teachers.

Our results suggest that teachers’ agency for AI tool use, including their feelings of about their own time, ability, and values, is salient in their willingness to use AI in their classrooms. Additionally, social support among teachers and from school leadership can increase teachers’ willingness to use AI tools. These results support providing training that specifies grade-appropriate use to all K-12 teachers about AI tools in the classroom.

Citations

Biesta, G. & Tedder, M., “Agency and learning in the life course: Towards an ecological perspective,” Stud. Educ. Adults, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 132–149, Sep. 2007, doi: 10.1080/02660830.2007.11661545.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (2000). Ecological systems theory. American Psychological Association.

Liu, S., Hallinger, P., & Feng, D. (2016). Supporting the professional learning of teachers in China: Does principal leadership make a difference?. Teaching and teacher education, 59, 79-91.

Authored by
Dr. Joseph Francis Mirabelli (University of Michigan), Jeanne Sanders (University of Michigan), Dr. Paul Jensen (University of Michigan), and Dr. Karin Jensen (University of Michigan)

Low participation of Black Americans in Computer Science (CS) careers is often attributed to a lack of “preparatory privilege,” encompassing the unavailability of resources, experiences that build content knowledge and associated skills, and role models. The impact of this goes beyond academic proficiency; pursuing opportunities and career paths that are not easily available in one’s community signals a departure from shared norms, which can have a deleterious impact on interest and persistence in STEM. This poster summarizes our NSF-funded multi-year project, called LEGACY, which targeted one of the communities most underrepresented in computing (Black young women), providing them with physical, academic, and social resources to overcome the lack of preparatory privilege, while building awareness of CS and realizing their potential for participation in CS and other STEM-related occupations.

LEGACY stands as a groundbreaking program that educates young Black female high school students in CS in a way that is unique to Alabama, yet eminently worthy of larger-scale adoption and adaptation. The LEGACY project recruited 4 cohorts (94 Black young women) from 29 High Schools for year-long preparatory experiences to promote their success in the College Board AP CS Principles (AP CSP) course and exam. Residential summer institutes at the University of Alabama (UA) and Tuskegee University (TU) immersed students in inquiry-based and culturally-responsive project-based AP CSP activities facilitated by 3 highly experienced Black women. Teacher-facilitators and CS undergraduates mentored these students as they explored CS concepts, acquired core computational thinking practices and developed CSP Create Performance Tasks. Intertwined with its academic activities, LEGACY created a peer community of Black young women CS learners. Interactions with Black women CS professionals added to the role modeling opportunities for the LEGACY students, building their sense of belonging and CS/STEM career awareness. Students also received resources to mitigate preparatory barriers. Drawing on LEGACY’s collaborative network, participants engaged with successful Black women speakers from industry, academia, and government, as well as STEM learning experiences in various on-campus labs. Social media maintained this collaborative network throughout the academic year, as students completed the AP CSP course in their home high schools.

The AP CSP curriculum is based on equity and inclusion as the course’s primary goals. From our multi-year evaluation of LEGACY, 71.8% of students obtained a qualifying score (3 or above), higher than the recent National passing rate of 63.3%. This suggests that LEGACY’s preparatory model promotes deep learning of CS concepts, and application on the Create Performance Task, as measured via the AP CSP exam. Students exhibited significant gains in computational thinking, identification with CS, and desire to pursue computing-based careers. Follow-up interviews revealed that significant numbers of LEGACY alumnae chose STEM majors and pursued STEM careers, crediting their participation in LEGACY with giving them the confidence to persist despite encountering challenges.

In this poster, we summarize the key components of LEGACY and our core evaluative findings, providing lessons learned and suggestions for others who desire to explore similar models grounded in DEI principles to support successful CS and STEM education.

Authored by
Dr. Mohammed A. Qazi (Tuskegee University), Dr. Jeff Gray (The University of Alabama), Prof. Martha Escobar (Oakland University), Dr. Kathleen C Haynie (Affiliation unknown), Noelle G. Mongene (Oakland University), and Yasmeen Rawajfih (Tuskegee University)

Background
This CAREER project focuses on examining how cultural familiarity plays a role in racially minoritized students’ experience with engineering classroom assessments to advance knowledge on the fairness of such assessments. There are continual achievement gaps between racially minoritized students and racial majority students in engineering education assessments. In engineering classrooms, exams and quizzes make up a large percent of students’ course grades. Thus, student performances differences on these assessments impact their GPAs, which impact vital educational and career decisions such as selections of students to participate in internships, co-ops, research opportunities and even hiring. It is currently unknown how much of the achievement gaps reflects assessment bias as little attention has been paid on evaluating fairness of engineering education assessments. Unless more discourse on engineering education assessments’ fairness emerge to reveal underlying bias towards racially minoritized students, the field of engineering will continue to turn talented students away and its current issue of unequal representation will remain.

Purpose
This CAREER project specifically examines commonly used concept inventories (CI) in engineering classrooms and how the CI items function for racially minoritized and racial majority students. The purpose of this poster paper is to provide an overview of this CAREER research project and plan. More specifically, this project investigates three research questions: 1) To what extent do items from commonly used engineering CIs demonstrate acceptable functioning (in terms of difficulty and discrimination) for racially minoritized students when compared to racial majorities? 2) What are patterns of cultural familiarity and content of problematic items and items that show acceptable functioning? And 3) How do racially minoritized students experience testing in engineering classrooms?

Methodology/approach
This project adopts a mixed-method research design, consisting of first a quantitative phase followed by a qualitative phase. In the quantitative phase, we use Classical Test Theory to evaluate CI item functioning (in terms of difficulty and discrimination) for different racial/ethnicity groups and identify problematic items that consistently perform poorly to assess racially minoritized students. In the qualitative phase, we investigate the context of the problematic items to reveal underlying cultural familiarity bias. Also in the qualitative phase, we conduct interviews with racially minoritized students to explore their experiences with engineering classroom tests and their cognitive processes while answering the problematic CI items.

Implication
Examining the fairness of engineering education assessments addresses an overlooked research area. Revealing underlying biases in commonly used CIs promotes the fair and equitable assessment for racially minoritized students. Ultimately, this project complements other efforts of increasing diversity and inclusion in engineering education, contributing to fixing systemic issues in this field that hinders the success of underrepresented minority students.

Authored by
Dr. Kerrie A Douglas (Purdue University at West Lafayette (PWL) (COE)), Ms. Tiantian Li (Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE)), and Shauna Adams (Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE))

In this paper, we report on the progress of a project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Scholarships for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S-STEM) program. The paper outlines the project goals. It provides a detailed review of the completed project tasks since the start of the project. It also describes the project achievements to-date, and the planned next steps.

The overall goal of the project is 1) to increase the degree completion rate of 32 low-income, high achieving undergraduate engineering students at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) 2) to improve the probability of a successful graduation (having a major-related job after graduation or joining graduate studies) for these students.

The project supports these students in two cohorts. Cohort 1 students are 18 freshmen from six different engineering/computer science majors. More than 70% of these students belong to minority/underrepresented groups. 40% are first-generation. Cohort 1 students started their education in Fall 2024. Cohort 2 students will be transferring students and will be recruited in Summer 2025. Cohort 2 is expected to have 14 students.

The project leverages available programs at UIC and incorporates improved activities, which include cohort building and nurturing throughout the undergraduate education, a three-pronged mentoring program with faculty, peers, and industry partners, and a professional practicum through a guaranteed paid internship program, and a senior preparation course.

The project team completed the following main project tasks since the start of the project on March 1, 2024.
1) Identifying, inviting, interviewing, and selecting 18 students for Cohort 1. These students were selected from an eligible pool of more that 300 incoming freshmen.
2) Planning and implementing a one-week on campus Summer Bridge Program (SBP) experience for Cohort 1 students. The SBP was the first cohort building activity of the project.
3) Designing a special version of a current engineering freshmen course (ENGR100) for Cohort 1 students. This special section of ENGR100 is currently offered.
4) Matching Cohort 1 students with peer mentors.
5) Training faculty mentors and matching them with Cohort 1 students.

The project team is currently monitoring the academic progress of the students in Cohort 1. The next major task is the recruitment of Cohort 2 students.

Authored by
Prof. Houshang Darabi (The University of Illinois Chicago), Dr. Shanon Marie Reckinger (The University of Illinois Chicago), Dr. Renata A Revelo (University of Illinois Chicago), Dr. Betul Bilgin (University of Illinois Chicago), Dr. Miiri Kotche (The University of Illinois at Chicago), Dr. Elizabeth A Sanders (University of Illinois Chicago), and Nikith Rachakonda (The University of Illinois at Chicago)

The implementation of NGSS in the United States has incorporated engineering practices in science education. Elementary and secondary science teachers must find ways to expose students to engineering in ways that are accessible and age-appropriate. In order to attract more students to engineering as a field of study and career path, it is important to offer outreach programs that are both educational and inspirational. Our university-based outreach program introduces students to fundamental engineering concepts through the design, implementation and optimization of a smart night light. The program is designed to be customizable for students in grades 4 through 12 and further tailored to the learning skills and available time of the participating groups. Furthermore, the program emphasizes hands-on learning while integrating engineering principles such as the engineering design process, electrical circuits, basic coding, and microcontroller programming. At the end of this program, students assemble a functional smart night light with four distinct operational modes, reinforcing their understanding of the practical applications of engineering.

Participants begin by exploring the engineering design process, learning how engineers identify problems, brainstorm solutions, design prototypes, and use the iterative process to improve their designs. This process is woven throughout the program as students use it to guide the creation of their night lights. They learn about the components of electrical circuits, including resistors, LEDs, and sensors, and use a breadboard to create a basic circuit for their project. There is an option for students to gain hands-on experience with soldering techniques .

As part of the program, students may also use a block-based coding language, which allows them to learn how to control the behavior of the microcontroller that powers the night light. Depending on the students’ grade level, coding can be part of the learning lesson and can range from simple light-sensor-triggered responses for younger students, to more complex programming for older participants. This flexibility ensures that the program is both challenging and age-appropriate, regardless of the students' prior knowledge.

The program is designed to be delivered in various formats to accommodate the needs of different schools and organizations. It can be conducted in-person at the university’s dedicated engineering outreach lab, in person at school district facilities, or remotely using a packaged kit of materials and online instruction. Furthermore, the program's duration can be adapted, ranging from a 3-hour introductory session to a more in-depth 6-hour workshop, providing educators with the flexibility to integrate the program into their curricula or as a stand-alone experience.

In summary, this program offers students a comprehensive introduction to engineering through an engaging, hands-on project. By constructing a smart night light, students gain practical experience in the engineering design process, electrical circuit assembly, block-based coding, and microcontroller programming, while cultivating their problem-solving and critical thinking skills. This adaptable program is well-suited for a variety of educational settings and timeframes, making it an accessible and enriching opportunity for aspiring young engineers.

This work was funded through the NSF Division on Research in Learning.

Authored by
Mrs. Kathleen Dinota (Stony Brook University) and Dr. Monica Bugallo (Stony Brook University)

Title: A Digital Nudge: Assessing the Impact of an Immutable Records Data Management Platform on Student Researcher Ethics (ER2: the Ethical and Responsible Research Program)

Research ethics and the lack of it have become an important issue more than ever both in the academia and the education sector, especially due to the advent of generative artificial intelligence. Hence, there is a pressing need for effective academic research ethics education at universities, particularly at STEM departments, so that we can help younger generations nurture their ethical thinking and responsible behavior in relation to STEM fields. The current literature on academic research ethics education at universities broadly tends to apply one of the following approaches to inducing positive behavioral changes among students: speculative training, knowledge-focused training, and skill-focused training. Nevertheless, it does not sufficiently explore alternative approaches even though existing approaches appear to have both advantages and weaknesses. That is, the literature also argues that some faculty are reluctant to integrate research ethics into technical courses due to time constraints. Therefore, the most feasible option could be designing a highly effective program with relatively few additional resources, little coordination, and minimum training. Hence, it is relevant to explore alternative approaches to academic research ethics education at universities. Such alternative approaches may include a nudge-focused approach.

The nudge theory postulates that we can guide people’s decision making and behavior in a particular direction by shaping the decision environment a.k.a. the choice architecture. Using this theory, we attempted to achieve high replicability and cost effectiveness as well as theoretical and methodological relevance. Thus, the present study investigated if the introduction of an online, immutable records data management platform would induce positive changes among graduate-level engineering students in terms of ethical understanding, ethical behavior in a research lab setting, and the choice architecture in which they were engaged in scientific research (N = 16).

Methodologically, we first introduced an online data management platform to five participating labs, and then carried out surveys with Likert-scale questions in Qualtrics before and after the introduction of this platform. After having obtained answers from 16 students, we statistically investigated its impact on their ethical understanding and behavior in addition to the choice architecture, using Wilcoxon signed-rank test. To obtain a deeper contextual understanding of the results, we further analyzed qualitative data from the surveys by generating word clouds of their answers to open-ended questions with R packages.

The interim results indicated that professors of participating labs were statistically significantly more likely to encourage lab members to seek out education and training in ethical research best practices after the introduction of our data management platform (pre-test average: 3.42 out of 5.00, post-test average = 4.00 out of 5.00, p = .04). Additionally, participating students changed their behavior in terms of data recording, data storage, and data sharing after the introduction of our data management platform. However, it is still unknown if the introduction of our data management platform statistically significantly induced these positive changes among students.

Authored by
Dr. Kazumi Homma (The George Washington University), Dr. Ekundayo Shittu (The George Washington University), Ryan Watkins (The George Washington University), Dr. Payman Dehghanian (The George Washington University), Dr. Chung Hyuk Park (The George Washington University), and Hiromi Sanders J.D., Ph.D. (The George Washington University/University of Maryland, Baltimore)

Engineering stress culture is a common phenomenon that many students are aware of but may not know how to verbalize or conceptualize. The culture of engineering has been described as one of stress, heavy workload, and burnout as a method of achieving one's goals. Engineering programs are considered rigorous and require hard work, which may include sacrifices to mental health and well-being. Students in engineering may struggle to understand or conceptualize their feelings of stress, overwhelm, burnout, and anxiety due to a limited range of vocabulary for self expression. Furthermore, the engineering stress culture has become so normalized that students may not even recognize that these are feelings of concern due to this culture being such a common shared experience amongst engineering students.

Over the course of three years, we administered a survey twice per semester to a cohort of undergraduate engineering students, establishing a total of ten time points. The survey sought to examine the perceptions of engineering stress culture and its influence on intention to remain in engineering. Each time point also included one to five open response questions for qualitative analysis. The survey captured over 3,000 engineering student responses over the three year time span. In this NSF Grantees Paper, we preview this data by presenting the open response results for the eighth time point. In the eighth time point we asked students “how do you know when you are feeling overwhelmed?” In order to analyze the open-response data, we used qualitative coding to generate a codebook for thematic analysis.

Results indicated that a majority of students were able to define or conceptualize the feeling of overwhelm and/or identify reactions they associated with being overwhelmed. However, other students struggled to identify the feeling of overwhelm, instead describing a constant state of overwhelm that they believed made it difficult to differentiate specific instances. Students associated feeling overwhelmed with feelings of stress, anxiety, and physical reactions to anxiety. Students attributed feeling overwhelmed to negative impacts on their mental or physical wellbeing. The negative connotation associated with feeling overwhelmed seemed to stem from student perceptions of time, workload, and methods of dealing with stress. Approaches to managing stress (e.g., making a list, taking a break) were inconsistently described as effective, with methods sometimes feeling beneficial, while others felt the methods caused more feelings of overwhelm.

Undergraduate students described intense reactions from feeling overwhelmed and a difficult time managing being overwhelmed. Sharing these understandings of overwhelm with educators with a greater understanding of undergraduate students’ experiences surrounding feeling overwhelmed. This may promote educators changing course structure to promote a more inclusive and supportive environment. This environment would support student well-being and emotional intelligence to allow for greater academic success and reduced stigma surrounding mental health.

Authored by
Faith Gacheru (University of Michigan), Dr. Karin Jensen (University of Michigan), Jeanne Sanders (University of Michigan), Eileen Johnson (University of Michigan), and Mr. Joseph Francis Mirabelli (University of Michigan)

The objective of the Awards to Increase Mechanical (ME) and Electrical/Computer Engineering (ECE) Diversity (AIME) S-STEM program is to increase sustainable gender and ethnic diversity by (a) financially supporting talented Underrepresented Minority (URM) students at Drexel University (DU), (b) activating networks that will support the AIME scholar’s intellectual growth, sense of belonging, socialization to their discipline, cultural capital, and (c) transforming the departmental culture that has structurally marginalized URM students in the past. Over six years, the program will award 23 four-year scholarships across two cohorts, with the first cohort of 9 students beginning in 2023-2024. This project is designed to drive institutional changes in how ME and ECE programs recruit and retain URM students, by not only providing financial support, but also examining how comprehensive services can enhance disciplinary learning and foster positive identity development. Specifically, AIME has cultivated strategic recruitment partnerships with local stakeholders in STEM education to recruit talented, under-resourced students from URM and women populations in the Philadelphia School District (PSD) and offer resources both financial through scholarships and academic through mentorship, tutoring, and undergraduate research opportunities, to scaffold their success at DU and eventually entering a rewarding lucrative engineering field. Additionally, AIME will explore the use of podcasting to explore themes our AIME Scholars find relevant including interviews of recent graduates and URM engineers in the workforce as a potential resource for supporting the authoring of positive disciplinary identities for the identified student population.

Although one of the purposes of the AIME program is to provide financial support to talented URM and women students with unmet financial need in ME and ECE disciplines, we recognize that there are other obstacles URMs and women face in an academic environment. To increase the likelihood of equitable educational experiences for our AIME Scholars and to interrupt the current policies and departmental culture that compromise learning opportunities and participation in academic programs, we adopted the Thrive Mosaic (TM) Scholar Development Framework. This framework is a conceptual toolkit for equitable STEM identity and leadership development that centers the student’s development of social capital, community and cultural wealth, and academic capital within an ecosystem of partners (associates, advocates, mentors, coaches, connectors, targeting trainers) who will provide specific support throughout the undergraduate experience. We are adopting this evidence-based framework because it disrupts the well-established obstructions to equity and inclusion in most institutions. It builds cultural competence among the TM partners responsible for providing services and guidance to URMs and women while supporting the educational goals of our AIME scholars by nurturing a sense of belonging, supporting intellectual growth, socializing them to their academic discipline, assigning value to their cultural differences and creating a welcoming environment. This project and its findings will inform engineering programs as they explore ways to support URM students' intellectual growth, while also fostering a sense of belonging in ME, ECE, and the broader engineering community.

Authored by
Dr. Jennifer S Atchison (Drexel University), Ahmad R. Najafi (Drexel University), and Prof. Gail Rosen (Drexel University)

The overall goal of the National Science Foundation-sponsored S-STEM program at Milwaukee School of Engineering (Grant No. DUE-2027632) is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving mechanical engineering undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The program incorporates evidence-based strategies and corresponding activities to affect academic and career success of S-STEM scholars, with these objectives: 1) Enable scholar cohorts to persist in the undergraduate mechanical engineering program and to enter the STEM workforce or graduate school upon graduation. 2) Provide a conducive atmosphere for cohorts to thrive as they participate in social activities, peer tutoring, shadowing experiences (with industry engineers), student-faculty interaction, career guidance, and preparation for research opportunities and graduate school and/or industry, and 3) Generate knowledge and understanding of the effectiveness of strategies and practices employed to enhance student persistence to graduation and beyond.
By the fourth year of the grant duration (September 2024), ten students have graduated and most of the remaining 8 scholars are poised for successful completion by Spring 2025. This paper will highlight the pertinent career pathways of the graduates and various demographics of the participants without individual reference (providing data in clusters and trends). It will include various opportunities in industry and research centers that prepared these graduates during the academic program. Salient observations and lessons learned in the process of advocating for STEM scholars by the STEM administration team are provided as pointers for other educators seeking to invest in the academic success and career enhancement of undergraduate STEM population. The observations of the External Evaluator are also included to validate the results. Both quantitative and qualitative results show the successful implementation of evidence-based strategies, the academic persistence of S-STEM scholars and their career transition into STEM workforce.

Authored by
Dr. Subha K Kumpaty (Concordia University Wisconsin/ Milwaukee School of Engineering), Dr. Mohammad Mahinfalah (Milwaukee School of Engineering), Dr. Jan L. Fertig (Milwaukee School of Engineering), and Mrs. Judith Eroe (Grand Canyon University)

This article outlines the objectives, design, recent findings, and anticipated outcomes of a newly funded research initiative supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The project is part of the Research on Innovative Technologies for Enhanced Learning (RITEL) program, which prioritizes pioneering research in emerging teaching and learning technologies tailored to address critical challenges in real-world educational contexts. The primary aim of the project is to create, implement, and assess an AI-driven learning platform in the format of a mobile application called CeLens that acts as an on-demand educator to help construction engineering students learn from their unstructured observations during everyday activities. CeLens seamlessly merges students’ observations during everyday experiences or formal site visits with their formal engineering education. The platform, designed based on the activity learning theory and developed based on human-centered principles, leverages advanced hybrid image-audio processing techniques to accurately and efficiently identify and explain diverse construction elements.
The envisioned AI-enhanced learning system will be designed based on the Activity Learning Theory, which asserts that the human mind is an integral part of environmental interactions and positions activity, whether sensory, mental, or physical, as a precursor to learning. The AI-enhanced platform will be designed based on human-centered principles and will operate using a novel hybrid image-audio processing system that can efficiently and effectively recognize and classify various construction components. In addition to integrating imagery and audio data through this novel hybrid approach, the project will introduce two major technological innovations in audio processing and sound recognition. First, the hybrid use of collected audio and imagery data will improve the overall performance of the system by capturing a more comprehensive range of construction components and operations. Second, by using innovative audio processing and signal source separation algorithms, the need for multiple microphones will be eliminated, enabling the entire system to be encapsulated in a single device (i.e., a student's smartphone) with the ability to sense and analyze audio signals from distances of up to 100 feet. Throughout this project, the proposed AI-enhanced teaching and learning approach will be implemented in multiple undergraduate construction engineering courses to empirically evaluate its effectiveness on students' learning processes and outcomes, as well as the perceptions of both students and educators regarding this innovation as a formal pedagogical method. Although the AI-enhanced learning platform will be developed in the context of construction engineering, the proposed learning method and the intellectual merit of this project can be transferred to other disciplines. This project will also assess the broader applicability of the proposed innovation.

Authored by
Dr. Mohammad Ilbeigi (Stevens Institute of Technology (School of Engineering and Science)), Dana Alzoubi (Iowa State University of Science and Technology), and Abbas Rashidi (The University of Utah)

Team-based design projects are an essential element of an undergraduate engineering curriculum. Many students in engineering programs are assigned their first long-term team-based design project in the context of interdisciplinary introductory engineering courses during their first semester on campus. Interpersonal conflict with teammates is a common challenge for students. Responding to team conflict promptly is a logistical challenge when the student-to-instructor ratio is high, as is often the case with large-enrollment introductory engineering courses.

The study context is a required first-semester Introduction to Engineering course taken by approximately 650 students every fall semester at a large public R1 university. The lead instructor (PI of this project) uses 28 undergraduate teaching assistants to provide additional instructional support. Because the teaching assistants are engineering undergraduates who have previously completed the course, they serve as near-peer mentors (NPMs) for students in the course. This NSF PFE: RIEF project aims to identify the root causes of student team conflicts and explore how NPMs respond to reports of student team members not contributing as expected. With this, we seek to develop a defensible logic model for a coaching program for NPMs that promotes equity-oriented strategies for identifying and responding to conflicts that arise during team-based design projects.

This paper presents preliminary results from two different survey instruments—Team Reflection Survey and Mentor Observation Survey—developed to collect confidential reflections on team conflict in the introductory engineering course at the end of the semester. The Team Reflection Survey collects data from students regarding their experiences with the incidence and severity of conflict within their team during the semester. This survey also asks if and how the students reported concerns with team conflicts during the semester and how they sought conflict resolution. The Mentor Observation Survey collects data from the NPMs to capture their impressions of team conflicts within the teams that they mentored. This survey includes questions about how the NPM noticed incidences of team conflict and how they responded to it. Insights into the nature of team conflicts from these two different perspectives are presented.

Authored by
Dr. Haritha Malladi (University of Delaware), Dr. Marcia Gail Headley (University of Delaware), and Dr. Pamela S. Lottero-Perdue (Towson University)

With the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs), new approaches to conversation-based teaching have risen. Manufacturing education can benefit from AI in democratizing access to know-how rapidly, upskilling the future workforce with a high economic impact due to the multiplier effect of manufacturing. However, platforms like ChatGPT should be assessed for their capability to provide accurate and relevant manufacturing knowledge. This NSF FMRG supported paper aims to test modern AI tools by prompting three types of questions selected from manufacturing textbooks categorized as General Process, Sub-process, and Process Parameters. The prompts explicitly request answers for four different user levels: Children, Teenagers, Undergraduates, and experts. The responses generated by ChatGPT are evaluated qualitatively for correctness, relevance, and suitability for the user’s level of understanding of manufacturing, and quantitively using semantic similarity between keywords of responses and questions. Results show lower similarity for children responses indicating simpler and more abstract terms used which are more suitable for children. Yet, some responses have complex details that are not likely understandable for children. Additionally, some responses for higher levels are inconsistent and incomprehensive. Several future steps can mitigate the limitations and improve reliability of adopting current AI and LLM tools. Retrieval Augmented Generation, i.e., creating specialized Generative Pre-trained Transformer models trained on acquired manufacturing corpora results in more accurate responses with less computational cost. Integrating Visual Language Models to answer more complex queries that involve CAD models and images facilitates introducing manufacturability of a design as a fourth category of questions. Explicitly searching for analogies can lead to more effective explanation of complex responses suitable for not only children but advanced learners. User studies are needed to finetune and validate an optimized personalized conversational educational platform to train and encourage a broader population to adopt manufacturing skills.

Authored by
Fatemeh Karimi Kenari (University of North Carolina at Charlotte), yasaswi bhumireddy (University of North Carolina at Charlotte), Xiaoliang Yan (Georgia Institute of Technology), Dr. Mahmoud Dinar (University of North Carolina at Charlotte), and Shreyes N Melkote (Georgia Institute of Technology)

An S-STEM program supported by the National Science Foundation located at a regional public university in a large metropolitan area aims to increase four-year degree completion rates and close the equity gap in retention rates for students in STEM. The program, launched in 2022, provides full tuition scholarships, a limited cohort experience, and accessible professional development opportunities for 50 talented, low income students at a 100% commuter university. The campus student body consists of 46% Pell-eligible students, 31% students of color, and 47% first gen students, and so the program was designed with flexibility in mind, understanding that most students work or have family commitments that impede their ability to participate in co-curricular activities. This paper reports on the results from participants in the first two cohorts, who are now sophomores and juniors, with majors in Biochemistry, Biology, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Software Engineering .

Early evidence suggests that the limited cohort model, with students sharing only two classes during their freshman year, along with supplementary programming provides robust academic onboarding and social connections that can be elusive on a commuter campus. Enrollment data from this group indicates a significant increase for second and third year retention on the campus as well as within STEM majors. The program has achieved an increase in success rates in both cohorted classes, like Calculus and General Chemistry, as well as non-cohorted classes like Calculus II and Introductory Biology. It is worth noting that every interested student who has met the eligibility requirements, with academic criteria including a 3.0 high school GPA and placement into Calculus I, has been accepted into the program.

Authored by
Prof. Joan Remski (University of Michigan - Dearborn)

Through a National Science Foundation grant (NSF BPE Track 4 Phase 1), the Colorado School of Mines launched a pilot program called BASE Camp as a creative approach to providing training to natural peer leaders within a university. The objective of this study and the associated program is to use a peer leader and mentorship model to create a stronger appreciation for the contributions underrepresented students make in STEM fields, focusing on engineering. This will create a stronger community of belonging for those who are currently socially and culturally excluded from the field.

The three overarching research questions to gauge success of the program center on 1) education, 2) comprehension and implementation, and 3) a resulting increase in a sense of belonging on campus. The pilot program includes preliminary training and follow-up assessments. Assessment of program results are being conducted through multiple measures. These include 1) pre and post surveys corresponding to training topics, 2) a broader belonging survey conducted at multiple points throughout the program, 3) university wide climate surveys conducted prior to the program start 4) journal prompts appropriate for each level and 5) focus groups to gain feedback on what needs to be adjusted.

Preliminary findings suggest that student leaders who have undergone the first module of training are entering with less inter-personal communication knowledge than their faculty mentors hoped. They know broad themes but do not feel confident in their deeper knowledge on any particular topic and have a desire to better understand what actions can be taken on their part to create a more welcoming academic environment for their peers. This finding promises a wealth of space to grow the BASE Camp program within not only the home university but also partnering small STEM institutions across the United States.

Authored by
Dr. Danni Lopez-Rogina (Colorado School of Mines), Stacey Roland (Colorado School of Mines), Dr. Jessica Mary Smith (Colorado School of Mines), and Lakshmi Krishna (Colorado School of Mines)

In recognition of the importance of integrated STEM yet the difficulty of implementing it effectively in classrooms, the community has called for research on how to support better integrated learning (English, 2016; Kelley & Knowles, 2016). The Biomimicry as an Authentic Anchor (BAA) project, funded by the DRK12 program of the NSF Division of Research on Learning, takes up this call by designing and researching a professional development model that supports middle school science and engineering teachers to adapt, plan, and enact design-based integrated STEM units focused on biomimicry. Through the BAA professional development model, teachers learn to engage their students in biology and engineering by (a) implementing biomimetic design challenges and (b) supporting students’ design work with structure/function analysis, an invariant concept common to both disciplines. In this poster, we report on a study we have done within this project that has focused on teacher choices, a major focus of this grant. For this study, we analyzed the curricular decisions of seven middle school STEM teachers who were implementing biomimetic design challenges in their classrooms. Guided by activity system theory, we found that different rules for timeframe and required topics, different pre-existing curricular and physical tools, and different teacher goals were consequential to the different teachers’ biomimicry implementations. These findings suggest the flexibility afforded by biomimicry for supporting STEM teachers who want to enact integrated curriculum with their students. In addition to this study of teacher choices, we also report project outcomes to date in terms of student participation. In future work, we plan to analyze students’ learning outcomes and the relationship between these outcomes and teachers’ curriculum choice-making.

Authored by
Geling Xu (Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach), Dr. Kristen B Wendell (Tufts University), Ms. Tyrine Jamella Pangan (Tufts University), Debra Bernstein (Affiliation unknown), William Church (Affiliation unknown), and Dr. Ethan E Danahy (Tufts University)

This paper outlines the results obtained during Year 3 of a Broadening Participation in Engineering project through the National Science Foundation concerning structural barriers that can push diverse subgroups of students out of engineering. We specifically focus on curricular factors using an emerging framework based in network analysis that can quantify the “complexity” of engineering curricula. We have curated a dataset of 497 plans of study representing five engineering disciplines (Mechanical, Civil, Electrical, Chemical, and Industrial) across 13 institutions within the Multiple Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development (MIDFIELD), which – among other demographic variables – contains course-taking records for all students. By aligning our plan of study dataset with MIDFIELD, we aim to enable the synthesis of the two data sources to parse out the educational trajectories of engineering students in the dataset.

In Year 3, we have focused on three primary activities: (1) mining course-taking trajectories for students in the MIDFIELD dataset to compare the uncovered patterns with the codified plans of studies, (2) distributing the dataset and functionality to analyze the plans of study through a comprehensive R package, and (3) conducting a scoping review to collect other possible metrics for researchers and practitioners to use in conjunction with the dataset or their own data.

Regarding the first activity, we have explored course-taking patterns in the five engineering disciplines under study at the 13 institutions within our dataset using association analysis. Through this process, we extracted common bundles of courses taken by students and overlayed those bundles within the plan of study networks. In this paper, we will provide sample visualizations to highlight how merging the two datasets can provide insights into the varied pathways in which students approach their degree program requirements.
Regarding the second and third activities, our R package is ready for public use and is currently being used by a set of early-adopting institutions. We will provide sample outputs to outline its essential functionality and include a list of metrics we have added to our package based on our scoping review of the literature describing other network-based measurements used to characterize the complexity of engineering programs. Our scoping review draws from a set of 159 papers that cited foundational papers on Curricular Analytics to capture how the framework has evolved since it was originally proposed in 2013.

Through this project, we contend our primary impact is drawing insights from already available data and providing the engineering education community with ready-to-use tools for analyzing their own curricula within a standard statistical programming platform used in the field. Moreover, by deconstructing the varied pathways students take to an engineering degree, we can better understand what curricular bottlenecks exist for students and find appropriate ways to increase the flexibility of our programs to enable a broader population of students to succeed.

Authored by
Dr. David Reeping (University of Cincinnati), Dr. Matthew W. Ohland (Purdue University at West Lafayette (PWL) (COE)), Dr. Kenneth Reid (University of Indianapolis), Dr. Hossein EbrahimNejad (Drexel University), NAHAL RASHEDI (University of Cincinnati), and Yunmeng Han (University of Cincinnati)

To enhance the United States’ competitiveness in STEM fields, the University of Arkansas created the NSF-funded program, Closing American’s Innovation Gap through Collaboration with Industry (INNOV), to equip low-income students with innovative skills and improve their retention and success in STEM disciplines. The program combines academic innovation opportunities, scholarships, and retention programming, targeting Pell Grant recipients with high potential. INNOV aims to cultivate a cohort of STEM graduates through a curriculum that integrates innovation methodologies and practical industry experience.

INNOV consists of several key components. Curricular components include a credit-bearing bridge program conducted prior to their first fall semester, and a year-long sequence of innovation courses featuring industry-partnered projects, and innovation-themed field trips. The non-curricular aspect includes a residential living-learning community, peer and professional mentoring, faculty guidance, and team-building exercises, all designed to foster student success. Scholarships provide up to eight semesters of financial support, reducing economic barriers for participants.

The program accepted 28 students. Currently, the first cohort are seniors, and the second cohort are juniors. Scholars enter the program with a high school GPA of 3.50 or higher and ACT composite scores between 23 and 27 (SAT 1130-1300). INNOV has achieved an 89% retention rate across two cohorts, a significant success in supporting this population in their STEM pursuits.

Insights into the program’s impact on participants’ innovation training and satisfaction with the program are gained from the end of academic year anonymous response surveys. Separate analyses from the junior and sophomore year surveys are provided in the paper. Pooling the INNOV sophomore and junior survey data from May 2024, of the 20 respondents (11 sophomore, 9 junior), 90% reported feeling more comfortable expressing their ideas, and 95% felt more confident taking risks. Furthermore, 90% indicated that the innovation courses were valuable for their future educational and career goals, while 75% credited the program with enhancing their creativity and innovative thinking.

Surveys also highlighted the importance of INNOV's non-academic support. Of respondents, 85% felt that the Path program, which provides mentoring and peer support, was essential in promoting their sense of belonging, and 95% felt it helped them be more academically engaged. They emphasized that Path was integral to their motivation, with 85% affirming that it helped them continue in their chosen STEM degree program. Additionally, the program’s cohort-building activities and faculty-student interaction were crucial in maintaining students’ academic focus and commitment. These findings demonstrate the program’s success in creating a supportive and inclusive environment that fosters both academic and personal growth.

In conclusion, INNOV has effectively combined innovation education with comprehensive support mechanisms to prepare low-income students for success in STEM fields. By fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, industry engagement early in their academic careers, and a strong academic support system, INNOV has made a significant impact on retention, academic performance, and future aspirations. These results provide a roadmap for future initiatives aimed at improving retention in STEM disciplines, particularly among students from low-income backgrounds.

Acknowledgment

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science under Grant No. 2030297. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Authored by
Dr. Karl D. Schubert FIET (University of Arkansas), Dr. Carol S Gattis (University of Arkansas), Xochitl Delgado Solorzano (University of Arkansas), Jennie S Popp Ph.D. (Affiliation unknown), Chunhua Cao (The University of Alabama), Mrs. Leslie Bartsch Massey (University of Arkansas), and Mr. Thomas Carter III (University of Arkansas)

The underrepresentation of women in STEM and especially engineering remains a persistent challenge, requiring urgent and innovative pedagogical strategies. Research suggests that contextualizing mathematics courses with real-world applications, particularly with an engineering context, can significantly enhance student engagement, especially for women, and positively affect their attitude towards STEM majors. To investigate this theory in a community college setting, we designed six modules for six different subjects in the Intermediate Algebra course. The intervention involved embedding real-world STEM applications with altruistic components into the curriculum to make algebra more engaging and relevant to women. Each of the six modules introduced students to word problems connected to physics, engineering, environmental science, and health care.
The designed modules were incorporated and piloted through twelve sections from fall 2021 through spring 2023. In total, 305 students enrolled in contextualized sections, and 1531 students enrolled in regular sessions at the same time. Students’ grades in the course and their academic and demographic background information were collected from the institution’s research department, allowing for an analysis of performance outcomes, including course completion rates, grades, and gender-specific trends.
Moreover, to further gauge students' STEM identity, all students in all course sections during this period were asked to fill out a survey at the start and end of the semester. The survey questions aimed to measure changes in students’ attitudes toward mathematics and word problems, interest in STEM careers, and their intentions to pursue further studies in STEM. In total, 288 students answered the survey question at both the beginning and the end of the semester, out of which 77 were enrolled in the contextualized sections.
A segmented regression analysis suggests that the intervention positively impacted students’ grades in the course for high-performing students while having a negative effect on the course performance of the students who exhibited academic struggles. Preliminary analysis of the survey data shows a positive impact on students’ attitudes toward mathematics and a contradicting trend toward students’ STEM identity and future plans. Further analysis, including multiple regression, is underway to better describe the findings concerning academic and demographic factors.

Authored by
Dr. Mobin Rastgar Agah (Ct State Community College Norwalk)

Since the inception of the NSF Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) Program in 2015, RED teams have worked to implement significant changes in engineering education. To facilitate such revolutionary changes in higher education, requirements were put in place by NSF to ensure that RED teams are composed of individuals in various institutional roles who hold diverse skills. Most of the RED teams have experienced some PI and senior personnel turnover during their funding period, and they have had to work hard to maintain team cohesion and momentum amidst those changes.

This paper will explore two concepts that can help build and maintain team cohesion, namely psychological safety within a team, and capacity to resolve conflicts in a psychologically safe and productive ways. Psychological safety is a shared belief held by team members that the other members of the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish them for speaking up (Edmondson, 1999). Inclusive and efficient teams are key to generating innovative, cross-cutting, and sustainable changes in higher education. Research suggests that for the most success, high-performing teams must continually and actively foster psychological safety among the team members. However, even in the presence of psychological safety, conflict will occur. Teams that have built capacity to respond to that conflict productively (Grenny et al., 2022, Heen & Stone, 2010) can reestablish psychological safety and enable progress.

This paper will review results of a group working session involving 42 members of 12 current and past RED teams. The session focused on identifying the level of psychological safety within the RED teams, as well as strategies that have helped RED teams foster psychological safety and resolve conflict constructively within their own teams. The paper will present the data collected through a validated survey (Edmondson, 1999) and discuss research-based strategies that can be utilized to foster psychological safety and productive conflict resolution. Furthermore, the paper will present an overview of strategies that RED teams have identified as useful for fostering psychological safety and for building conflict resolution capacity, and examples of behaviors that can suppress psychological safety on their teams.

The findings from this paper are domain agnostic and highly transferable, and therefore will be of value to any individual working in a team setting, especially change agents working in teams, as teams that foster psychological safety have been shown to produce more innovative changes (Kark & Carmeli, 2009).

Authored by
Dr. Eva Andrijcic (Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology), Dr. Michelle Marincel Payne (Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology), Dr. Julia M. Williams (Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology), Dr. Sriram Mohan (Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology), Dr. Elizabeth Litzler (University of Washington), Dr. Rae Jing Han (University of Washington), and Selen Güler (University of Washington)

Together, student veterans and service members (SVSM) are a unique yet understudied group that comprises substantial numbers of those historically underrepresented in engineering based on their race, ethnicity, gender, ability, or sex. That, in combination with technical interests and skills, maturity and life experience, and leadership and teamwork training, makes SVSM ideal candidates for helping engineering education 21st needs for a robust and diverse engineering workforce..

This NSF CAREER project aims to advance full participation of SVSM within higher engineering education and the engineering workforce. The project plan comprises a 1) Research Plan to develop deeper understandings about how SVSM participate, persist, and produce professional identities in engineering education, and an 2) Education Plan to place new understandings into practice through collaborative development, implementation, and broad dissemination of an evidence-based orientation, community building and mentorship workshop for SVSM in engineering, and a set of modularized awareness/support training materials to introduce engineering faculty, staff, and administrators, and the general engineering student populace to military student issues.

The research plan builds from ongoing work using a longitudinal, narrative inquiry research approach and an innovative, two-strand theoretical framework. In doing so, it aims to both critically examine higher engineering education structures and interpretively explore SVSM professional identity development in engineering programs at 2- and 4- year public institutions in the western United States. The research plan is guided by two research questions (RQ):

1. How do SVSM participate and persist in undergraduate engineering education?

a. How do personal and professional assets combine to create SVSM community cultural wealth in engineering?

b. How do SVSM negotiate educational structures to participate and persist in engineering?

2. During their undergraduate engineering education, how do SVSM produce engineering identities?

a. How do SVSM experience transitions between military, civilian, academic, professional, and engineering related contexts?

b. How do SVSM engage in professional identity development?

The education plan draws from design based research approaches and grounded theory methods and. Concurrent with the research plan, the education plan works to connect local theory to practice by characterizing the current support structures available for SVSM in engineering and higher education, and implementing new supports based on SVSM identities and required and preferred resources.

This paper reports on project activities conducted and outcomes achieved during project YEAR 4. Specifically, the following activities and outcomes will be described: 1) Research Plan: a documented analytic process for examining qualitiave data generated from longitudinal narrative data generation, 2) Research Plan: preliminary narrative findings centered on veteran community cultural wealth and professional identity development and constructed from SVSM personal narrative journal entries and one-on-one narrative interviews, 3) Education Plan: outcomes from presenting collaboratively developed and member-checked military student awareness training for VRO and VA collaborators and 4) Education Plan: preliminary findings from first year design-based research activities to develop an engineering onboarding seminar series with SVSM and other post-traditional students in engineering.

Authored by
Dr. Angela Minichiello (Utah State University), Hannah Wilkinson (Utah State University), Samuel Shaw (Utah State University), and Allison Miles (Utah State University)

Engineering education strives to transform the field of engineering by integrating research and practice. These efforts often involve groups of individuals from fields such as engineering, sociology, and psychology and from different roles within a university (e.g., faculty, administration, student support staff). Each of these team members bring their own approaches to the generation, expression, and application of knowledge. These differences in thinking are key to the success of engineering education; however, they can create tensions that prevent many groups from achieving their core goals. These tensions are often associated with ineffective communication or project management, which overlook the more fundamental differences around what counts as knowledge and how knowledge is generated – epistemic differences. The goal of this project is to explore how research teams navigate these epistemic differences and engage in critical conversations to make research decisions. This paper will summarize our key findings from the second year of our NSF CAREER project, which focused on analyzing ethnographic data collected from one research team. Our data included 13 recorded team meetings (approximately 15 hours of data) and transcripts from interviews with 7 team members. From the recorded team meetings, we generated detailed fieldnotes and analyzed the data to understand the team’s epistemic culture through inductive coding and memo writing. Our analysis was guided by two theoretical frameworks: Critical Contextual Empiricism and Epistemic Identity. Together these frameworks allowed us to explore the team’s culture from both the group and individual levels. In this paper, we will highlight one core finding from our analysis: the importance of the space and the documents the team uses during meetings. These two features support critical conversations and allow all team members to participate in the conversation.

Authored by
Dr. Courtney June Faber (University at Buffalo, The State University of New York), Lorna Treffert (University at Buffalo, The State University of New York), Dr. Danielle V. Lewis (University at Buffalo), Ms. Isabel Anne Boyd (Georgia Institute of Technology), and Aaron Livingston Alexander (University at Buffalo, The State University of New York)

This study examines how undergraduate students develop an engineering identity in a multidisciplinary course incorporating an academic makerspace. The data includes survey responses collected at the beginning and end of the Fall 2023 semester. The findings indicate a statistically significant positive shift in students' engineering identity. The study highlights the potential of academic makerspaces to support engineering identity development beyond traditional engineering curricula and suggests avenues for future research.

Authored by
Dr. Audrey Boklage (University of Texas at Austin)

Recent calls for equitable access for people with disabilities have gained attention from political leaders, STEM agencies, engineering societies, and scholars, highlighting the underrepresentation of disabled engineers, who comprise only 8% of awarded STEM doctorates. Systemic gaps in access, particularly in higher education and the workplace, persist. Faculty play a crucial role in influencing students' experiences but often lack the training and resources to support disabled students effectively, requiring students to informally guide them on accommodations. This CAREER project seeks to address these challenges by developing support structures that foster collaboration between students, faculty, and administrators. Through organizational theory frameworks and a mixed-methods approach, the project aims to enhance systemic access and inclusion for disabled students in engineering and serve as a model for other STEM fields. The education plan will offer practical strategies through the Innovation for Inclusion framework and create a community of practice to promote greater inclusivity.

This poster presentation will present findings from Phase 1 of the CAREER study, which aims to establish a foundational understanding of the policies and information currently accessible to university students and faculty regarding disability accommodations. To create this overview, we employed content analysis techniques to evaluate publicly available disability accommodation and support policies from the websites of 25 higher education institutions across the U.S. Our analysis was guided by the University Disability Inclusion Score framework developed by Johns Hopkins University and the Transparency Indicator Scorecard created by Harder and Jordan, focusing on various disability inclusion factors such as website navigation, resource accessibility, policy content, and intended audience. Our findings reveal a diverse array of information available to students and faculty, highlighting opportunities for cross-institutional learning and collaboration. The insights gained from this analysis will inform the development of future data collection protocols aimed at conducting interviews with university students, faculty, and administrators in the subsequent phases of the project.

Authored by
Dr. Cassandra McCall (Utah State University), Kristine Marie Peterson (Utah State University - Engineering Education), and Ms. Le Tram Huong Dang (Utah State University - Engineering Education)

Undergraduate engineering in the United States is characterized by many opportunities and obstacles within and beyond the classroom [1]. The exact nature of these opportunities and obstacles may differ across demographic identities [2], [3], [4] and institution types [5], [6], [7]. During the fifth year of this NSF CAREER project, we engaged demographically marginalized undergraduate engineering students nationwide to understand better how they navigate undergraduate engineering in different contexts. In this poster, we will showcase our findings from interviewing upper-division engineering students and deploying a Situational Judgment Inventory (SJI) at multiple universities across the United States.

We collected data using semi-structured virtual interviews. We interviewed over 45 undergraduate engineering students. Data analysis of the completed interviews is ongoing. The goal of this analysis is to determine the role an institution plays in the navigation of opportunities and obstacles in engineering. We are also interested in the similarities of student experience for those facing excessive obstacles in engineering.

For the education plan of this CAREER project, we developed the Engineering Student Preferences in Navigating (E-SPIN) SJI containing 19 scenarios related to the obstacles and opportunities commonly encountered in engineering and various ways to respond. During the past year, we developed a public website to disseminate E-SPIN to students across the country. In this paper, we discuss students’ and practitioners' experience interacting with E-SPIN.

Authored by
Dr. Walter C. Lee (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) and Malini Josiam (Virginia Tech Department of Engineering Education)

An NSF S-STEM scholarship program is drawing to a close at a private STEM university, providing an assets-based framework of wrap-around support for a small group of high-achieving, low-income students from the racially and ethnically diverse [1], high-poverty [2], local urban area. The program supports a portion of the cost of on-campus housing for 2 cohorts of 10 students, and is paired with a commitment from the university to support the unmet financial need with scholarships. All students in this program are first-generation college students and a high percentage are from under-represented groups in STEM. This program is funded by the NSF DUE Division of Undergraduate Education, EDU Directorate for STEM Education.

One goal is to improve matriculation, retention, and graduation rates of similar students. Admissions data from 2020–2024 shows no increase in application numbers or matriculation rates of students from the local urban high schools; the data is essentially flat over 5 years, which may reflect changes in admissions priorities. However, from the first cohort, 8-out-of-10 graduated within 4 academic years by May 2024, and the remaining 2 finished degree requirements by August 2024. This 100% retention and graduation rate within the program surpasses the university’s average rate of 83% over this same period.

A second goal to provide mentoring, advising, and guidance for the cohorts within the existing university system is performed by the support team: one faculty, two administrators, a near-peer mentor graduate student, and on-call support from academic advising and other offices. The small team has been with the cohorts during their entire time in college and have a holistic view of their experiences, which has led to high engagement of the scholars. A sense of belonging, safety, support, and care has been created.

Graduation success is attributed to students’ abilities and the team, who meet bi-weekly to report one-on-one student interactions, discuss paths forward, and plan just-in-time development programming. The unique insight of seeing how scholars navigate the university has afforded the team to suggest shifts to support many other students. The experiences from this S-STEM grant have contributed to re-written job duties at the Associate Dean-level to support non-traditional students through structured scholarship initiatives, in-house research fellowships, free summer courses, and pre-enrollment bridge programs. The team advocates for foundational change to create a more supporting and inclusive institution for the students in which the university was not originally designed for. [3,4]

Authored by
Ms. Jessica Anne Rosewitz P.E. (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Dr. Katherine C. Chen (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), and Brianna Raphino (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)

The Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) program aims at long-term transformation of academic departments, adopting approaches that will extend beyond the five years of the grant. A theory of change guides that transformation, with the intent of designing a deliberate effort to approach both institutional policies and practices, emerging from aiming at a culture change that lays the foundation of a true and lasting transformation. Given that leadership changes often take place during a five-year time frame, it is particularly important that the structures put in place support, encourage and inspire a cultural change allowing them to survive administrative shifts. Culture change is an intangible and fragile concept, and it is particularly challenging to implement it within a unit that is part of a much larger organization with rigid structures. RED projects often focus on curricular reforms and interventions at the course and programmatic level as vehicles for change and these can survive administrative changes in the short term. However, it is less clear that long term transformations take place with this approach, especially given the high turnover of both faculty members and administrators that is a recent feature of academia.
The RED grant of this study took a different avenue to approaching change, as the main instrument was not curricular reform, but the adoption of a fundamentally different view of neurodiversity as a philosophy for transformation of the education system. Since the beginning of the project in 2020, profound cultural shifts have taken place in the world and within the context of education, with major implications for both the project and the mindset of faculty, staff and students. The project is currently nearing completion, which is accompanied by a change in leadership both at the departmental and the college level. This study describes the shared perspective of the former and current department heads in facilitating the transition and developing a plan for institutionalizing and incentivizing transformational work. The role of departmental policies such as workload, merit and resource allocation is discussed, along with the role of the leadership philosophy and departmental climate in providing continuity.

Authored by
Prof. Kay Wille (University of Connecticut), Ms. Connie Syharat (University of Connecticut), Prof. Arash Esmaili Zaghi P.E. (University of Connecticut), Dr. Sarira Motaref P.E. (University of Connecticut), and Prof. Marisa Chrysochoou (University of Missouri - Columbia)

Capstone design courses are an important part of engineering students’ training as they expose students to complex engineering design problems and include aspects of professional engineering. These open-ended design courses are presented as a transitional step between student’s academic and professional engineering careers.

By understanding and improving student engagement in design activities within capstone courses, educators can develop and solidify students’ engineering design skills and better prepare them for the transition into workplaces. Little research has been done on the factors impacting student engagement in capstone design courses.

In this paper, we aim to highlight how understanding the factors influencing civil and mechanical engineering students’ engagement in capstone design activities can affect course planning and translate to increased student engagement with capstone design activities.

Using our framework of design activity engagement developed through a grounded theory study founded by the NSF RFE program, we explore how our theoretical understanding of student engagement could be implemented throughout the development and implementation of capstone courses.

These results constitute a knowledge base upon which further research on engagement and motivation within capstone courses can be expanded. In addition, our findings could be used by capstone educators as a starting point in adapting and developing course activities and structure focused on fostering student design activity engagement. Expansion to different engineering fields and further considerations of professional engineering engagement will be needed to expand our understanding of motivation in design activity engagement and reach more fields and settings.

Authored by
Elliott Clement (Oregon State University), Dr. James L. Huff (University of Georgia), and Dr. Shane A. Brown P.E. (Oregon State University)

The need for collaborative software is greater than ever in our modern world. Especially in large software companies, it becomes imperative to work efficiently with co-workers to complete large projects. Consider that nearly seven percent of Americans between ages six and eleven have been diagnosed with neurodivergency [1] Some of these individuals will end up becoming software developers. The problem, though, is that many of these students will not have the practice of collaborating effectively while coding. Scratch, one of the largest block-based software tools that aims to teach students basic programming practices, does not support multi-user collaboration. Students can share projects, but not work on them at the same time. As such, reverse-engineering single-user web programming applications to multi-user applications could help younger students–especially those with neurodivergent social behaviors–learn good collaborative practices early while they are still being exposed to programming. Moreover, the development of this tool allows a unique case study into the implementation of multi-user features in closed single-user systems and challenges faced in implementing such a software.

In this paper, we demonstrate the process of developing our software that we built for a summer camp related to teaching around 20 neurodivergent high school students programming concepts under the funding of NSF’s Division Of Research On Learning and ITEST. This paper will elaborate on the challenges and potential issues of creating such a software and making it easily accessible. Namely, the problems with synchronization that arises from turning a closed single-user system into a multi-user system for a neurodivergent programming camp. We also talk about the iterative and real-time feedback development of our tool.

Authored by
Ryon Vinay Peddapalli (Clemson University), Ella Kokinda (Clemson University), Dr. D. Matthew Boyer (Clemson University), Andrew Begel (Carnegie Mellon University), and Paige Rodeghero (Clemson University)

The Scholars of Excellence in Engineering and Computing Studies (SEECS) program, funded by an NSF S-STEM grant, delivers engineering solutions that tackle community challenges while providing students with opportunities for professional and personal development while demonstrating their technical skills. This study evaluates the program’s impact from a stakeholder perspective, focusing on the contributions of SEECS projects to community, organizations, and student growth. Through surveys of internal (university resources) and external stakeholders (community partners), the investigators assess the professionalism, technical expertise, and tangible outcomes delivered by SEECS scholars. Additionally, the study examines the program’s broader value, including its effects on organizational efficiency, community improvement, and its alignment with the university’s mission. By understanding the factors driving continued collaboration and the perceived benefits of the SEECS projects, this paper aims to share a road map to building a successful collaborative program that positively impacts both the community and partner organizations.

The paper concludes by sharing a framework for building a program that maximizes the use of existing resources, further enhancing the SEECS programs broader impact and effectiveness. This approach serves as a framework for other institutions of higher education interested in developing similar initiatives that contribute to both student growth and community development.

Authored by
Dr. Varun K Kasaraneni (Gannon University), Dr. Karinna M Vernaza (Gannon University), and Dr. Lin Zhao (Gannon University)

In this NSF grantees poster session, we will report on our NSF DRK-12 “Community Tech Press” project, funded by the Division of Research on Learning. In this project, we are developing, enacting, and studying a critical climate tech journalism curriculum to support multilingual sixth grade students’ engineering knowledge and practices. Our 20-lesson unit synthesizes research findings from climate tech, climate advocacy, communication, and multilingual education, to provide students opportunities to investigate, design, and communicate critical engineering knowledge about community-based technological systems. Composed of threads of engineering, community, and climate change, the civic-oriented curriculum supports student groups in creating a multilingual, multimodal journalism piece to inform their community about a locally-relevant climate technology engineered to address climate change.

Our research in this project centers around characterizing: (1) student learning outcomes, particularly practices of engineering, communication, and translanguaging, their ideas about climate tech, and their perceptions of the value of engineering and technical communication for the community; (2) the community resources students draw on as they participate in the curriculum; and (3) the influence of curriculum resources and teacher facilitation moves on student learning outcomes.

In this poster, we will highlight two research studies that have emerged from this project. Using qualitative approaches, we analyze videorecorded lessons, interviews with teachers and students, and student and teacher artifacts.

The first study analyzes end-of-unit interviews with three students, who represented the wide racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of the classroom, to explore the connections they drew between themselves, their community, science, and engineering. We found that all three students centered their own experiences and community resources in their final video journalism projects, whether that meant focusing explicitly on differentially racist climate change impacts or the technical knowledge of how a particular climate tech works. At the same time, all three students recognized tensions constraining the possible actions they could take to push for change in their own community and their in-class video journalism project. These tensions included classroom time constraints, limitations in power, and majority norms and practices.

The second study focuses on how multilingual students drew on their linguistic and cultural resources when learning about engineering through the climate tech journalism curriculum. Looking across interviews and lesson recordings, we saw students understood the value of their own multilingualism in this engineering curriculum and welcomed the opportunities to draw on their vast language and cultural resources. Students described access to learning in different languages as a way to (i) create possibilities for solutions to address the cultural traditions of people, (ii) expand the messages for external audiences, and (iii) to listen and be listened to through experiences and artifacts.

This project aims to empower diverse youth to critically analyze and communicate climate justice in their community while enhancing their capacity to participate in engineering design practices in culturally meaningful ways.

Authored by
Dr. Chelsea Joy Andrews (Tufts University), Dr. Kristen B Wendell (Tufts University), Dr. Greses Perez P.E. (Tufts University), Ms. Fatima Rahman (Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach), and L. Clara Mabour (Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach)

In kindergarten through eighth grade (K-8) in the United States, computer science is sometimes integrated into other content areas like social studies, science, and math rather than taught as a stand-alone subject. This integration can enrich disciplinary content learning while ensuring equitable access to computer science for all students. When computer science is integrated into disciplinary content areas in K-8, the demographics of students engaging with computer science contents typically reflect the demographics of the school, suggesting that K-8 is an important arena for reducing participation and identification gaps in computer science. However, most K-8 teachers have little to no exposure to computer science and, as a result, require curricula and professional development to support K-8 computer science integration in their classrooms.
Here, we report on findings from our National Science Foundation Computer Science For All project focused on developing integrated computer science curricula for use with middle school students in Montana and Wyoming. Montana and Wyoming present an interesting context for developing and implementing integrated computer science curricula. First, computer science standards are relatively new in both states. Schools began implementing computer science standards in the last two years, meaning that most teachers had little to no experience with computer science at the outset of our project. Second, both states have an Indian Education For All (IEFA) requirement, meaning that all K-12 students must learn about the Indigenous peoples who call these states home. Integrating IEFA and computer science students presents a unique opportunity for developing integrated, culturally responsive-sustaining computer science curricula.
We designed an integrated social studies unit and a computer science unit around the topic of food sovereignty for middle school students and their teachers. We also provided teachers with professional development around how to teach the two curricular units. Some teachers who attended the professional development sessions have already implemented the curriculum in their classrooms. In this paper, we first introduce the curricular units and then examine their strengths and challenges from the teachers' perspectives, based on their classroom implementation experiences. Drawing on multiple teacher interviews and fieldnotes, we examine teachers’ overall impressions of the curriculum, what they saw as strengths, and what they saw as challenges. This work contributes to our knowledge of K-8 computer science integration, particularly teacher perspectives on K-8 computer science integration.

Authored by
Kristin A Searle (Utah State University), Bolaji Ruth Bamidele (Utah State University), and Michaela Harper (Utah State University)

Founded in 2000 with a grant from NSF (EEC - EWFD-Eng Workforce Development), our project is a free digital library of classroom-tested, standards-aligned K-12 STEM resources created in collaboration with educators across the nation. The major goals for the current NSF funded grant are:
Democratize & broaden the project’s classroom impact by creatively supporting K-12 teachers.
Create a community of practice among K-12 educators to empower teachers to adopt the collection as their own.
Advance penetration of engineering habits of mind among K-12 youth & educators through strategic partnerships.
Create tools to optimize the system for the constantly evolving digital landscape.
Realign the project’s lessons & activities w/ relevant & changing K-12 STEM educational standards, especially NGSS engineering standards & performance expectations.
Better serve NSF grantees through the publication & dissemination of their original K-12 engineering curricula.
During this past year, numerous activities and outcomes have occurred towards these goals. For example, total activities now number 1933 and video support resources total 550. Newsletters and professional development opportunities have helped create a community of practice. Partnerships with like-minded organizations have been cultivated and built-upon. Website and project management improvements have been initiated. All new resources are standards aligned and new collection organizations have been established. NSF RETs were continually supported through webinars and conference sessions.
This paper will focus on how the project is creating a community of practice among K-12 educators through professional development opportunities. Research has shown that whether in formal or informal settings, K-12 teachers and influencers need to be trained to bring engineering design into classrooms to increase students’ awareness of engineering, and ultimately, interest in and ability to pursue engineering careers [1]. Yet, many successful mathematics and science teachers express that their discomfort with engineering principles is a barrier to using engineering as a means of connecting STEM subjects across curricula [2,3]. Research shows that K-12 teachers would prefer to use an integrated approach with STEM education, but they do not feel well prepared to implement such an approach [4]. Simultaneously, 80% of assessed professional development (PD) opportunities do not meet the federal definition of high- quality, leaving a gap in both the content and the quality of available STEM PD for K-12 teachers [5]. The project aims to bridge this gap by offering a variety of asynchronous and in-person professional development opportunities in addition to the current virtual workshops. Each of these three options will provide high-quality opportunities to teachers across the US to help prepare them to successfully implement engineering design thinking into their STEM lessons. Results from our 2024 evaluation of virtual workshop offerings reveal that participants believe these sessions had a positive impact on their ability to bring engineering design into the classroom.

Authored by
Dr. Lyn Ely Swackhamer (NCWIT/University of Colorado)

This interactive poster will encourage audience members to review and provide feedback for a preliminary model and framework for integrating humanitarian efforts into engineering education for the purpose of creating inclusive engineers. The model and framework are the culminating work of an NSF RIEF-funded project focused on understanding the impacts of humanitarian engineering projects on student professional formation and views of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The project has included both quantitative methods through a survey and qualitative methods through interviews for a robust mixed method study to uncover these connections and impacts. From the surveys, the researchers found a lack of self-selection bias toward professional responsibility by those involved in humanitarian engineering projects. Additionally, the surveys found some differences in enacting inclusive behaviors across demographics like age and representation within the field. The interviews also produced interesting results, specifically two students whose experiences with inclusive behaviors were unexpected based on their identities - the student from an underrepresented background (veteran, mixed race) overcame bias toward teammates whereas the traditional white male student experienced inclusion. In addition to these narratives, the research team performed coding and thematic analysis of 23 interviews to better understand the connections between involvement in humanitarian engineering and enacting inclusive behaviors. From the results, a preliminary model and framework for creating inclusive engineers through humanitarian engineering was developed. The preliminary model is presented as a Venn diagram with three parts: technical abilities (traditionally taught in engineering), professional skills (only recently taught in engineering), and social and behavioral qualities (rarely taught in engineering). The research team proposes that while typical engineering projects tend to provide formation in technical abilities and professional skills, an emphasis on humanitarianism (at the center of the Venn diagram) can support development of crucial social and behavioral qualities like respect, humility, and empathy. Developing these qualities, though unexpected in most engineering programs and uncomfortable for many faculty, could be a key to creating more inclusive engineers. The model and framework will be the primary focus of the poster to encourage collaboration and interaction with the audience.

Authored by
Dr. Kirsten Heikkinen Dodson (Lipscomb University) and Ruth Fessehaye (Affiliation unknown)

In recent years, significant private and public resources have been applied to increase access to computing education in K12 schools. While these efforts have led to growth in the number of high schools offering courses in computer science (CS), access and achievement for students historically underrepresented in STEM have lagged behind national averages. This paper examines the impact of the authors’ work to address this issue as supported by a collaborative NSF CSforAll award. The work seeks to develop high school teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogic skills in order to offer high-quality, equity-focused instruction of the Advanced Placement (AP) CS Principles curriculum. This was done through summer training and a unique capacity-building model where high school teachers co-teach with a university instructor for one full year. This paper presents a preliminary study of student attitudes from the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 academic years as an indirect means for assessing the implemented approach to teacher development and the program overall. Across a diverse set of circumstances—different instructors, student grade level, student preparation, student race/ethnicity, etc.—we have observed some consistent trends. Participation in this AP-level CS course has led to a decrease in student self-efficacy as well as the students’ own assessment of their interest in the field of CS. In contrast with these trends, the research team observed strong reporting of students planning to pursue CS-related careers following their high school graduation, with some notable exceptions.

Authored by
Dr. Richard C Hill (University of Detroit Mercy), Dr. Andrew Lapetina (University of Detroit Mercy), Dr. Michael Lachney (Michigan State University), and Dr. Aman Yadav (Affiliation unknown)

Most first-year engineering students are initially paired with non-engineering advisors and typically only enroll in one engineering course during their first year. However, undergraduate research is vital for enhancing critical thinking skills and boosting STEM persistence. Recognizing this gap, we initiated "Sprouting Research from Day 1," which paired S-STEM scholars during their second semester of college with engineering faculty research mentors. Faculty mentors met bi-weekly with their mentees to discuss individual research interests and then every other week as part of a group session about broader research concepts. To gain insights into the motivations and expectations of the faculty mentors, a focus group was conducted at the end of the semester. The transcript of that meeting was analyzed using the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (Kaplan & Garner, 2017). Findings suggest mentors were motivated by the DEIB nature of this initiative, a modest financial incentive, and a desire to build deeper connections with scholars. They viewed the program primarily as a teaching opportunity, expecting scholars to be self-motivated and research inclined. Mentors noted that a better alignment of research projects with student aspirations and a more focused semester-end deliverable (e.g. REU application) would enhance the program's structure. Finally, the need for professional development for faculty was identified as crucial to scaling up the initiative. That suggestion led to the development of a five-part professional development workshop series on how to better engage first-year students in research which is currently being delivered. Feedback from this series will be analyzed and used to help foster a stronger research culture from the start of a student’s undergraduate engineering education.

Authored by
Dr. Ryan Scott Hassler (Penn State University Berks Campus), Dr. Rungun Nathan (Pennsylvania State University, Berks Campus), Dr. Marietta Scanlon (Pennsylvania State University, Berks Campus), and Dr. Catherine L. Cohan (The Pennsylvania State University)

Hispanic-serving institutions have a significant impact on the students and communities they serve. This study, which followed former students from Hispanic-majority institutions who participated in a summer undergraduate research experience between 2019 and 2023, is of utmost importance. As alumni graduated with a STEM degree and entered the workforce, they reported on their K-12 preparation, academic support, obstacles that extended their time to degree, transition to the workforce, and the impact higher education had on their intragenerational socio-economic status. The methodology for this study follows a mixed-methods approach that includes separate sets of online surveys and interviews on degree completion and social mobility. One of the goals of this research is to underscore the critical role of social mobility in the academic and professional success of Hispanic students in STEM disciplines. A second goal is to understand Hispanic students' challenges while they pursue their STEM degrees, particularly for students who transfer from community colleges who see extended time to degree.

Currently, there is limited work on intragenerational social mobility as it applies to Hispanic STEM students. We hope to spark further research and broaden our understanding of social mobility in this context. In addition, by researching the challenges the students face while navigating their academic ecosystems, this project contributes to research that points to ways to build better STEM pathways for nontraditional students. The results of this work, which are crucial for advancing our understanding, should inform the research community how HSIs committed to access to education can increase graduation rates, reduce time to degree, promote the development of professional identities, and benefit from economic mobility.

Authored by
Pilar Gonzalez (University of Texas at El Paso), Dr. Benjamin C. Flores (University of Texas at El Paso), Song An (University of Texas at El Paso), and Karime H Smith (University of Texas at El Paso)

As engineering work becomes increasingly global in nature, developing global competence in engineering students is crucial (Grandin & Hirleman, 2009). These skills are often fostered through study abroad and global engineering programs. These programs have been shown to influence students’ intercultural learning outcomes (Davis & Knight, 2021; Levonisova et al., 2015). However, previous studies have primarily focused on short-term outcomes, gathering data either immediately after the study abroad experience or during undergraduate studies (e.g., Ingraham & Peterson, 2004; McNeill & Cox, 2011; Preuss et al., 2020). Little information exists on how global programs affect the career outcomes of engineering graduates. Phase 1 of our project (funded through Research in the Formation of Engineers program) focuses on the development and deployment of a survey exploring the impact of global undergraduate experiences on global career outcomes.

To develop the survey for this study, we sourced and adapted questions from the Pathways of Engineering Alumni Research Survey (PEARS) (Chen et al., 2012), the Cultural Intelligence Survey (CQS; Ang et al., 2007) and the Global Engineering Competence (GEC) scale (Mazzurco et al., 2020), and the global engineering survey used by Davis et al. (2023). We introduced new questions to understand global activities participants undertake in their engineering work. We developed the survey in six phases: (1) Initial survey development, (2) modifications after advisory board meeting, (3) think-aloud interviews, (4) time tests, and (5) a large-scale survey pilot. The survey instrument was refined at each stage until the final version was deployed in Fall of 2024.

In this paper, we discuss decision-making processes for the initial survey development and report on outcomes of each stage of its development and the pilot deployment. We also describe modifications made to the survey through each stage of the development process. Preliminary findings from the survey pilot suggest that global undergraduate experiences influence alumni's career choices, particularly by influencing their pursuit of international job roles, increase their interest in multicultural teamwork, and provide key connections that aid career development. A regression analysis also revealed that involvement in global job tasks significantly predicts an engineer's global engineering competence but does not necessarily predict their cultural intelligence. In the final version of the paper, we will include additional results from our Fall 2024 survey deployment.

This survey instrument can be a tool for evaluating the long-term impacts of global engineering programs. Identifying long term outcomes of undergraduate experiences can provide motivation for continued investment in development, implementation, and improvement of access to such programs. Furthermore, the insights gained from this study can directly inform the design and structure of global engineering programs to better serve students. By tailoring programs based on long-term feedback, educators can ensure that these experiences align more closely with the evolving demands of the global workforce.

Authored by
Dr. Kirsten A. Davis (Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE)), Lexy Chiwete Arinze (Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE)), Dr. Sigrid Berka (The University of Rhode Island), Prof. Christopher Cooper (University of Cincinnati), and Joe Tort (Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE))

The ambitious vision outlined in A Framework for K-12 Science Education, which is delineated in the Next Generation Science Standards, calls for advancing engineering. Nationwide data shows that teachers report comparatively low self-efficacy for engineering, compared to other subjects (e.g., math), and elementary teachers generally report the lowest levels. Prior research shows that teachers’ self-efficacy impacts their inclusion of engineering in classrooms, and self-efficacy may be influenced by content and pedagogical knowledge among other variables. Professional learning (PL), a strategy for strengthening teachers’ knowledge, can also foster self-efficacy. This project recruited elementary teachers from four states (CA, MT, ND, and WY). Teachers received intense summer PL for five days and stayed connected through PL activities during the 2023-2024 school year. To accommodate rural teachers from multiple states, all PL activities and research were completed virtually. The online PL modeled shifts called for by NGSS and offered guidance for teachers as they introduced engineering practices into their classrooms. Likert scale surveys were administered at three time points—before and immediately after the summer PL with a delayed post-PL survey at the school year’s end. Measures captured teachers’ engineering self-efficacy and outcome expectancy, plus an array of background characteristics. Analysis explores data collected from participants who responded to all three surveys (n=111). We found improvement in teacher self-efficacy. The full paper will include descriptive and inferential statistics to investigate associations between teachers’ engineering self-efficacy and background variables (e.g., prior PL experience, years of teaching experience) and characteristics (e.g., geographic location, grade level).

Authored by
Prof. Ryan G. Summers (University of North Dakota), Dr. Rebekah J Hammack (Purdue University at West Lafayette (PPI)), Julie Robinson (University of North Dakota), Min Jung Lee (University of North Dakota), Dr. Tugba Boz (Indiana-Purdue University), Martha Inouye (University of Wyoming), Meghan Macias (Affiliation unknown), and Ashley Iveland (Affiliation unknown)

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a significant grant in 2023 to investigate the motivations behind Black students' choice of engineering technology over other engineering disciplines. This research is crucial as it addresses a gap in understanding the factors influencing academic choices among underrepresented groups in engineering fields. The findings from Phase 1 of this project reveal essential insights into students' experiences, particularly concerning faculty engagement and institutional support, which are pivotal for fostering persistence and success among minority students in engineering Burt et al. [1-3]. Research has consistently shown that faculty engagement plays a vital role in the academic success of underrepresented students. For instance, Berhane et al. [2] Highlighted the importance of positive interactions with faculty at two-year colleges, noting that such relationships significantly contribute to the persistence and transfer of Black engineering students [2].

Similarly, Henderson et al. emphasized how supportive faculty environments can enhance the experiences of minority students, leading to improved academic outcomes. [3]. These studies underscore the necessity of creating supportive academic environments that recognize and address underrepresented students' unique challenges in STEM. Moreover, the intersectionality of race and gender significantly shapes students' experiences in engineering disciplines. Campbell-Montalvo et al. [4].

Their findings suggest that understanding these dynamics is essential for developing effective strategies to support underrepresented students in engineering and STEM fields. In addition to addressing challenges, the research from Phase 1 also highlights successes achieved throughout the project. Participants reported that the supportive environments fostered by faculty and institutional programs were instrumental in their academic journeys. For example, Burt et al. [1] found that underrepresented students in STEM benefit from programs that provide validation and encouragement from faculty, which enhances their sense of belonging and commitment to their fields [1].

This aligns with the findings of Okstad et al [5], who noted that institutional leaders play a crucial role in cultivating environments that support the success of underrepresented racial minority students in STEM[5]. The insights gained from this research contribute to the academic discourse surrounding engineering education and offer practical recommendations for institutions. Institutions can better serve their diverse student populations by focusing on enhancing support systems and promoting positive environments within engineering technology programs. This study aims to illuminate the pathways that lead students to choose engineering technology, fostering hope for more inclusive and supportive educational environments.

Authored by
Dr. Anne M Lucietto (Purdue University at West Lafayette (PPI)), Dr. Lesley M Berhan (The University of Toledo), Monita Hollis Mungo (The University of Toledo), and Dr. Revathy Kumar (Affiliation unknown)

Ensuring higher education accessible to all is critical to increasing diversity among those obtaining college degrees and, in turn, going into the workforce. The cost of higher education can be a huge barrier that restricts a portion of the population from attending. Students who come from low-income homes may choose to not attend college due to these financial burdens. These students, who may have been successful otherwise, become limited in their educational and career goals.

The NSF Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) Program provides academically talented, low-income students with financial, academic, and career-focused support. Colleges and Universities develop programs that are customized to their institution using evidence-based curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular activities. The ultimate objective of S-STEM projects is to increase STEM workforce development by reducing financial burdens and providing them with support to attain their STEM degree.

Louisiana Tech University was awarded an S-STEM grant in the Fall of 2022, which funds a five-year project called the SUCCESS Scholars Program (SSP). Now in its second year, the project has supported two cohorts consisting of forty-six low-income, academically talented students pursuing engineering degrees in one of six engineering programs and one engineering technology program: biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, civil engineering, cyber engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and instrumentation control systems engineering technology.

This paper explores the SSP as it transitioned into its second year, which is characterized by the addition of a second cohort of first-year, first-time engineering students and the expansion of resources for the initial cohort as they progressed into the second year of their curriculum. The focus of this paper is the impact of the SSP on the students’ retention and confidence in their chosen career field which has found to be positively impacted by the SSP.

Authored by
Dr. Krystal Corbett Cruse (Louisiana Tech University)

Our project addresses a training gap in preparing emerging researchers for independent research career paths. We piloted and evaluated TRANSPIRE as a theory of change (TOC) model (De Silva et al., 2014). TRANSPIRE was motivated by a reality wherein the postdoc path tends to insufficiently prepare researchers in conceptual skills that ground impactful research careers, how to conceptualize transformative research questions that would frame or motivate their research, or to foreground the potential impacts (scientific &/or societal) of the research when devising a project.

TRANSPIRE is based on ideas that a matrix of epistemologies, pragmatics, and values are needed to conceptualize and solve increasingly intractable problems Flyvbjerg (2001). We drew on an Aristotelian idea that places ¬practical wisdom on the same plane as epistemology and technical know-how. Specifically, three theories of learning frame our project: Scaffolding (Vygotsky, 1978), Reflective practice (Alvesson et al., 2017; Schön, 1991), and transdisciplinary learning (Mezirow, 1997). Scaffolding involves both peers and experts guiding learners to progress beyond their current zones of comfort or expertise. Reflective practice helps students focus on both processes/outcomes and the potential societal significance of their work. Transdisciplinary learning opens a space for “reflexive analysis and discussion of values and interests” (p.3), which grounds content in authentic problems–essential for adult learners.

The program included short writing assignments, developing research statements for a job application, and writing white papers for a grant proposal. These were discussed in weekly dialogues with their postdoctoral peers, faculty mentors, and the PI/facilitator.

Data gathered includes participant observations, recordings of weekly meetings, interviews and focus groups, pre/post surveys, and postdocs’ work products. Our cohorts over two years were small and thus, we employed a qualitative analysis, which integrates inductive category development and directed content analysis.

Our poster will describe program specifics and findings about the postdocs’ engagement and learning, perspectives from faculty mentors, and data that supports our proposed Theory of Change. Briefly, most postdocs found the program beneficial and a first experience in reflecting deeply on the transformative potential of research questions. Most gained new understandings of transformative research and felt that the program would help them be more successful as they pursued independent research careers. Some significant challenges identified include a reality wherein postdocs tend to be used more as employees rather than trainees and participating in the program was an add-on to already burdened schedules. Similarly, many postdocs’ supervisors either misunderstood the program’s purpose or felt it would interfere with their postdoc’s responsibilities. The faculty fellows/mentors reported that they gained a great deal from participating in the weekly meetings, noting they now have a far better understanding of what is meant by transformative research and that they learned new mentoring approaches that they intend to bring to mentoring their own students or postdocs. A critical challenge identified is the need for substantive support for such a program by both postdocs’ supervisors and by the institution. Based on our data, we also propose ideas for incorporating aspects of our program in NSF’s mentoring plans.

Authored by
Dr. Linda Vigdor (Advanced Science Research Center, City University of NY), Dr. Rosemarie Wesson (City University of New York, City College), and JOSHUA Craig BRUMBERG (Affiliation unknown)

Debugging is a special form of troubleshooting. Some electronics engineers spend as much as 44% of their time debugging, which has earned the nickname of schedule killer in the semiconductor industry. However, such an important skill is rarely taught in college. To fully capture electrical engineering majors’ debugging skills, our team has developed a series of customized, laboratory-based debug tests to measure a student’s circuit debugging performance.
The first roll-out of these experiments on students revealed a surprising result: female students disproportionally outperformed male students. Among the twenty-nine students who participated in this study in Spring 2024, female students’ success rate in identifying the bug was 100% (3 out of 3), while male students’ success rate was only 23% (6 out of 26). The success rate was calculated over three different debug problems. Students were randomly assigned one of the three problems: (1) opamp malfunctioning, (2) equipment setting, and (3) component specifications. When we limit the comparison to responses to the same question (Q1: opamp malfunctioning), the success rate in bug identification was 100% (3 out of 3) for female students versus 21.7% (5 out of 23) for male students.
In conclusion, are female students better than male students in microelectronics debugging? It may be too early to tell. There may be a few threats, such as limited sample size and potential biases in the student population. However, this early finding in the gender gap, despite its limitations, may have profound implications in engineering education: Are females really better than males in debugging? What may have caused such a discrepancy? Is there something with debugging as a cognitive task that favors a female’s thinking? Most importantly, how can we leverage this early finding to broaden the participation of engineering among female students? This brief will seek to answer these questions.

Authored by
Andrew Jay Ash (Oklahoma State University) and Dr. John Hu (Oklahoma State University)

This paper explores how the identities of Indigenous computer scientists and engineers intersect with their cultural values around their motivations to be in these disciplines and around how they approach their work. This paper draws from a larger study funded by the National Science Foundation and is based on a set of fourteen photo elicitation interviews with Indigenous engineers and computer science students and professionals. Participants shared photographs and reflected on supports, challenges, and motivations due to the lived intersections of their identities as computer scientists and engineers and as Indigenous individuals. We found that the values of giving back and Nation building and the integration of traditional Indigenous knowledge with western disciplinary training are among the main motivators for Indigenous computer scientists and engineers to be in their disciplines. We recommend integrating Indigenous values and knowledges and western training to support the development of positive identities of Indigenous students and professionals in engineering and computing.

Authored by
Nuria Jaumot-Pascual Ph.D. (TERC), Maria Ong (Affiliation unknown), and Tiffany Smith (American Indian Science & Engineering Society)

The aim of this NSF ECR project is to perform an extensive multi-method metasynthesis of literature published between 2011 and 2023 on strategies for enhancing undergraduate STEM instruction. Specifically, we update the previous review and examine the change strategies implemented after a decade of research. We present an updated methodology with the innovative application of machine learning methods to select and analyze articles. From initially determined potentially relevant articles (n = 9,262) from keyword search, 253 articles were included after the title and abstract and full-text screening. Subsequently, we conducted both human qualitative coding and quantitative machine learning analyses to examine the themes of the included articles. Preliminary findings from the qualitatively coding showed that most articles implemented a dissemination change strategy focusing on telling or teaching individuals about new teaching practices; the predominant target for disseminating pedagogy was individual faculty and developing reflective teachers-focused strategies, whereas departments and institutions tended to be the target for developing a policy or a shared vision. Additionally, preliminary findings from the quantitative machine-learning clustering analyses showed groupings related to specific science disciplines (e.g. engineering, chemistry). Next steps of the project are discussed.

Authored by
Dr. Ying Wang (FHI 360), Emily Bolger (Affiliation unknown), Rachel L Renbarger (Affiliation unknown), Taylor Boyd (Western Michigan University), Prof. Noah D Finkelstein (University of Colorado Boulder), Dr. Charles Henderson (Western Michigan University ), Andrea L Beach (Western Michigan University), Scott P. Simkins (North Carolina A&T State University), and Marcos Caballero (Affiliation unknown)

Engineering curricular content communicates a message about the nature of work in the field. While engineering practice requires a broad skillset, research suggests the undergraduate curriculum often has a predominantly technocentric focus. Such a focus communicates a narrow view of engineering practice and risks disengaging students who are interested in broader engineering skillsets or the social impacts of engineering work, often women and minoritized students. This study explores the role of curricular content in a Mechanical Engineering department on students’ career thinking. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 4th-year ME students to understand (mis)alignment between ME course content and students’ career intentions. We found that while most students described learning knowledge and skills in their courses that were applicable to their intended future careers. Less than half of the participants described their ME courses as informing their career directions in any way. Further, only two students described required courses as informing their career plans. Our work contributes to understanding student career pathways in engineering and how to support students’ pursuits in careers that apply comprehensive skillsets.

Authored by
Dr. Jingfeng Wu (University of Michigan), Dr. Erika Mosyjowski (University of Michigan), Dr. Shanna R. Daly (University of Michigan), Dr. Joi-Lynn Mondisa (University of Michigan), and Dr. Lisa R. Lattuca (University of Michigan)

Our study examines a set of organizational change processes that serve to facilitate and amplify the combined effects of interventions intended to promote systems change for equity in higher education contexts. Previous work documents the types of interventions that have been used to promote equity in faculty career trajectories and outcomes (e.g., Bilimoria & Liang, 2012; De Welde & Stepnick, 2015; Laursen & Austin, 2020; Stewart, Malley & LaVaque-Manty, 2007, Stewart & Valian, 2018). Our current work builds on this body of empirical and applied knowledge to identify, make visible, and leverage the often overlooked processes associated with system-wide change initiatives. These processes – cultivating a leadership team, planning for sustainability, developing robust communications plans, and weathering institutional leadership changes, among others – support, strengthen, connect, and synergize individual interventions for increased success and impact, hence we refer to them as "scaffolding processes" to emphasize their connective and supportive effects. Change agents who attend to these processes are better able to “engineer” successful system-wide transformation.

Supported by National Science Foundation's Human Resource Directorate (HRD) Division, we study NSF-supported ADVANCE Institutional Transformation projects and other projects in science and engineering education that take systems approaches to change. We gather data through group interviews with seasoned change leaders who together represent a variety of projects and roles. Our poster will describe the relevance of the change processes that we have identified and will offer an illustrative example of one such process, strategic use of data. In brief, we find that data can be used to diagnose problems, signify urgency, refine interventions, and make a case for sustainability, but it is important to understand the audience, and to engage them with making meaning from the data. The research aims to make new theoretical contributions about systems change projects in higher education and to provide change agents who lead complex, systemic change projects with insight on how to conceptualize and organize their work to maximize its effectiveness.

Authored by
Sandra Laursen (University of Colorado Boulder), Prof. Ann E. Austin (Michigan State University), Kris De Welde (College of Charleston), and Diana Ribas Rodrigues Roque (University of Colorado Boulder)

This EDU Racial Equity project, funded by the National Science Foundation, aims to shift the way faculty understand racial equity in engineering education. Rather than treating “underrepresentation” as the result of an inherent deficit in people of color, this project explores the ways the invisible and normalized nature of Whiteness in engineering has led to systemic barriers for students and faculty of color. We find that these barriers are consistently ignored, making it difficult to identify, challenge, and (re)imagine racial equity in engineering. In order to challenge the hegemonic discourse of Whiteness, engineering faculty must develop the ability to see and name these invisible forces. Our milestones for achieving this goal include: 1) conducting a collaborative autoethnography; 2) creating a development program focusing on fostering and developing critical consciousness to reveal these underpinnings of engineering culture; and 3) engaging engineering faculty, staff, and students to critically reflect on their own positionality, question structures of power (such as the social, cultural, historical and political effects of Whiteness in engineering), and become change agents for racial equity in engineering education.

In Year 3 of our project, we have developed and launched our professional development program. Our 8-session program is open to any graduate student, staff, or faculty member of any rank who is currently affiliated with an engineering program at a U.S.-based academic institution. The program is designed to help participants understand, critically examine, and take action regarding Whiteness in their professional environments. The program uses Bloom’s taxonomy to progress from foundational knowledge to application and critical reflection, while also incorporating the stages of racial identity consciousness. The first cohort will meet monthly online to explore topics including but not limited to: racial equity, Whiteness in engineering spaces, unpacking privilege and challenging Whiteness, embracing racial identity, building inclusive engineering cultures, advancing critical consciousness, and implementing change in engineering practice. The sessions aim to blend theoretical understanding, reflective activities, and practical applications. We hope to help participants build a network of peers who fight for racial equity, discover ways to persist and thrive in White academia, and expand their research portfolio to incorporate what they have learned about critical consciousness and racial equity.

Authored by
Dr. Diana A. Chen (University of San Diego), Dr. Joel Alejandro Mejia (University of Cincinnati), Prof. Gordon D Hoople (University of San Diego), and Dr. R. Jamaal Downey ()

This paper reports on the success of an NSF S-STEM grant, which builds on two successful previous programs at “our institution”. The initiative aims to improve retention and graduation rates, increasing the participation of minority and female students in STEM fields and the NYC workforce, thereby reducing socio-economic disparities.

From Spring 2020 to Spring 2024, the project awarded an average of 40 scholarships annually to academically strong and financially disadvantaged students in various STEM programs, benefiting 93 unique students. It also enhanced early research experiences, internships, and provided robust academic advisement and mentoring. Seminars and meetings with STEM professionals expanded students' networks. Feedback highlighted the need for more research experience, programming skills, and mentorship.

Authored by
Dr. Diana Samaroo (City University of New York - New York City College of Technology), Dr. Urmi Duttagupta (New York City College of Technology, City University of New York), Nadia S Kennedy (New York City College of Technology), Dr. Armando Dominguez Solis (New York City College of Technology, The City University of New York), and Dr. Viviana Acquaviva (New York City College of Technology)

This paper summarizes the effectiveness of an NSF-funded project (NSF EHR:BSCER: 2225306), which used culturally responsive and gamified instructional strategies to support migratory adolescents’ STEM interest, self-efficacy, and STEM career aspirations. A migratory adolescent is a child/youth whose parent(s) is a migratory agricultural worker. There are approximately half a million migratory children navigating the American education system, and they face unique challenges—including frequent relocations, English language learners, and disrupted schooling—that significantly impact their academic outcomes and career aspirations. Few migratory youth in the Southwest region receive academically enriching services during the summer months, and many of these services are not STEM-focused.

This project created a culturally responsive, gamified engineering design activity for migratory high school students as a way to (a) provide meaningful and culturally relevant engineering learning, (b) support students’ engineering identity, (c) develop critical STEM agency, and (d) leverage prior cultural knowledge to solve engineering problems.

Our approach was unique in that we combined elements of gamification (i.e., a simulation storyline with a design challenge and rewards) and dimensions of culturally responsive instruction by Gay (2010). These dimensions included validation, empowerment, socially transformative, multidimensional, comprehensive, and inclusive. The activity took 1.5 hours to complete and was an in-person activity with two parts: an online engineering design story that used students’ cultural backgrounds as the backdrop and a hands-on Arduino building activity.

This three-year project is in its second year. We have delivered the activity during the summer, multiple times across two sites in the Southwest and Pacific Northwest, to migratory high school students (n = 222). Pre-and-post surveys were collected to understand if there were changes in students’ understanding of engineering, interest, self-efficacy beliefs, recognition, and perception of using engineering as a tool for social justice. Pairwise t-tests and mixed ANOVA were performed to evaluate if there were significant changes in students’ perceptions of their capabilities before and after the activity.

The findings from this project demonstrate that the culturally responsive, gamified engineering activity significantly improved self-efficacy, interest, and general confidence in engineering among migratory students. Notably, all students reported substantial increases in their understanding of engineering, tinkering self-efficacy, interest in engineering, engineering agency, engineering recognition, and design self-efficacy. A particularly inspiring result was the substantial increase in girls’ tinkering self-efficacy beliefs and their confidence to academically excel in engineering compared to boys, effectively closing the gender gap present in the pre-survey data.

This project provides engaging engineering education opportunities to an important but underserved population of students. The activity’s effectiveness stemmed from its culturally responsive and gamified approach, which resonated with the unique experiences of migratory high school students. By providing a supportive space for problem scoping, brainstorming, prototyping, and evaluating, we created an environment where students could apply their diverse perspectives to engineering challenges. The findings underscore the importance of engineering education activities that leverage the sociocultural realities and lived experiences of migratory students, demonstrating that when educational content is made relevant and accessible, it can significantly impact students’ perceptions of and engagement with STEM fields.

Authored by
Dr. Dina Verdin (Arizona State University, Polytechnic Campus), Tim Wells (Arizona State University, Polytechnic Campus), Ulises Juan Trujillo Garcia (Arizona State University), and Andrea Lidia Castillo (Arizona State University)

The Rebooting through EmTech Programs (REP) project addresses the critical shortage of skilled professionals in emerging technology (EmTech) fields by focusing on increasing STEM degree completion among low-income and underrepresented students, particularly in high-demand areas like data analytics, cybersecurity, and information systems technology. The College, a large, diverse, Hispanic-Serving Institution, is well-positioned to lead this initiative, particularly as EmTech job opportunities in Miami-Dade County continue to grow faster than the national average. Funded by the National Science Foundation’s S-STEM program, REP provides two-year scholarships to 60 full-time students who have earned associate degrees and are now pursuing EmTech bachelor’s degrees.

In this poster, we highlight the key high-impact extracurricular activities that support REP scholars and present findings on the program’s impact, including improved student retention, confidence, and community building. Through these efforts, the REP project aims to serve as a scalable model for advancing workforce readiness and degree completion among underrepresented groups, addressing the STEM shortage and promoting sustainable access to careers in emerging technologies.

Authored by
Dr. Elodie Billionniere (Miami Dade College) and Anthony Torres (Miami Dade College)

Research shows that teams with gender and racial diversity are highly effective when innovation and problem-solving are critical goals [1]. Despite a wealth of best practices published over the past several decades on how to broaden participation in engineering, and despite significant investments to increase diversity in the engineering workforce by the National Science Foundation, engineering industries, and universities, women currently comprise just 26% of all engineering bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2023 [2]. Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) received 23% of undergraduate engineering degrees in 2023 [2], although they constitute 35% of the current U.S. population [3]. Women and BIPOC engineering students encounter complex barriers to retention and degree attainment, including campus climates that are not inclusive and inadequate student support programs at some institutions.

The vision of Engineering PLUS, a NSF Eddie Bernice Johnson INCLUDES Alliance [4] is to achieve transformative, systemic and sustainable change that will increase the growth in the number of BIPOC and women obtaining undergraduate/graduate engineering degrees to 100,000/30,000 by 2026 and establish a future growth rate that can substantially close the participation gaps. Addressing barriers to women and BIPOC participation in engineering will require changing the systems that hold current policies and practices in place.

In August of 2021, NSF provided $10 million in seed funding for 5 years. This Alliance is one of seventeen funded by NSF INCLUDES, a nationwide initiative designed to build U.S. leadership in science, technology, engineering and mathematics by enhancing the preparation, and participation of individuals from underrepresented groups in STEM. [redacted name] is the only INCLUDES Alliance that focuses primarily on engineering and 5 key strategies:

1. Partner with ASEE to develop a critical mass of institutional partners and leverage existing ASEE programs and initiatives.
2. Train, empower, resource and support a national network of institutional change agents through a professional development Academy who accelerate the implementation of high-impact, evidence-based practices within their home institutions and beyond.
3. Establish a network of regional Hubs that build on and expand NSF LSAMP Alliances and leverage partnerships with ASEE, GEM Consortium, NACME, NAMEPA, NSBE, AISES and other stakeholders.
4. Measure outcomes, engage in data-driven decision-making, and continuously optimize best practices through a multidisciplinary data team effort to support the data focused activities, research and evaluation of the Alliance.
5. Implement a sustainability strategy involving industry and key stakeholders to ensure the long-term vision and viability of the Alliance beyond the grant funding period.

Results and measurable outcomes to date including the success of our data team, Academy participants (70 faculty and administrators to date), the expansion of multiple regional Hubs (4 as of this writing), and our partnership with ASEE will be outlined in the forthcoming paper submission.

Acknowledgement

This work is funded by the National Science Foundation under award #2119930 NSF Eddie Bernice Johnson INCLUDES Alliance Engineering PLUS (Partnerships Launching Underrepresented Students). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

References

[1] S.E. Page, The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019.

[2] Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds. [Accessed September 27, 2024].

[3] United States Census Bureau Quick Facts. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US. [Accessed September 27, 2024].

[4] Engineering PLUS, a NSF Eddie Bernice Johnson INCLUDES Alliance https://engplusalliance.northeastern.edu/ [Accessed September 27, 2024].

Authored by
Mrs. Claire Duggan (Northeastern University), Mr. Richard R Harris (Northeastern University), and Dr. Jennifer Ocif Love (Northeastern University)

The transition from academic training to professional practice often exposes engineers to real-world ethical dilemmas and equity concerns that may not have been fully addressed during their formal education. As engineering education evolves to address not only technical competencies but also the broader social responsibilities of engineers, the knowledge of how early-career engineers grapple with these issues in real-world settings becomes increasingly important. The primary purpose of this NSF-funded project is to gain insight into the professional experiences of early-career engineers regarding ethics and equity through a national survey. The survey will focus on early-career engineers with five years or less of experience in the field, to obtain approximately 1,000 completed responses. To recruit participants from various engineering disciplines, we will utilize various methods, including outreach through social media platforms like LinkedIn, as well as engagement with professional organizations specific to different engineering fields. Using a quantitative research approach, to examine the data collected from these surveys, we will employ a combination of inferential and descriptive statistical methods. Inferential techniques, such as regression analysis, will be used to identify relationships and draw conclusions beyond the immediate data, while descriptive statistics, including measures such as frequency distributions and percentiles, will provide a detailed summary and overview of the key patterns and trends observed in the dataset. This approach will allow for both an in-depth understanding of the data and the ability to make broader inferences about early career engineers' experiences in the transition phase. This study reports on the experiences of early-career engineers regarding ethics and equity in the workplace and in their professional work. The findings of our research can help engineering educators understand the ethical and equity-related challenges early-career engineers may encounter during the early phases of their professional careers. Also, the study will provide valuable knowledge to engineering employers, highlighting the difficulties younger engineers may experience, and enabling employers to proactively address and support the ethical development of their workforce.

Keywords: survey, engineering ethics, equity, early-career engineers

Authored by
Chika Winnifred Agha (Colorado State University), Dr. Rebecca A Atadero (Colorado State University), and Dr. Amir Hedayati Mehdiabadi (University of New Mexico)

This paper presents the progress made in engaging high school teachers during Year 3 of a five-year NSF ER2 (Ethical and Responsible Research)-funded project focused on ethical research practices in science and engineering at a large public university in the southwestern United States. The project's broader objectives include assessing students' ethical research competency and self-efficacy, integrating ethics-focused learning materials into undergraduate engineering curricula, and providing enrichment experiences for high school teachers. This paper focuses on the Enrichment Experience in Engineering (E3) program, where six K-12 school teachers participated in a three-week summer initiative to integrate ethics into STEM education. Teachers were recruited from diverse school districts and regions, provided with room, board, and a stipend, and engaged in research, training, and curriculum development activities. They received instruction on and discussed topics of ethics, with an emphasis on science, technology, and engineering, developed lesson plans, and created posters showcasing their integration strategies. The participants also interacted with other E3 groups to explore best practices in engineering education. This paper describes the teacher selection process, program structure, and key outcomes, including ongoing discussions to assess the integration of ethics into their curricula. Lessons learned from this experience will inform future efforts to enhance ethical awareness in high school STEM education.

Authored by
Prof. Amarnath Banerjee (Texas A&M University), Dr. Bimal P. Nepal (Texas A&M University), Dr. Michael Johnson (Texas A&M University), and Glen Miller (Affiliation unknown)

This short report gives an update on the NSF-supported project “ERI: Towards Data-Capable Engineers with a Variability-Capable Mindset” (Grant No. 2138463).

Statistical variability is important, but under-emphasized in engineering. Variability is the phenomenon of non-identical behavior, which has important effects on designing systems for people (who are different), and on designing for safety (in the face of variable conditions). Our project seeks to better understand how people—engineers in particular—react to statistical variability, and to use these insights to improve undergraduate education.

Statistical variability is under-emphasized in engineering: A recent review of the education literature on mathematical practices in engineering found that only 2 out of 5,466 even discuss "uncertainty" or "error" [1]. Our scoping review of textbooks actively used to teach engineering courses found that only 11% of textbooks mentioned "variability" [2]. Despite this neglect, variability remains important to engineering practice; for example, female automobile passengers in the U.S. experience 47% higher odds of injury than males [3], a disparity that the Government Accountability Office attributes to poor statistical modeling practices in crash testing [4].

This report focuses on results from the final (quantitative) phase of our project: The development of a survey instrument to measure decision-making under variability, and the deployment of the instrument with a large and representative sample. Our results have implications for education theorists seeking to better understand statistical thinking, and for engineering educators seeking to promote statistical thinking in their own classes.
References
[1] K. Hadley and W. Oyetunji, “Extending the Theoretical Framework of Numeracy to Engineers,” J. Eng. Educ., vol. 111, no. 2, pp. 376–399, Apr. 2022, doi: 10.1002/jee.20453.
[2] K. Vo, A. Evans, S. Madan, and Z. del Rosario, “A Scoping Review of Engineering Textbooks to Quantify the Teaching of Uncertainty,” in ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, 2023.
[3] D. Bose, M. Segui-Gomez, ScD, and J. R. Crandall, “Vulnerability of Female Drivers Involved in Motor Vehicle Crashes: An Analysis of US Population at Risk,” Am. J. Public Health, vol. 101, no. 12, pp. 2368–2373, Dec. 2011, doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2011.300275.
[4] GAO, “Vehicle Safety: DOT Should Take Additional Actions to Improve the Information Obtained from Crash Test Dummies,” U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-23-105595, Mar. 2023. Accessed: Mar. 13, 2023. [Online]. Available: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105595

Authored by
Dr. Zachary Riggins Del Rosario (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering)

The NSF S-STEM-funded program titled Fostering Leaders in Technology Entrepreneurship (FLiTE) hosted by Western Carolina University has now completed its third year of operation. The program continues to its mission to cultivate the entrepreneurial mindset and growth-oriented thinking among a cohort of engineering and technology students with the goal of creating graduates who become growth-oriented professionals and entrepreneurs. With the onboarding of its second-year recruiting class, the program has begun to observe the productive interactions of its vertically integrated cohort. Program activities for the 2024 calendar year have included a team-based pitch development program, scholar participation in an externally facilitated certificate course in business startup logistics, and the integration of scholar’s product ideas into the Project-Based Learning curriculum of the host department. This paper describes each of these program highlights. As the scholars progress in their degrees with some nearing the Flight phase of the program, the dynamics of integrating the scholars’ work into their degree curricula are addressed. Pre- and post-year surveys assessing scholars’ perception of their entrepreneurial self-efficacy are summarized, showing a positive trajectory.

Authored by
Dr. Paul M Yanik (Western Carolina University), Wendy Cagle (Western Carolina University), Dr. Andrew Ritenour (Western Carolina University), Dr. Chip W Ferguson (Western Carolina University), and Dr. Scott Rowe (Western Carolina University)

Collaboration and teamwork are critical in STEM fields, especially during complex tasks, as they enable the integration of diverse skills and lead to more innovative solutions. Collaborative environments allow students to leverage each other’s strengths, address challenges from multiple perspectives, and enhance decision-making processes. This study, funded by the NSF RIEF program under award #2204919, aims to advance collaboration during assembly tasks by utilizing Mixed Reality (MR) technology as a training tool for promoting teamwork and problem-solving among STEM students. In prior research, our team developed an immersive single-user MR training module for hydraulic grippers, which significantly enhanced STEM students’ spatial visualization, technical abilities, diagnostic skills, and comprehensive perception. Building on these promising results, we upgraded the MR module to a multi-user experience to enable a collaborative environment for advancing teamwork and problem-solving capabilities. Thus, this study introduces the new design for the collaborative MR module and investigates the impact of collaboration within MR-shared settings on learning dynamics. The study involved 103 participants enrolled in a Fluid Power course, utilizing the new collaborative MR module to expose students to the design and assembly of a hydraulic bike. The collaborative MR environment synchronizes up to four MR headsets (HoloLens 2), allowing multiple users to collaborate within the same MR scene on shared assembly tasks. This synchronized environment was developed using Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing platform, and Photon Cloud, a software service (SaaS) solution for developing multiplayer experiences. Team dynamics and collaboration survey is utilized to assess participants’ collaborative problem-solving skills considering performance and teamwork.

Authored by
Ms. Israa Azzam (Purdue University at West Lafayette), Dr. Farid Breidi (Purdue University at West Lafayette (PPI)), and Dr. Faisal Aqlan (University of Louisville)

The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) project aims to enhance professional identity, foster a sense of belonging, and reduce impostorism among STEM graduate students. Recognizing the prevailing focus on content expertise in STEM fields, this project introduces a cohort-based program centered on storytelling. Students learn and apply storytelling techniques through personal narratives, which are grounded in narrative identity, reflection, and cognitive consistency theories. This initiative builds on previous pilot work and is framed by Self-Determination Theory, targeting the basic human needs of autonomy (identity), relatedness (belongingness), and competence (imposter feelings). The project's collaboration with The Story Collider, a national nonprofit, further aligns with the IGE mission to transform STEM graduate education. By performing stories of discovery, fitting in, and overcoming doubt, students explore themes relevant to their STEM experiences. The project's goal is to develop, implement, and assess a storytelling curriculum that contributes to broader dissemination and fosters positive change in STEM graduate education.

The project operates on three primary hypotheses: (1) storytelling pedagogy will improve STEM graduate students' professional identity and sense of belonging while reducing impostorism; (2) storytelling will decrease the stereotyping of STEM professionals; and (3) personal storytelling performances will enhance retention in graduate programs and support transition into STEM careers. Four key objectives guide the research: (1) develop a storytelling curriculum in collaboration with The Story Collider; (2) implement the curriculum with graduate students; (3) evaluate the impact of these performances on multiple stakeholders; and (4) disseminate the storytelling curriculum and student stories via open-source platforms like workshops and webinars.

The research will address three main questions using a mixed-methods approach: (1) What are the thematic and structural characteristics of personal narratives that students create about their STEM experiences? (2) How does storytelling relate to professional identity, sense of belonging, and impostor feelings among STEM graduate students? (3) How do the narrative characteristics of these stories influence identity, belonging, and impostor syndrome?

Preliminary quantitative data, drawn from 38 participants, suggests improvements in both STEM and researcher identities (as hypothesized), with slight declines in social fit (inconsistent with hypotheses) and marginal decreases in impostorism (as hypothesized). Audience responses to Fall 2024 performances, measured using the Warmth and Competence Scale and the Nerd-Genius Stereotype Scale, showed no change in perceived competence but noted significant improvements in perceived warmth. Although not formally hypothesized, this finding offers a promising direction for future research. Post-workshop interviews with graduate student participants further suggest that participants found the workshops beneficial and expressed interest in expanding the program to faculty and undergraduate students, as well as non-STEM fields.

This project is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Authored by
Dr. Krishna Pakala (Boise State University), Dr. Angela Minichiello PE (Utah State University), Eric Jankowski (Boise State University), Ms. Uyen Thi Kim Nguyen (Utah State University), Anne Hamby (Affiliation unknown), and Jelena Pokimica (Boise State University)

This project focuses on developing three technical courses for lower-division electrical engineering education to bridge the gap between Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs in high schools, engineering programs at community colleges, and lower-division electrical engineering courses at four-year universities. The primary goal of the project is to create a seamless academic transition by providing students with the necessary foundational knowledge in analog and digital systems, as well as hands-on experience with laboratory measurement tools. The courses utilize industry-relevant technologies such as LabView, MATLAB, PLC programming, and ready-to-use microcontroller boards to facilitate experiential learning at lower division courses. Early exposure to these tools and systems equips students with practical skills that not only prepare them for further academic pursuits but also align them with workforce demands in industries that increasingly rely on automation, data acquisition, and real-time system controls.
The success of this project is attributed to its emphasis on design and project-based learning, which fosters critical thinking and problem-solving skills essential for real-world applications. By integrating design principles early in students' educational experiences, they are better prepared to tackle complex engineering problems as they progress through their academic careers. The use of project-based learning allows students to apply theoretical knowledge to tangible, real-world projects, enhancing their engagement and deepening their understanding of electrical engineering concepts. Incorporating practical tools like MATLAB and microcontroller boards in entry-level courses not only motivates students to pursue engineering but also increases retention rates in STEM fields, a key metric for academic success.
This project's approach aligns closely with research advocating for early exposure to hands-on technical skills as a way to better prepare students for the workforce. By focusing on skill development in both CTE programs and early college courses, students are equipped with a stronger foundation for electrical engineering careers and are more likely to succeed in upper-division coursework and beyond. The seamless integration of high school, community college, and university programs ensures that students acquire both the theoretical and practical skills necessary to thrive in an increasingly technology-driven economy. Moreover, the project's use of industry-standard tools, coupled with its focus on bridging academic gaps, provides a sustainable model for developing a skilled and versatile workforce, addressing the growing need for engineers proficient in both design and system implementation.

Authored by
Dr. Reza Kamali (California State University San Marcos), Prof. Hector Garcia VIlla (Palomar College), Khang Nguyen (MiraCosta College), and Mr. Anthony P. Mauro (Affiliation unknown)

A typical engineering design pedagogy engages students in the design process, culminating in a presentation of their process and product to the class. While design is iterative and should include opportunities for revision and improvement, for beginning design students early stages of the design process may not develop clarity or traction that moves the design process forward. Instead, we are developing and testing an instructional approach called Learning by Evaluating (LbE) through funding by the NSF Division of Research on Learning. In LbE, students evaluate curated artifacts prior to beginning their design work in order to prime them for learning while designing. Class activities such as teacher modeling, individual practice, and a whole class discussion follow the process of cognitive apprenticeship and apply epistemic practices in engineering argumentation so that students can solidify ways of thinking about the project (design mindset), develop evaluation skills (critical thinking and reasoning), and improve performance in future designs.
The first several years of the project used a design-based approach to guide development of the LbE approach from our initial conjecture to a refined protocol which has been tested in 9th grade Introduction to Engineering classrooms. Validation of the approach has been based on classroom observations, feedback from partner teachers, and fundamental research related to students' critical thinking and reasoning during the LbE experience. We are disseminating several artifacts related to these efforts including an instructional design planning template and a library of artifacts for other instructors to use in their own teaching contexts.
At the time of submission our study is continuing into a fourth year (through a no-cost extension). Our paper and poster will report and build on the validated instructional approach. Research efforts this year are focused on studying two main aspects of LbE: 1) the adoption process of LbE with new teachers and new contexts; and 2) a more formal judgment of the effectiveness of the approach, using quasi-experimental research design. First, in response to challenges of participation in the project we have broadened participation criteria for the study. This has opened a line of inquiry into how LbE is experienced by teachers new to the approach, as well as how the approach translates to design-based contexts beyond the initial 9th grade course. Findings related to these processes may prove valuable to the development of other instructional interventions. Then, efforts to evaluate students’ design performance will be described as a step toward conclusions about the effectiveness of the LbE approach. By partnering with teachers who can teach with LbE in some sections and a control group in other sections we expect to gain insights into how the LbE approach directly impacts student learning.

Authored by
Dr. Andrew Jackson (University of Georgia), Prof. Nathan Mentzer (Purdue University at West Lafayette (PWL) (COE)), Dr. Scott Bartholomew (Brigham Young University), Mr. Daniel Bayah (University of Georgia), and Ms. Wonki Lee (Purdue University at West Lafayette (PWL) (COE))

In recent years, the use of virtual meetings in work settings has dramatically increased, and society has become more open to having large online meetings. This has expanded the possibilities of reaching and training teachers nationwide through online professional development. This expansion calls for a more thorough understanding of the effectiveness of online training. Building on previous research demonstrating the positive effects of music-centered PD on teachers' perceptions of teaching the physics of sound and waves, we examine the comparative effectiveness of in-person and online PD modalities. The study utilizes a curriculum developed by our team, emphasizing hands-on and browser-based applications that allow teachers and students to playfully explore and create sound. Surveys conducted before, after, and following the classroom implementation of the curriculum assessed changes in teachers' enjoyment, confidence, and content knowledge related to teaching science, physics, and sound. Results from 79 participating teachers, including 46 in virtual and 33 in-person workshops, reveal no significant differences in effectiveness between the two formats. Both modalities resulted in significant improvements in teachers’ attitudes. Teachers highlighted the value of well-organized resources, such as Google Slides with video tutorials, teaching tips, and structured lesson plans, which enhanced the ease of classroom implementation. These findings suggest that PD programs integrating music and science are equally effective across modalities and benefit significantly from teacher-friendly resource design. This study contributes to the ongoing evaluation of online and in-person PD, offering insights for designing impactful educational experiences. This work was funded by NSF’s Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST).

Authored by
Dr. Victor Hugo Minces* (University of California, San Diego), Dr. Linlin Li (WestEd), Susan Yonezawa (University of California, San Diego), Eunice Chow (Affiliation unknown), and Alec Barron (University of California, San Diego)

Innovative and Meaningful Mentoring to Enhance Retention, Success, and Engagement (IMMERSE) in STEM supports the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low- income students with demonstrated financial need at Skyline College, a two-year Hispanic Serving Institution situated in Silicon Valley, a hub of STEM innovation with many high-demand jobs.

Over its 5-year duration, this project will fund 90 scholarships to at least 30 students who are advancing toward an associate degree or transfer to a four-year university to earn a degree in Biology, Biotechnology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or Physics.

IMMERSE in STEM is now in its second year and has supported 25 scholars, including 4 who have transferred to a 4-year university. All students receive up to three years of support. In addition to scholarships, the project incorporates a transformative approach to mentoring, and innovative supports intended to address financial and academic barriers. All participating students engage in a comprehensive set of evidence-based co-curricular services designed to support their persistence, completion, and transfer. Faculty mentors are trained on innovative and effective approaches to student retention and success, such as the implementation of ePortfolios.

The overall goal of this project is to increase the STEM degree completion of low-income, high- achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. There are three specific aims: 1) leverage existing high-impact, evidence-based processes already implemented on campus (such as ePortfolios and undergraduate research opportunities); 2) implement a cohesive multi-layer mentorship program to increase retention, student success, and graduation of scholars; 3) expand industry partnerships in association with workforce development programs to support the scholars’ academic and career opportunities with mentoring and internships.

The high cost of attendance in the San Francisco Bay Area leads to high unmet financial needs, and leads students to seek part-time or full-time employment while they are in college. By combining financial assistance with specific practices, such as multi-tiered mentoring, ePortfolio adoption or participation in co-curricular activities, we have observed the impact on the retention and success rates of underrepresented minorities in STEM.

This work is supported by the NSF S-STEM program under award number 2221696.

Authored by
Dr. Emilie Hein (Skyline College) and Rick Hough (Skyline College)

The Teacher Preparation Program (TPP) at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has been actively piloting components of Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) to better prepare our pre-service teachers to feel confident and excited to teach in urban, high need public school districts. With the awarding of an NSF Noyce Track 1 grant, we have intentionally created workshops that establish foundations for CRT while thoughtfully pairing pre-practicum experiences in our local community. Realizing the necessity to have more CRT theory, focused experiences, and reflections, as well as to develop and deepen CRT practices with feedback, we have mapped out different CRT competencies and approaches throughout the TPP curriculum. The goal is to have our teacher candidates develop an equity mindset to be inclusive, anti-racist, and effective educators such that all their students engage in STEM learning. We are curious as to whether the strategic integration of CRT in the curriculum, along with the experiential components in the community, might also encourage pre-service teachers to apply to be Noyce scholars. Learning objectives, experiences, and assignments will be shared, as well as initial results from the Noyce program. This project is funded by the NSF Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, Track 1.

Authored by
Dr. Katherine C. Chen (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Theresa Fs Bruckerhoff (Curriculum Research & Evaluation, Inc.), Jillian A DiBonaventura (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Noemi Robertson (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), and Thomas Noviello (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)

In recent years, computer science (CS) education has gained prominence in the K-12 curriculum, equipping students with essential 21st-century skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, and creativity. As this field continues to evolve, educators are exploring more creative, interdisciplinary approaches. Among those approaches, integrating music into programming has emerged as a particularly effective strategy. Music can make coding more engaging for students, while programming allows students to bring their musical ideas to life in ways that go beyond traditional performances. Flow-based programming (FBP), a visual programming paradigm that represents processes through connected boxes, offers a unique and accessible entry point into programming, especially for students in K-12 settings. The simplicity and intuitive nature of FBP align well with the structure of music, making it an ideal tool for integrating these two subjects. While prior research has shown that flow-based music programming environments can positively influence students' attitudes toward programming, the success of such approaches depends heavily on teachers, especially those with no prior CS experience. Teachers play a pivotal role in determining whether these innovative approaches reach the classroom and engage students. Moreover, their confidence and willingness to adopt CS tools are key factors that influence student outcomes. To investigate how flow-based music programming environments impact teachers’ confidence and attitude, our study involved ten elementary school teachers who participated in a six-hour, in-person workshop. The workshop centered on a curriculum for Mflow, a flow-based programming platform for making music and organizing sounds, and was structured to provide teachers with both practical experience and strategies for incorporating M-flow into their classrooms. Our survey results revealed increases across three key dimensions: self-efficacy, interest, and attitudes. Before the workshop, none of the teachers had any experience teaching CS, and six reported not feeling confident in their ability to teach programming. However, after the workshop, all ten teachers expressed increased confidence in teaching programming, addressing student issues, and learning new programming concepts on their own. Moreover, interest in programming also grew, with teachers reporting increased interest in learning more about programming and integrating it into their teaching practices. Lastly, they showed a stronger belief in the importance of programming for their professional development and their roles as educators. The findings highlight how flow-based music programming influences teachers' learning and interest in CS careers by boosting their confidence and improving their willingness and professional growth to integrate CS into their classrooms. This work is funded by National Science Foundation the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program.

Authored by
Zifeng Liu (University of Florida), Ms. Shan Zhang (University of Florida), Wanli Xing (University of Florida), Dr. Victor Minces* (University of California, San Diego), Maya Israel (University of Florida), and Alec Barron (University of California, San Diego)

This paper describes the beginnings of a multi-institutional, collaborative research project. This project, funded by the National Science Foundation Directorate for STEM Education, investigates the development and manifestation of engineering students’ conceptualizations of well-being in engineering programs and careers.

Worsening student mental health and well-being is a crisis that needs urgent attention to support student wellness and the growth of the United States engineering workforce. Recent studies have identified that more than 75% of college students experience moderate to severe psychological distress and that more than 60% meet the criteria for one or more mental health diagnoses. These alarming statistics are rising rapidly across the nation and have grave consequences. Academically, un- or under-treated mental health problems are linked to diminished performance. Furthermore, stress is a top reason students cite for “stopping out”, or leaving, their degree programs. Even more concerning, studies have shown that suicide is the second leading cause of death of college students (estimated at 1,100 lives each year). In engineering, these issues are well-presented. Amongst studies, engineering students have suggested that stress is a “necessity,” demonstrating how harmful engineering cultures create pervasive narratives against well-being. Culture has also been shown to have a repeated effect on engineering student help-seeking behaviors and faculty support of engineering student mental health. We believe that novel mental health investigations are needed to support the development of the engineering student population. In part, we wonder whether students’ thinking regarding mental health is connected to the choices they make about their engineering careers over the course of their academic trajectory.

This five-year National Science Foundation-funded project began in August 2024 and is in the initial planning and data collection stages. Over the course of Year 1, we expect to interview a total of 55 undergraduate students (mixed-years) to understand what their conceptualizations of well-being are and how they developed them. Interviews will be 60-90 minutes, video recorded, and include semi-structured interviewing as well as concept map development to support elicitation. Following Year 1, first-year students will be interviewed yearly, using a repeat protocol, up until their graduation and entrance into their first position Year 5. Through this investigation, we expect to determine how students’ thinking regarding their well-being influenced their career choice and overall career trajectory.

In this paper, we will describe the development of our study and share some of our initial findings of Year 1 at time of publication. We expect our findings will help researchers and practitioners better understand engineering student mental health and its impacts upon long-term success, such as through students choices about their engineering careers.

Authored by
Dr. Justin Charles Major (Rowan University), Dr. Karin Jensen (University of Michigan), Kailey Nicole Head (University of Michigan), Sowmya Panuganti (Purdue Engineering Education), and Ash Quadd (Rowan University)

This proposed presentation/paper will report preliminary insights garnered from workforce development and adult informal learning activities in the area of semiconductors and microelectronics conducted at Chicago State University, a small public comprehensive university that is also a Predominantly Black Institution (PBI). This work is funded in part through the National Science Foundation project, “Pivots: Chicagoland Partnership for Semiconductor and Microelectronics Experiential Learning (Mic2ExL).” Mic2ExL (NSF: ITE Innovation and Technology Ecosystems Award #2322734). Some of the goals of Mic2ExL include increasing awareness of career opportunities in the semiconductor and microelectronics industry for individuals from underrepresented minority (URM) groups, increasing participation of URMs in the U.S. semiconductor and microelectronics industry, providing experiential learning opportunities and culturally responsive support for adults to transition into new careers in semiconductor and microelectronics. The workforce development programs also have intended impacts of increasing economic development in the Chicagoland region and supporting the national security interests of the U.S. by developing a diverse domestic workforce prepared to work in the growing sector of semiconductor and microelectronics manufacturing. Additional support for this work comes from Natcast and from the Department of Defense.

This project responds to the needs expressed by NSF asking how they and other relevant stakeholders can “significantly expand, diversify, and support the development of new cohorts and communities of scientists and researchers to address pressing research, social, and global issues in 2030.” [1] This has been described the “missing millions” problem – the need to include the voices and perspectives of individuals from underrepresented groups in the science and engineering enterprise. This project also responds to needs expressed by the Fast Track Action Subcommittee on Critical And Emerging Technologies of the National Science and Technology Council’s Critical and Emerging Technologies effort which specifically mention a need for semiconductors and microelectronics as an area of national need [2, 3].

The semiconductor workforce development program relies on a model of experiential learning. There are various models of adult experiential learning and lifelong learning. The framework model recently described by Lyndgaard et al. (2024) include a description of processes that include “ (1) knowledge and skill acquisition, (2) the development and maintenance of motivation and wellbeing over time, and (3) transfer of learning to career-related goals.” [4] This presentation will provide an example of CSU’s workforce development program as an example of the Adult Learning Ecosystem model posed by Lyndgaard and will describe the micro-level, meso-level and macro-level challenges confronted in the implementation of the project as well as discuss the personal level and systemic influences confronted by URMs in technology workforce development programs.

References

[1] A. Blatecky et al., “The Missing Millions: Democratizing Computation and Data to Bridge Digital Divides and Increase Access to Science for Underrepresented Communities,” NSF OAC 2127459, Oct. 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.rti.org/publication/missing-millions/fulltext.pdf
[2] National Science and Technology Council. (2022). Critical and Emerging Technologies List Update: A Report by the Fast Track Action Subcommittee on Critical and Emerging Technologies. Available: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/02-2022-Critical-and-Emerging-Technologies-List-Update.pdf
[3] National Science and Technology Council. (2024). Critical and Emerging Technologies List Update: A Report by the Fast Track Action Subcommittee on Critical and Emerging Technologies. Available: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Critical-and-Emerging-Technologies-List-2024-Update.pdf
[4] S. F. Lyndgaard, R. Storey, and R. Kanfer, “Technological support for lifelong learning: The application of a multilevel, person-centric framework,” Journal of Vocational Behavior, vol. 153, p. 104027, 2024, doi: 10.1016/j.jvb.2024.104027.

Authored by
Dr. Kimberly Black (Chicago State University ) and Prof. Moussa Ayyash (Chicago State University)

Quantum Education for Students and Teachers (QuEST), a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Division of Research and Learning ITEST Developing and Testing Innovations partnership between a research university and an urban informal science institution, advances quantum education, physical science literacy, and the diversification of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pipeline through improved quantum science and quantum computing access, teaching, and learning for precollege (grades 9-12) students and teachers. Student outcomes (N=262) include improved quantum information science and technology (QIST) knowledge and attitudes, as well as increased intentions to enroll in four years of mathematics and science in high school. Teacher outcomes (N=68) include improved QIST knowledge and pedagogical self-efficacy. This project is a replicable model of university-based QIST outreach to inspire the next generation quantum workforce in industry, research, and academia.

Authored by
Dr. Angela M Kelly (Stony Brook University) and Dominik Schneble (Stony Brook University)

The Journal of Advanced Technological Education (J ATE) special project was a one-year pilot funded through NSF’s DUE ATE program (DUE ATE 2325500) whose goal was to build a community of peer-reviewed published authors from technical and community colleges. The “publish or perish” academic aphorism of the 4-year university tenure system does not cross over to community colleges, and community college faculty face many barriers to pursuing scholarship. Two of this project’s objectives that directly impact two-year college faculty were 1) providing new writers with professional development interactions with experienced writing coaches to support them in writing and publishing their work in a peer-reviewed journal and 2) supporting faculty in developing and incorporating lessons into their community college research programs to enable their undergraduate research students to become peer-reviewed published journal authors. These objectives were implemented with two separate programs, called “J ATE Connect” and “J ATE URE” (Undergraduate Research Experience). The pilot focused on publishing in the J ATE journal, but the skills apply to other journals. We report on the successes and lessons learned from these two programs.

Authored by
Dr. Peter D Kazarinoff (Portland Community College), Dr. Tanya Faltens (Purdue University at West Lafayette (PPI)), Karen Leung (City College of San Francisco), Candiya Mann (Affiliation unknown), and Janet Pinhorn (Affiliation unknown)

The NSF Research Initiation in Engineering Formation (RIEF) program has two primary aims: 1) build new knowledge around the professional formation of engineers, and 2) expand the engineering education research (EER) community by facilitating the transition of established engineering researchers into a new field of research (EER). As an established engineering scholar, one of the most difficult aspects of this transition is the significant paradigm shift that occurs as a novice in a new field. Thus, this transition can be professionally challenging to navigate, especially without sufficient mentoring support.

In this study, we adopt a collaborative autoethnographic approach to explore an unconventional mentoring model and how it impacts the RIEF mentees’ transition into conducting EER. This mentoring structure uses cognitive apprenticeship as its theoretical model and involves two RIEF recipient mentees, their single EER faculty mentor, a first-year EER graduate student, and a postdoctoral EER scholar. Uniquely, the graduate student and postdoctoral scholar occupy dual mentor-mentee positions, as they possess more qualitative educational research experience than the RIEF faculty mentees yet are still learners themselves under the guidance of the EER faculty mentor.

Through analyzing a series of written reflections and self-interviews, we investigate how our diverse group interacts to learn qualitative research methods in the context of EER. This collaborative approach allows the mentoring team to reflect on their evolving identities as EER scholars and mentors. Although the RIEF faculty mentees’ research focuses on entirely different domains in the professional formation of engineers, there are shared commonalities in their qualitative methods and analysis techniques that provide a cohesive structure for cross-disciplinary learning and support. This mentoring model not only facilitates a deeper understanding of qualitative research methods and analyses (e.g., interviewing, thematic analysis, narrative analysis) for all involved but also creates an opportunity for the graduate student and postdoctoral scholar to develop valuable mentoring skills while advancing their own research capabilities.

By studying this mentoring model, these partner RIEF projects highlight how diverse perspectives and experience levels in a mentoring team can enrich research collaborations in EER. The findings have broader implications for engineering faculty development, mentoring strategies, and a greater awareness of qualitative methodologies in traditionally quantitative disciplinary engineering fields.

Authored by
Dr. Jennifer S. Brown (University of Georgia), Landon Todd Smith (University of Georgia), Mrs. Kristina Kennedy (The Ohio State University), Dr. Fred Richard Beyette Jr. (University of Georgia), and Dr. Julie P Martin (University of Georgia)

This poster gives an update on the progress our team has made on the Learning Through Making Instrument (LMI) project over the last year. The project has been funded through the Research in the Formation of Engineers (RFE) program of the National Science Foundation. The goal of the project is to create and provide validity evidence for a survey instrument that allows instructors and administrators to evaluate and quantify the learning that students experience in makerspaces. The measures made possible by such an instrument would be useful to help administrators, managers, and staff of makerspaces in academic environments better understand how they are accomplishing their goals within their institutions and reveal areas that might need special attention. These areas might include what draws students to the makerspaces, what culture is developed in the makerspace, and what kinds of activities students engage with. Our project is currently structured in four phases: (1) Develop definitions for the constructs to be assessed; (2) Generate and refine survey items; (3) Validation and reliability studies for the instrument; and (4) Fairness studies and finalizing the scoring of the instrument. In our previous overview of the project, we reported the entire first phase of the project and parts of the second phase. We used the Learning Through Making Typology to guide the development process of our construct definitions and preliminary items, which were then reviewed and tweaked through a round of feedback from experts in makerspaces and instrument development. At the time of writing this abstract, we are finalizing cognitive interviews with students using our draft items. These cognitive interviews allow us to identify how students are interpreting our questions and refine them so that diverse populations understand the questions consistently, following our intention. Additionally, we are making preparations to start with data collection that will be used for studies in phase three. We anticipate that by the time of the conference, we will be getting close to finishing the third phase and starting on the last phase of the project.

Authored by
Mr. Leonardo Pollettini Marcos (Purdue University), Dr. Melissa Wood Aleman (James Madison University), Dr. Robert L. Nagel (Carthage College), Dr. Julie S Linsey (Georgia Institute of Technology), Dr. Kerrie A Douglas (Purdue University at West Lafayette (PWL) (COE)), and Prof. Eric Holloway (Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE))

The California Central Coast Community College Collaborative (C6-LSAMP, C6) is a National Science Foundation Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation Bridge to the Baccalaureate grant project (NSF/LSAMP/B2B). C6-LSAMP is a cross-disciplinary collaboration across eight California community colleges. The C6 alliance leverages existing support structures and best practices to address inequities in STEM outcomes for a population of students comprised of the underserved: Hispanic/Latinx and other traditionally underrepresented populations. The primary LSAMP population within the five counties served by the C6 colleges is Hispanic/Latinx. Within these counties, only 16% of Hispanic/Latinx residents 25 years or older hold a bachelor’s degree, compared to 51% of White, non-Hispanic residents. At C6 colleges, the Hispanic/Latinx vs White transfer gap is 16% (34% vs. 50%, respectively). Supporting and encouraging LSAMP student populations as they prepare to transfer is vital.

The C6-LSAMP project supports LSAMP students via three pillars: (1) Research Opportunities: Fall Research Symposium and university partnerships, (2) Academic Support: Embedded Tutors in gateway STEM courses, and (3) Professional Development/Career Exploration for students and for faculty: workshops, mentoring, and networking. Reinforcing each pillar is a commitment to create culturally sensitive, relevant and responsive learning environments.

This work-in-progress poster will report results from C6’s third Fall Research Symposium – poster presentations, networking and campus tours – held at, and in collaboration with, California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo in Fall 2025. This experience has not only exposed community college students to the university itself, but to the idea of doing research and design projects, and presenting their results. As non-poster presenters noted: “I didn’t know cc [community college] students were able to present a research poster.” and, “I felt encouraged to do my own research and present.” Such extra-curricular research and presentation activities are critical in motivating students to continue on their academic path.

Authored by
Prof. Dominic J Dal Bello (Allan Hancock College), Eva Schiorring (STEMEVAL), Dr. Jens-Uwe Kuhn (Santa Barbara City College), Jason Curtis (Cuesta College), Christine L Reed (Allan Hancock College), Francisco E Jimenez (Cabrillo College), Gabriel Cuarenta-Gallegos (Cuesta College), Leila Jewell (Monterey Peninsula College), Mr. Thomas Rebold (Monterey Peninsula College), Vincent Mark Briones Crisostomo (Moorpark College), Marcella Klein Williams (Oxnard College), Justin William Miller (Oxnard College), Franco Javier Mancini (Santa Barbara City College), and Joe Selzler (Ventura College)

The Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Partnerships (LSAMP) program funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) brings together partner institutions of higher education to promote student success. Regional partners develop programs to support their students in academic, research, and career achievement. Developing programs that meet the needs of a cooperative alliance composed of institutions of varying size and type requires logistical planning and flexibility. This paper presents a summary of factors that were considered as a new alliance, [redacted for review], developed through a multi-year planning and development process. The goal of the alliance was to create an integrated LSAMP program that facilitates students growing within their institutions and forming connections across institutions in the alliance. Therefore, developing a cohesive program that meets the needs of all institutional partners is critical. Factors considered include existing institutional programming, research infrastructure, administrator and faculty workflow, students schedules and needs, and conversations with established LSAMP programs. This paper aims to serve as a roadmap for new alliances to consider as they plan for multi-institution collaborations.

Authored by
Dr. Ashleigh Wright (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Prof. Holly M Golecki (University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign), Dr. Jacqueline Henderson (Bradley University), Rebekka Darner (Illinois State University), Dr. Nafisa A Ibrahim (The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Prof. Brenda Anne Wilson (University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign), Dr. Loralyn Cozy (Illinois Wesleyan University), Brian J. Bellott (Western Illinois University), Dr. Mahua Biswas (Illinois State University), Prof. Alejandro Lleras (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Narendra Jaggi (Affiliation unknown), Michelle Edgcomb Friday (Bradley University), Terrance Bishop (Southern Illinois University Carbondale), and Dr. Catherine Lipovsky (Bradley University)

As community college students transfer to four-year institutions, they commonly encounter a phenomenon called “transfer shock” that can impact their academic success negatively (Smith et al, 2021). Along with other issues, one of the main issues transfer students face is a lack of social integration at the new institution. This includes a lack of personal relationships with faculty as well as no integration into a peer group (Monroe, 2006, Walker & Okpala, 2017). Qualitative research has shown that this lack of personal connection can be linked to less help seeking behavior shown by transfer students, which, in turn, is likely to affect their academic success negatively (Elliott & Lakin, 2021). One of the tools that can help address this issue is the facilitation of quality interactions with faculty and peers through mentoring (Dhin & Zhang, 2020; Smith & Van Aken, 2020; Winterer et al., 2020). To help increase the number of low-income community college students who successfully transfer to four-year-institutions, graduate with an engineering baccalaureate degree, and enter the STEM workforce/graduate school, the current project, funded through an NSF S-STEM grant, developed a comprehensive scholarship program to help underrepresented low-income students from diverse backgrounds. To address the issue of social integration, the comprehensive scholarship program included structured faculty and peer mentoring that transfer students enrolled in the program received as part of their participation. On the one hand, based on their chosen engineering major, they were matched with an individual faculty mentor to provide them with guidance. On the other hand, they were matched with a more advanced transfer student in their major to promote social integration. The aim of the current study is to showcase the mentoring program and students’ perceptions of the mentoring program in terms of its benefits and opportunities for improvement. Findings will help inform the improvement of the existing program and the development of future mentoring programs that aim to specifically support transfer students.

Authored by
Anna-Lena Dicke (University of California, Irvine), Dr. David A. Copp (University of California, Irvine), and Analia E. Rao (University of California, Irvine)

Through an NSF funded ITEST program, ImageSTEAM, summer workshops were conducted for the past 4 years with diverse middle school teachers in Georgia and Arizona. Specifically, we focused on introducing artificial intelligence (AI) concepts in the middle school curriculum through computer vision and AI tools that will substantially augment science and technology teaching and Learning. We introduced computer vision, machine learning, and computational cameras as key AI tools to engage students in middle school for teachers to creating lesson for middle school grades 6-8 classes as part of teachers professional development in summer. After co-designing and developing the lesson module with the team, teachers practiced with their students at the workshop. Based on the feedback, teachers further improved the lesson modules to present to their classes. The results, including the experiences of the teacher as well as the impact on student learning through AI tools, were obtained through surveys. The results demonstrated teacher satisfaction with AI integration in classroom instruction and increased student engagement in AI-based activities in middle school students and their classrooms. More details about the teachers experiences and the lessons learned will be presented at the conference.

Authored by
Dr. Ramana Pidaparti (University of Georgia), Dr. John M Mativo (University of Georgia), and Kimberlee Ann Swisher (Affiliation unknown)

The LIDERES project brings together three public R1 universities in the western United States to tackle the underrepresentation of African American, Hispanic American, Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander scholars in STEM graduate programs and faculty positions. The project was funded by NSF’s Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate Catalyst Alliance (AGEP-ACA) program. The project involved a multi-faceted approach: (i) managerial engagement meetings to mobilize STEM leaders, (ii) an innovative factorial experiment to identify local institutional and departmental barriers to equity, (iii) self-assessment reports on graduate student success, and (iv) the development of a set of five-year equity goals at each partner institution.

Key to the project’s approach was the use of managerial engagement, which actively involves institutional leaders in identifying challenges and driving diversity efforts. By engaging STEM leaders through leadership committees and promoting accountability, we made significant progress in fostering institutional buy-in and commitment to equity goals. Complementing this was the "small wins" strategy, which focuses on achieving incremental, tangible changes that build momentum for broader institutional transformation.

We used evidence from the factorial experiment and the self-assessment report informed our managerial engagement meetings, ensuring that leadership discussions and decisions are grounded in evidence and tailored to address specific, local institutional barriers, while allowing leaders at all partner institutions to brainstorm and share knowledge on potential solutions. The factorial experiment utilized institutional data and surveys to identify key barriers hindering the recruitment, retention, and advancement of underrepresented minority faculty in STEM at each institution. The factorial experiment provided a rigorous, data-driven approach to uncovering specific institutional and departmental obstacles. Building on our faculty factorial experiment, we also administered a self-assessment report on graduate student success, which offered insights into the experiences and challenges of URM students across partner institutions. Findings show that lack of appropriate mentoring, mental health, and access to university resources were common challenges to degree completion. These efforts resulted in the writing of a set of attainable goals for institutions to pursue over the next five years based directly on evidence gathered and shared expertise.

Authored by
Dr. Lizandra C Godwin (University of New Mexico), Dr. John K. Wagner (University of New Mexico), Benjamin Jose Aleman (University of Oregon), Elizabeth A Wentz (Arizona State University), and Dr. Donna M Riley (University of New Mexico)

This abstract presents the preliminary findings of Planet+AI, an informal learning experience aimed at teaching AI concepts in the context of elemental fingerprinting to high school-aged youths and the public at large. With support from a previous NASA grant and the current NSF AISL grant (2023-2026), our research team iteratively develops and tests a sequence of interdisciplinary, Python-based and application-focused lessons through a Community of Practice. Participating students are involved in inquiry-driven, open-ended research projects by collecting drinking water samples, planning and implementing analysis and data interpretation by using the UTK ICP-MS. The dataset(s) generated for drinking water samples, the elemental composition datasets of Apollo lunar rocks, and petrographic images of Apollo lunar thin sections are integrated into a Public AI literacy curriculum.

The objectives are (1) to create an interdisciplinary learning experience, integrating basic Linear Algebra, basic Python programming language, the ICP-MS, planetary data, elemental fingerprinting with basic AI concepts, (2) to introduce computational exercises, data reduction techniques, and AI techniques that solve real-world problems, emphasizing the importance in connecting fundamental and applied concepts in elemental composition data, information, knowledge, and AI, and (3) to incorporate open-ended research activities that motivate students to learn math, programming, planetary data, and AI. The research uses a mixed-methods design, combining quantitative surveys with qualitative written reflections and class observations.

The implementation guidelines adopted in this three-year project include (1) taking advantage of modern technologies, including YouTube videos and Colab notebooks, when introducing new concepts to assist learning, (2) incorporating public webinars and lecture series so that students benefit from both organized learning activities but also informal learning, (3) building strong integration of math, programming, elemental fingerprinting, and AI, (4) incorporating lab activities and research activities which motivate students and also enhance students’ STEM learning, and (5) focusing on developing student’s agile mindset, ability to adapt and improvise, through tinkering.

The 3-week Planet+AI summer program was implemented during the 2024 summer and 47 students participated in the program. PD workshops will be provided, and we anticipate high school teachers will incorporate (part of) our lessons in their high-school classrooms. Preliminary findings from observations of student performance and feedback suggest that: (1) students welcome the opportunity to learn linear algebra, Python programming, and AI with planetary data by using Google Colab notebooks, (2) students appreciate the practical relevance of linear algebra which helps understand data reduction, neural networks and deep learning in AI, (3) students appreciate the ICP-MS for drinking water samples, planetary data, and elemental fingerprinting research, and (4) students welcome the opportunity to learn emerging technologies, particularly, using emerging AI techniques to solve real-world problems.

Authored by
Ping Wang (The University of Tennessee, Knoxville) and Prof. Shichun Huang (The University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

The Increasing Minority Presence within Academia through Continuous Training at Scale (IMPACTS) inclusive mentoring hub brings together Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, the American Society for Engineering Education, and T-STEM Inc. to develop, implement, study, and evaluate an evolving mentoring model in engineering academia. The IMPACTS hub is sponsored by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Broadening Participation in Engineering award (#22-17745) and builds on the success of two prior NSF awards (BPE: #15-42524 and INCLUDES #17-44500). The program was initially intended to be an innovative strategy to complement prevailing approaches that support career mentorship opportunities for engineering faculty of color while boosting the career longevity of emeriti faculty who served as mentors; the current award includes white women as mentees.

The IMPACTS hub was developed through an extensive review of the literature with a targeted focus on diverse mentoring relationships in STEM academia (Kram, 1985; Lechuga, 2014; Zambrana et al., 2015). The primary goal is to strategically match mentors with mentees as they navigate the promotion and tenure process and establish a greater professional presence in their field. Distinct from other mentoring models, this program moves beyond career development to include professional networking and advocacy by renowned emeriti faculty positioned to provide these resources and who have the flexibility, time, and desire to mentor. This ASEE NSF Grantee Poster reports on the results of a satisfaction survey focused on the efficacy of the IMPACTS inclusive mentoring hub.

In the summer of 2024, an anonymous satisfaction survey was administered with the seven current mentor-mentee matches to study and evaluate the efficacy of the IMPACTS inclusive mentoring hub. Four mentees and six mentors responded. All mentees and five of the six mentors rated the mentoring hub as “excellent” (one mentor rated it as “very good”). All respondents indicated that they are enjoying their mentoring experience. The majority shared that their time together is beneficial and that their time is sufficient. While most mentors indicated that no additional mentoring training was needed and their mentoring responsibilities were clear, a few suggested that mentors gather to “discuss strategies” to best support their mentees. One also shared that it would be valuable for mentees to meet so they could engage in “cohort-building and collaboration” activities. One mentee echoed this suggestion and indicated that connecting the mentee-mentor matches with others in the hub would “improve the impact of the program…[and] could be tremendous for building a supportive community outside of the individual mentor-mentee relationship.” Based on these recommendations, the IMPACTS coordinating team is organizing opportunities for mentees and mentors to meet respectively together and for the mentoring hub to gather as a whole.

Authored by
Dr. Sylvia L. Mendez (University of Kentucky), Dr. Comas Lamar Haynes (Georgia Tech Research Institute), Dr. Billyde Brown (Affiliation unknown), and Ray Phillips (American Society for Engineering Education)

Broadening participation in the skilled technical workforce is a national priority due to the growing demand for engineers and the need to reflect the nation's diverse population. In rural Appalachian communities, improving education access, quality, and workforce development is especially critical. Students in these regions face unique barriers to accessing higher education and pursuing engineering careers. The Appalachian Regional Commission has emphasized the need to invest in preK-12 education, engage youth in community activities, and develop workforce opportunities in fields such as advanced manufacturing. These efforts are essential for enhancing economic resilience in the region and broadening students’ understanding of what engineering is and who can succeed in it.

Developing large-scale engineering and technical career pathways for Appalachian youth remains challenging due to broader systemic issues. While sparking interest in engineering is vital, previous research shows that this alone does not guarantee students will pursue engineering careers. Earlier phases of this project have focused on (1) school-industry partnerships during the COVID-19 pandemic, (2) the development of a conceptual framework for rural engineering education, and (3) a systematic literature review on assessing systems thinking in K-12 education.

In recent work, the team has successfully (1) built relationships with individual teachers through outreach and collaboration, (2) conducted a professional development needs assessment, and (3) designed and implemented a two-day workshop for sixteen K-12 teachers in Southwest Virginia. This workshop focused on ways that teachers could integrate engineering content into their curriculum, covering topics like systems thinking, data science, and artificial intelligence (AI) into curriculum design, helping to prepare students for engineering pathways. Hands-on activities, such as a data science challenge and microcontroller programming, were tailored to various subject areas to support diverse educators.

The current phase now focuses on personalized support for teachers who attended the workshop. Key needs identified by the teachers include resources, curriculum guidance, engineering activities, access to guest speakers from the engineering field, and information on preparing students for college-level engineering programs. To address these needs, the research team is offering customized resources, ongoing collaboration and support, and expanded networks with engineers and educators, ensuring long-term integration of engineering concepts into their classrooms. The goal is to build durable partnerships that enhance educational and career opportunities for Appalachian students in engineering.

Authored by
Dr. Hannah Glisson (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), Felicity Bilow (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), and Dr. Jacob R Grohs (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)

BACKGROUND
In the last two decades, many computer science (CS) departments have undertaken diversity, equity, access and inclusion (DEAI) efforts to broaden participation in computing (BPC) for underrepresented populations. Much National Science Foundation (NSF) has gone toward these efforts with little progress in changing the gender or racial representation of computer science students or faculty. We posit that this stasis is rooted in departmental cultures and organizational values that inhibit change. Little research has focused on faculty contributions to CS departmental cultures and what helps or hinders progress towards equitable climates.

STUDY DESIGN
Our phenomenological qualitative research study explores faculty attitudes toward departmental BPC efforts. We use organizational change theory developed by Maxey and Kezar, among others, to understand the role that faculty beliefs and actions play in responding to and co-creating departmental culture. These theories examine how organizational structures, norms and values are formed and reproduced within organizations through everyday practices and interactions. Our approach focuses on understanding individuals’ perceptions and experiences in order to make sense of organizational phenomena, i.e., BPC efforts.

This project is funded through the NSF EDU Core Research program. Study sites were three computing departments in three different states. Site selection was based on (1) high undergraduate degree-production, (2) involvement in NSF BPC initiatives, (3) experiencing success in some BPC areas and lagging in others. Our research question is: How does the locus of BPC efforts influence the norms of the department relative to DEAI?

DATA ANALYSIS
The data sources are 63 interviews with faculty, staff, and administrators collected during site visits and via Zoom. The qualitative data consist of hour-long individual interviews using a semi-structured protocol based on prior research on organizational change. Analysis included generating first cycle codes to identify important issues in the data, then second cycle codes to organize first cycle codes into larger patterns or themes. First cycle codes were generated deductively, based on our research questions and theoretical framework (e.g., leadership, BPC practices, DEIA norms/values, etc.) and inductively, based on emerging issues salient to interviewees (e.g. perceptions of individual sphere of influence, student admissions, etc.). Second cycle codes identified overarching patterns and unifying themes.

RESULTS
We found that: (1) BPC standalone programs may relieve faculty of responsibility for DEAI; (2) low faculty accountability or recognition for involvement impede BPC efforts; (3) a wide swath of activities integrated in the department’s regular functions may normalize BPC within the departmental culture and promote greater faculty engagement.

SIGNIFICANCE
We conclude that where BPC efforts are located in the structure of the department influence the culture and norms related to DEAI. The locus of activities also influences who becomes involved in BPC efforts and how they are valued within the department. A wider array of integrated activities leads to engagement of more faculty and staff, and ultimately greater success, compared to efforts that stand outside of regular departmental structures and processes. Our findings suggest it is crucial to locate BPC activities within teaching, research, and service.

Authored by
Dr. Wendy M. DuBow (University of Colorado-Boulder), Dr. Heather Thiry (Affiliation unknown), and Katie Spoon (University of Colorado Boulder)

The STEM Academy for Research and Entrepreneurship at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff integrates engineering, science, and business disciplines to fast-track the number of STEM graduates who attend graduate school or enter STEM entrepreneurship. In our poster, we will report on the research strand of the project. Guided by the theory of socialization and exposure, our research was scoped under the assumption that activities in which students participate, such as opportunities to engage with role models, would ultimately help them successfully and efficiently progress through their programs and earn a STEM bachelor’s degree. Our research also draws on the Model of Co-Curricular Supports as an organizing framework, which holistically considers the range of different kinds of support that students need to be successful. Applying that model within an HBCU represents a new contextual operationalization. Thus, the purpose of the research is to identify programmatic elements that foster greater success in STEM undergraduate education at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU), with a particular focus on interest in graduate school and entrepreneurship. The research goals are to identify the programmatic elements that support the following latent variables: (1) students’ self-confidence in their STEM-related skills (i.e., math and science skills; professional and interpersonal skills; problem-solving skills); (2) students’ entrepreneurial intents; (3) students’ self-efficacy pertaining to a potential future in graduate school; and (4) students’ career goals.

Our research to date has focused on administering a survey instrument within the STEM programs at UAPB in two different years. This instrument is comprised of scales and items that were developed in prior STEM-focused projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Scales have established reliabilities, and items have undergone extensive piloting and testing in that prior work. Our poster will present findings from these two different cohorts and identify preliminary relationships between programmatic supports and outcomes.

Program funding the work: HBCU-UP

Acknowledgements: This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation (EES-2106350). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.

Authored by
Dr. Walter C. Lee (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) and Dr. David B Knight (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)

This study explores the computational thinking skills of young children (2nd-year elementary students) within an embodied learning environment designed to enhance STEM education, utilizing both augmented reality and social robot technology. The research aims to understand how these technologies can support and improve children’s problem-solving abilities in STEM-related tasks. Over a four-day period, students interacted with a custom-developed educational tool, which was designed to engage them in physical activities and social interactions with the robot. These interactions were tracked to observe changes in their bodily movements, responses to problem-solving tasks, and interactions with the social robot.

To comprehensively analyze the children's learning behaviors, researchers conducted manual annotations of video recordings, focusing on key behavioral indicators. Concurrently, objective data were collected using advanced tools such as a motion capture system and facial muscle activity sensors, allowing for precise measurement of physical responses. A detailed statistical analysis will be carried out to determine the correlations and patterns between the motion capture and muscle activity data and the human annotations.

Following the analysis, a machine learning model will be developed to accurately link sensor-based data with human annotations, which will allow for automatic recognition of learning behaviors in future studies. By refining this model, we aim to increase the efficiency of assessing children’s interactions in technology-supported learning environments. Additionally, the study will highlight critical measures that contribute to understanding how students react to and adapt during STEM problem-solving tasks, offering valuable insights into the specific cognitive and physical processes involved in embodied learning. This research has the potential to significantly enhance the methodologies used to evaluate children’s learning behaviors, improving future educational tools and strategies in STEM education.

Authored by
Dr. Jaejin Hwang (Northern Illinois University)

Despite efforts to diversify the STEM workforce, many historically marginalized groups continue to be significantly underrepresented in STEM, particularly in engineering [National Science Board 2022; Hynes et al., 2016]. Many youths have a limited perception of engineering, and often this fails to align with how they view their own interests and strengths [Hynes et al., 2016; Hynes & Maxey, 2018; National Academy of Engineering, 2008].

This paper describes an NSF ITEST project that addresses the need to attract, motivate, prepare and support a more diverse engineering workforce. The _____ project (NSF ITEST award no. 2049109) engages teens in an engineering design experience grounded in principles of universal design and focused on engineering for accessibility. Teen internships take place at four sites around the country, including a university, public library, high school, and science center. Internship sites strive to engage a diverse cohort of interns who are representative of their community and may or may not identify as having a strong interest in or affinity for engineering. This paper provides an overview of the project and shares findings from multiple iterations of the teen internship program across the four sites. The program builds on a foundation developed by the _____ project (NSF ITEST award no. 1615247) over several years (2016-21) and provides expanded opportunities for teens to participate in deeper, more comprehensive engineering internship experiences.

Across all four sites, teens engaged in engineering internship experiences–ranging from month-long intensive summer programs to a seven-month in-school program–in which they designed and fabricated accessible media (e.g., games, books, toys, tactile maps, etc.) for community clients who are blind or have low-vision (BLV) or have other special needs. Endeavoring to model principles of authentic engineering design work environments (appropriate for teens), staff mentors provided coaching, mentorship, and training, while teens collaborated in small teams to prototype client-requested products. Regardless of location, each site's internship program incorporated key design principles aligned to the theoretical research framework underpinning this work, including authenticity of projects, collaboration with community partners, 21st century workplace skills, mentorship, and opportunity to approach prototype completion (__ et al., 2024). Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, including pre-post surveys and audio reflections, interviews with site leads, and focus group discussions, the team measured the impact of the internship on teens’ perceptions of engineering, identities as engineers, awareness of disabilities and the importance of universal design, and confidence and competence in an array of technical skills and 21st century workplace skills.

Across all sites and iterations, 151 youth (grades 9-12) participated in the research study. Early findings indicate that the internship experience broadens youths’ perceptions of engineering, increases their confidence and competency with technical skills and 21st century workplace skills, and significantly increases their awareness of accessibility issues, particularly related to the BLV community. Planned future work includes assessing longer-term impacts of the ___ internship experience by surveying program alumni one to three years after their participation and examining the relative impacts of different educational environments on intended outcomes.

Authored by
Dr. Stacey Forsyth (University of Colorado Boulder), Tim Ogino (University of Colorado Boulder), Jessica Sickler (J. Sickler Consulting), and Angelina Ong (Affiliation unknown)

The overarching goals of the Kansas Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (KS-LSAMP) project (EDU/EES) is to establish a sustainable pathway for underrepresented minority students in STEM disciplines in the state of Kansas and to significantly increase the number of underrepresented minority students graduating with STEM baccalaureate degrees in the state of Kansas. The project is led by Kansas State University, a large land grant research institution. The alliance institutions included newly added Wichita University and five community colleges, Barton Community College, Dodge City Community College, Donnelly College, Garden City Community College, and Seward County Community College, all of which are minority-serving institutions with two-year programs that are transferable into STEM majors at Kansas State University and Wichita State University.

The purpose this paper was to examine how STEM faculty and staff at alliance community college institutions perceive the implementation of KS-LSAMP program. We specifically focused on the perceived strengths, obstacles, and possible solutions throughout the implementation phases, which offers insights as we aim to strengthen the institutionalization of the project across all partner institutions.

A qualitative study was conducted with multi-site focus group interviews. In Spring 2024, a purposive sample of 21 STEM faculty and staff from three community college alliance institutions were selected. These faculty and staff have been heavily involved in the KS-LSAMP program by recruiting students into STEM fields, teaching core STEM courses, and offering STEM-specific extracurricular activities at their respective institutions.

Multiple members on the PI team visited three community college alliance institutions, Dodge City Community College, Donnelly College, and Garden City Community College during Spring 2024 semester. At each site, a semi-structured focus group interview was conducted with the STEM faculty and staff. Each focus group interview lasted about an hour. The interview protocol was reviewed by the PI team before the site visits. Detailed notes were taken for all focus group interviews. The content analysis was conducted following the five-step process recommended by Creswell’s (2014) – organizing data; gaining a comprehensive understanding of the collected information; engaging in the coding process to identify patterns and recurring themes; categorizing the identified themes; and interpreting the data within the context of the research purpose.

There are three major themes in the findings: a) The first theme related to the strengths in the existing programs. Participants acknowledged a variety of support programs and activities (e.g., Bridges, Noyce) that exist in their institutions and a large group of students actively use tutoring services and STEM clubs. b) The barriers to students transferring from a 2-year institution to a 4-year institution revolve around lack of or insufficient communication about the transfer process and variation across institutions’ academic programs. c) The third theme related to potential solutions to the perceived barriers. Participants expressed the need to have a clear and well-articulated transfer process as well as the importance to connect 2-year students with successful transfer students enrolled at 4-year institutions.

Authored by
Dr. Lydia Yang Yang (Kansas State University), Craig Wanklyn P.E. (Kansas State University), and Dr. Amy Rachel Betz (Kansas State University)

This paper outlines the progress of a five-year National Science Foundation Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) project, entitled “Engineering Pathways for Access, Community, and Transfer (EPACT).” The project utilizes a consortium model, uniting faculty from three community colleges and a large western land-grant university in the same state. This project, in its second year, has successfully implemented a community of practice among community college and university teaching faculty, who are collectively developing second-year engineering courses for community college students. These courses will be delivered using a shared learning management system, adhere to ABET accreditation standards, and mirror the rigor of in-person university engineering courses, while fostering a sense of community, engineering identity, and belonging for transfer students.
In the first year, the project focused on creating cohesion within the EPACT team by holding a two-day symposium to establish clear roles and responsibilities, and to align expectations. Participants in the symposium consisted of members of the community of practice, the principal and co-principal investigators, a change expert, two project mentors, and the project external evaluator. The symposium enabled the faculty to share knowledge, skills, and assets, ensuring that everyone understood their contributions to the project’s goals.
One major aspect of the project is to design and deliver effectively three required middle-year engineering courses at the community colleges, preventing the need for early transfer to the university, and helping students stay on track for graduation. By providing these courses locally, students will be able to reduce the time and costs associated with transferring to the university, ultimately improving their success rates measured by transfer and graduation with an engineering degree.
Additionally, the project emphasizes the importance of building community among both students and EPACT faculty. Community college engineering faculty often work in departments with multiple disciplines, limiting opportunities for collaboration. This project creates dedicated spaces for faculty to share curriculum, pedagogy, and a vision for student success, while also ensuring alignment with university-level engineering programs. In year two, the focus will be on developing the learning platform for these courses, ensuring consistency across institutions, and meeting the unique needs of community college students, while celebrating the diversity of our students, their backgrounds, and experiences, creating an inclusive learning environment, and fostering a sense of belonging, and engineering identity among this population of engineering transfer students. As part of the project, a mixed methods engineering education study will be performed, both on the EPACT CoP faculty and community college students. The research study will utilize two well-tested survey instruments, well tested rubrics, and focus group interviews.
The project hopes to showcase organizationally, how community colleges and universities within a system of higher education can collaborate and share courses effectively through the lens of student success in transfer programs. We also will emphasize the importance of faculty collaboration across institutions with a common goal, and show how that collaboration can be effective in helping engineering transfer students to complete their degrees in a timely manner and enter the workplace or graduate school.

Authored by
Anne Flesher (Affiliation unknown), Dr. Ann-Marie Vollstedt (University of Nevada, Reno), Daniel Loranz (Truckee Meadows Community College), Milinda Wasala (Affiliation unknown), Jaspreet Kaur Gill (Affiliation unknown), Dr. Julia M. Williams (Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology), Brandon Protas (Affiliation unknown), Dr. Jennifer R Amos (University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign), and Dr. Indira Chatterjee (University of Nevada, Reno)

Faculty advisors play an integral role in the experiences of graduate students. Advisors serve in many different capacities for doctoral students: teachers, career guides, research mentors, and more. However, especially in engineering disciplines, faculty advisors often receive little to no training on how to serve as effective mentors. The training that faculty may receive is oftentimes lacking in how to provide psychosocial support, which is an important part of developing psychological safety in a team. A psychologically safe environment is one where an individual feels safe to be themselves and take risks without fear of negative consequences. In graduate engineering education, psychologically safe research environments enable students to be creative and innovative, which is a necessary part of the research process. The impact that psychological safety has on graduate students’ work outcomes and mental health and well-being needs to be more deeply explored to best support students throughout their degree programs and beyond. Psychological safety in a graduate student-advisor relationship can have positive or negative effects on student mental health and well-being as well as learning outcomes. We posit that faculty advisors serve as a resource to students and in turn influence psychological safety in student research environments, which impacts student outcomes.

This paper is an update on an NSF RFE project started in 2023 that leverages mixed methods to combine a survey of graduate engineering students and two sets of interviews. We use Conservation of Resources theory to examine psychological safety in relationships between doctoral engineering students and their research advisor(s). We have completed data collection and begun analysis of the survey responses and the first set of interviews. The survey was completed by 469 doctoral engineering students across two R1 institutions. Results indicated that psychological safety was a mediator between mentoring skills and student mental health and well-being and work outcomes. Twenty-eight survey participants were invited to participate in explanatory interviews. Nineteen participants completed an explanatory interview during which they provided insights and additional context into answers they had provided on the survey. Participants were selected to stratify demographics and offer a broad range of advisor experiences. Interviewers provided participants with their responses to survey items and asked them why they selected the answer they did or for any examples of times when their survey response was representative or not of their overall advising relationship. Explanatory interview findings emphasized the variability of student experiences with advisor mentorship and related work outcomes.

Additional narrative interviews are currently being conducted with participants who had previously completed the survey. These narrative interviews are designed to capture specific events and stories from students about critical moments in their relationships with their advisors and how advisor actions (or inaction) in these critical moments impacted their psychological safety and work outcomes, and how these experiences changed over time. We intend to interview 10-15 participants from the larger study in Fall 2024. Collectively, these results will inform training for faculty advising graduate students to create psychologically safe environments where students will thrive.

Authored by
Dorian Bobbett (University of Michigan), Larkin Martini (Affiliation unknown), Dr. Karin Jensen (University of Michigan), Jeanne Sanders (University of Michigan), and Dr. Mark Vincent Huerta (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)

Introduction:

A central goal in engineering education is developing students’ design thinking for creative real-world problem solving [1], [2]. Design thinking provides engineers a comprehensive set of principles for approaching diverse and emergent authentic challenges through deep needs assessment, contextualized problem definition, creative idea generation, and constructive iterative phases of implementing, testing, and improving a solution [3]. It is expected that engineering students will transfer principles of design thinking (DT) they learn in their courses to new situations and problems [4]. Yet, decades of research demonstrated people commonly fail to transfer, and that promoting transfer is very challenging [4], [5], [6], [7].

We use the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI) [8] to conceptualize the use of DT strategies based in the person’s situated role identity—who they believe they are in a particular situation, and whether their role calls for using design thinking [8]. Correspondingly, use of design thinking in a new situation occurs when the person transfers strategies learned in one role identity to another role identity. We hypothesized that engaging students who learn design thinking in one role identity (Biodesign student in Biodesign course) in imagining using those design thinking strategies in other role identities (future Capstone student, future Engineer, another concurrent life role) would promote transfer of these DT strategies into those other role identities when students occupy them.

Methods:

In an IRB-approved study protocol, sixteen students (of 22) in a Biodesign course in a large research university consented to participate. This course, consisting of required weekly lecture and laboratory sessions, is a pre-requisite to the students’ senior capstone course. This class is used to reinforce learning about the DT process through several design modules, each requiring a complete cycle through the design process, including prototyping and testing. For the study, students were tasked with creating weekly reflective journals describing their use of DT strategies. At each module’s end, students also created a DSMRI-informed summary reflection involving imagining DT use in future roles. We used a combined deductive-inductive analysis of course observations and students’ reflections to identify emerging themes about students’ engagement in transfer of DT.

Results and Discussion:

Two major themes gleaned thus far highlight: (1) Students’ difficulty in converting abstract conceptions of DT from lectures into applications in laboratory projects. This suggests a discrepancy between students’ role identities of “lecture attendant” (passive) and “lab participant” (active) that may explain failure in near transfer of DT. (2) Student reflections suggest interpretations of success and failure in laboratory tasks as implying the student’s overall capacity within the engineering field. Failure elicited feelings of inadequacy that pointed to the fragility of engineering identity, even among senior students, implicating a need to reframe the meaning of failure within engineering education.

Acknowledgements: Funding for the project is provided by NSF RIEF proposal #2306219.

Authored by
Jennifer Patten (Temple University), Dr. Avi Kaplan (Affiliation unknown), and Dr. Ruth Ochia (Temple University)

The National Science Foundation S-STEM program at NYC College of Technology (City Tech), Developing an Ecosystem of STEM success for Built Environment Scholars (Award Number 2150432), focuses on supporting and developing scholars in the majors relating to the Built-Environment which include Civil Engineering Technology, Construction Engineering Technology, Electrical Engineering Technology, Mechanical Engineering Technology and Environmental Control Technology. The intent of the project was to implement evidence-based effective practices and assess the impact of these practices, degree attainment, and entry into the U.S. workforce or graduate programs in STEM. Students are provided faculty mentors and opportunities to engage in cohort building activities that include field trips, research, workforce internships, and networking sessions. The project began in 2022 and has successfully recruited four cohorts of students within the programs first two years serving a unique cohort of 72 students to date, 30 of which have graduated.

Authored by
Prof. Melanie Villatoro (New York City College of Technology) and Dr. Muhammad Ummy (New York City College of Technology)

The Alternative Pathways to Excellence (APEX): Engineering a Transfer-Friendly Experience program at the University of St. Thomas is an NSF S-STEM 25-514 Track 2 project, award number 2130042. The aim of the grant is to build a foundation for non-traditional students and transfer students through recruitment, academic support, community-built retention efforts, student success, networking, graduation, and post-graduation placement in industry and/or graduate school. Key to the efforts is development of the support system for high academic potential students from low-income households through removal of systematic curricular barriers, strong empowerment through a community of peers, hidden curriculum mentoring from culturally informed faculty, industry coaching, and up to $10,000 annual scholarships.
The inaugural APEX scholar cohort enrolled in Fall 2022. The effectiveness research examines data related to enrollment, retention, and success metrics for students in engineering, specifically comparing these factors among engineering transfer students and the APEX scholars group. Although not all APEX students are transfer students, the program targets the transfer student population by creating new pipelines from five community college partners. This paper reviews key comparison data points, quantitative analysis of this data, qualitative analysis of student feedback, and demonstrates the initial success of the program.

Authored by
Dr. Deborah Besser (University of St. Thomas), Dr. Katherine Acton (University of St. Thomas), Dr. Jennifer E. Holte (University of St. Thomas), and Dr. Kundan Nepal (University of St. Thomas)

Student success and persistence in an engineering program goes beyond academic knowledge and proficiency. Previous studies have shown that many factors, including sense of belonging and grit, contribute to student performance and retention in STEM fields [1-9]. Sense of belonging refers to the belief that one fits in and belongs, and grit is described as perseverance and passion for long term goals.
At [our university], an NSF S-STEM program centered around scholarship and mentorship was developed to support our limited-income (LI) students. Scholarships are awarded to selected students in their second term, renewable for up to 6 additional semesters. Each scholar is paired with a faculty mentor, following a one-to-one mentoring model. In addition, each cohort of scholars is matched with a small group of peer mentors and alumni mentors. Cohort activities include a mix of social events and professional workshops to build community and develop essential skills among our scholars.
The goals of the program include:
• increasing retention and graduation rates of our LI student body to match those of our overall STEM student body,
• increasing departmental and institutional awareness of the challenges faced by LI students in STEM, and
• developing new programming specific to LI students and integrating with existing campus supports and activities.
In this study, we examine the effects of sense of belonging and grit on student retention and academic performance among our LI and non-LI student populations. Specifically, we aim to address the following research questions:
• RQ1. Can we see differences in sense of belonging and grit among our LI vs. non-LI student population (first-year STEM)?
• RQ2. Is sense of belonging and/or grit correlated with retention and/or academic performance among our students?
• RQ3. Does the S-STEM program have an impact on sense of belonging?
We use the responses to a psychosocial survey disseminated to the majority of first-year STEM students to address RQ1 and RQ2. For RQ3, we have our scholars take the psychosocial survey every year, so we are able to track changes in sense of belonging and grit among this student group as they progress through their degree program.
Preliminary results show that sense of belonging is significantly lower among our LI first-year STEM students (M=4.854, SD=1.249) than their non-LI counterparts (M=5.211, SD=1.268), t(641) = -2.624, p=.009. No differences in grit were observed among our LI (M=2.756, SD=.650) and non-LI (M=2.746, SD=.604) first-year STEM students, t(641) = 0.156, p=.876.

References:
[1] Duckworth, A., & Gross, J. J. (2014). Self-control and grit: Related but separable determinants of success. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(5), 319-325. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721414541462
[2] Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 1087. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.6.1087
[3] Duckworth, A.L, & Quinn, P.D. (2009). Development and validation of the Short Grit Scale (Grit- S). Journal of Personality Assessment, 91(2), 166-174. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223890802634290
[4] Good, C., Rattan, A., & Dweck, C. S. (2012). Why do women opt out? Sense of belonging and women's representation in mathematics. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(4), 700. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026659
[5] Hunter, M. (2020). The role of grit and other non-cognitive factors: Investigating the engagementand achievement of STEM majors. Retrieved from https://etd.ohiolink.edu/
[6] Hodge, B., Wright, B., & Bennett, P. (2018). The role of grit in determining engagement and academic outcomes for university students. Research in Higher Education, 59(4), 448-460. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-017-9474-y
[7] Leslie, S. J., Cimpian, A., Meyer, M., & Freeland, E. (2015). Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines. Science, 347(6219), 262-265. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1261375
[8] Marra, R.M., Rodgers, K.A., Shen, D. and Bogue, B. (2012), Leaving Engineering: A Multi-Year Single Institution Study. Journal of Engineering Education, 101: 6-27. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2012.tb00039.x
[9] Rosenthal, L., London, B., Levy, S. R., & Lobel, M. (2011). The roles of perceived identity compatibility and social support for women in a single-sex STEM program at a co-educational university. Sex Roles, 65(9–10), 725–736. doi: 10.1007/s11199-011-9945-0

Authored by
Dr. Maxine Fontaine (Stevens Institute of Technology (School of Engineering and Science)), Dr. Ashley Lytle (Affiliation unknown), and Dr. Frank T Fisher (Stevens Institute of Technology (School of Engineering and Science))

It has been well documented that the number of K-12 students with the interest, knowledge and motivation to pursue STEM subjects is declining at an alarming rate. Lack of access to high quality STEM education in rural areas, in particular, remains a significant challenge. This paper will discuss the student outcomes resulting from participation in a STEM-focused middle school (grades 6-8) program centered around engineering and advanced manufacturing. Participants attended one of two partner schools in a rural NC school district. This work is part of a National Science Foundation Innovative Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) project designed to provide community-based engineering design experiences for underserved rural middle school students. The STEM program, referred to as DeSIRE (Developing STEM Identity in Rural Audiences through Community-based Engineering Design), provides an opportunity for students to explore STEM concepts through hands-on, project-based learning within the context of the local advanced manufacturing industry. Over the past four years, the program has engaged students in STEM learning through a 3-part STEM-focused advanced manufacturing elective course, mentoring and guidance from undergraduate engineering students, and participation in informal STEM enrichment activities outside the classroom, including a Saturday Academy and Summer Camp.

The goals of the DeSIRE program are to improve students’ STEM content knowledge and STEM career awareness thus increasing their interest in pursuing STEM careers, particularly engineering. In this study, participants’ science content knowledge was measured using proficiency scores (Not Proficient: Levels 0-2, Proficient: Level 3, College or Career Ready: Levels 4, 5) from end-of grade (EOG) tests taken during the final year of elementary school (5th grade) and the final year of middle school (8th grade). EOG scores of DeSIRE program participants were compared to non-participants within the same school. In addition, the two partner schools were compared to each other to explore potential implementation effects.

Ordinal regression was performed to determine the impact of the program on students’ science content knowledge. It was found that the DeSIRE program improved students’ chances of reaching higher proficiency levels by the 8th grade regardless of their 5th grade EOG score. Additionally, it was shown that the number of years spent in the program had a significant effect on proficiency levels. The probability of students scoring Level 4 or 5 on the 8th grade EOG increased while the probability of scoring Level 3 or Not Proficient decreased as the number of years (0, 1, or 2) in the DeSIRE program increased irrespective of the school attended. Further, students that were deemed Not Proficient in 5th grade showed a significant proficiency increase with just one year in the program and a reduced probability of remaining Not Proficient in 8th grade. Outcomes of this program could have implications for rural school districts seeking to bolster student knowledge and interest in STEM subjects.

Authored by
Dr. Tameshia Ballard Baldwin (North Carolina State University at Raleigh), Dr. Latricia Walker Townsend (North Carolina State University at Raleigh), Aaron Arenas (North Carolina State University at Raleigh), and Micaha Dean Hughes (North Carolina State University at Raleigh)

In general, engineering programs aspire to offer curricula that are rigorous enough to produce competent graduates as well as engaging enough to attract and retain undergraduate students. From evidence collected in the literature, about half of students who enter an engineering program leave within the first two years, often because they develop a dislike for engineering or lose interest in the profession altogether. These findings suggest a disconnect between students’ perceptions of engineering and the reality of engineering education they encounter in their early years of study. This research aims to explore how contextualizing the practice of engineering can improve students’ commitment to their degree program, especially among underrepresented minorities and women who historically have lower retention rates in the discipline. With this understanding, changes to undergraduate engineering education can be made to ideally improve student retention. Additionally, this work, funded through the PFE:RIEF program, will provide insights into how students’ perceptions of engineering practice evolve when exposed to different types of contextualization (e.g., historical or technical). It will also shed light on how undergraduate students link engineering science and judgment with engineering practice, particularly in terms of how these aspects serve the design process.

One important opportunity to improve curriculum lies with the engineering science courses that occupy the middle two years of a program. These courses often utilize traditional lecture-based pedagogy and simplified close-ended textbook problems that do not typically allow students to engage in the kind of decision-making that is essential to developing engineering judgement. This work proposes a teaching pedagogy intended to provide students with technical context for how engineering science concepts are implemented in authentic engineering practice and how engineering judgement is essential in that implementation. This pedagogy was implemented during the Spring 2024 semester in an introductory dynamics course required for multiple engineering subdisciplines at [name of university]. Moreover, this work employs another teaching pedagogy to provide a more holistic contextualization of engineering practice by introducing students to the history of the profession. This pedagogy was implemented during the Fall 2023 and Fall 2024 semester in a required seminar course for mechanical engineering sophomores at [name of university]. This work will advance the field of engineering education research by studying how students’ perceptions of engineering practice develop as they progress through a program. Additionally, this work will address how these educational activities can shape that progress and reframe their beliefs about their education and training. Preliminary results from semi-structured interviews will illustrate students’ perceptions of engineering practice and whether the aforementioned educational activities influence that trajectory. Furthermore, data analysis will also be presented with respect to a larger group of students that were invited to participate in surveys.

Authored by
Martell Cartiaire Bell (The University of Iowa), Dr. Aaron W. Johnson (University of Michigan), and Prof. Rachel Vitali (The University of Iowa)

A National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) that is currently in its sixth (no-cost extension) year aims to enhance graduate education by integrating research and professional skill development within a diverse, inclusive, and supportive academy. This NRT aims to enhance graduate student preparation for employment in the public and private sectors – i.e., academia, government, nonprofit, and industry – through training that integrates education, research, and professional development with multiple experiential activities that expose trainees to a diverse array of individuals, sites, and organizations representing various career options.

This contribution will describe the career exploration offerings of this NRT, which is focused on Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems (INFEWS). In addition, this contribution will share the experiences and perspectives of program graduates and their post-graduation supervisors. In so doing, this contribution will address an important gap in the literature, which is scant of reports dealing with the post-graduation outcomes of graduate traineeships in STEM due to the challenges inherent to performing this type of longitudinal inquiry.

Career development in this NRT included a four-pronged approach that spanned the entirety of the graduate program and included 1) transferable skill development; 2) interdisciplinary research; 3) career and research symposia; as well as 4) field trips, internships, and international opportunities. Evaluation of these interventions was conducted across time via pre-, post-, and follow-up surveys with corresponding measures and via focus groups. In this contribution, both assessment and outcomes will be discussed.

In addition to the survey and focus group data, interviews of graduates from this NRT on INFEWS provided retrospective thoughts on the perceived influence of each career development intervention. Purposive sampling was conducted to represent diverse career pathways and employment settings of NRT graduates who were asked to discuss which experiences were most and least impactful as well as their goals for continued professional growth. Employers were asked to provide general comments from a global perspective on preparedness and professionalism of NRT graduates.

Authored by
Dr. Eduardo Santillan-Jimenez (University of Kentucky), Carissa B. Schutzman Ph.D. (University of Cincinnati), and Teresa Michelle Encalada (University of Cincinnati)

An interinstitutional team of researchers at a Southwest HSI Land-Grant University and its affiliated local community college embarked on managing an NSF-supported Track III S-STEM scholarship project called STAR (“Successful Transfer and Retention”) project. This project is a synergistic effort between the University’s College of Engineering (CoE) and a neighboring 2-year Community College (CC). The project addresses an institutionally identified need of increasing recruitment of financially challenged, academically talented, 2-year CC transfer engineering students as well as retaining and graduating them. Major elements o this effort are: provide need-based financial assistance to academically talented engineering students; enhance transfer engineering students’ math proficiency through a Summer Math Boot Camp (SMBC); enhance Students’ Self-Efficacy, Growth Mindset, and Engineering Identity through metacognition- and cohort-based activities; and assess students’ academic performance using data analytics. The program began recruitment of scholars in Fall 2020 and continuing. As of now, it has 57 scholars at various stages of their education. The cognitive and noncognitive activities of the program support students’ academic preparation through SMBC, Self-Efficacy and Growth Mindset through metacognition-based workshops, Engineering Identity through cohort-based activities in Engineering Learning Communities (ELCs), time management skills, one-on-one relationships with near-peer and faculty mentors, and a cohort model. The program conducts yearly SMBC and monthly meetings comprising presentations, workshops, and cohort-building activities. The key preliminary findings indicate S-STEM financial support is the top-rated element of the program followed by professional preparation and community building. These scholars have seen progressive growth in their various aspects of engineering identity.

Authored by
Dr. Muhammad Dawood (New Mexico State University), Dr. Paola Bandini (New Mexico State University), Dr. Rachel Boren (New Mexico State University), Joe Butler (New Mexico State University - Dona Ana Community College), and Dr. Wendy Chi (ABC Research & Evaluation)

Civil engineering graduate programs continue to focus on preparing students for careers in research and academia, even though academic opportunities remain limited. Consequently, a growing number of graduates are pursuing careers in industry, highlighting the need for enhanced support during this transition. Research-to-practice models provide a bridge between academic learning and real-world application, equipping students for careers beyond academia without compromising the technical rigor of their program. In our NSF-funded Innovation in Graduate Education (IGE) grant, we have created a research-to-practice graduate education model within the Civil and Environmental Engineering graduate program through the incorporation of a non-academic mentor into the thesis / dissertation committee structure. While the traditional academic advisor ensures students are well-prepared to meet academic and research requirements, the non-academic mentor brings valuable practical insights, helping students address engineering challenges that are relevant to their projects and allowing them to understand the broader implications of their work outside of academia. This dynamic mentorship ensures students gain both theoretical expertise and practical experience, positioning them for success in diverse professional environments.The research-to-practice model is grounded in the cognitive apprenticeship framework, which emphasizes how novices learn expert problem-solving techniques. Non-academic mentors’ participation supports graduate students in this learning process.
In this paper we seek to address the research question: How are graduate students perceiving support from their academic and non-academic mentors? To assess graduate students' perceptions of their non-academic mentors, a modified version of the Maastricht Clinical Teaching Questionnaire (MCTQ) was administered. Originally developed to provide clinical educators with feedback from medical students during clerkship rotations, the MCTQ’s 24 items were carefully revised and rephrased to fit the context of engineering graduate students working with non-academic mentors. This adapted version of the MCTQ was tested with transportation engineering students in a think-aloud protocol to identify areas needing further clarification. The finalized survey was administered for the first time at the end of the Spring 2024 semester. Additionally, students were asked to complete the Engineering Identity Inventory, which examines their identities as scientists, engineers, and researchers. This instrument also gathers data on advisor relationships. The Engineering Doctoral Student Identity Instrument was administered during both the Fall 2023 and Fall 2024 semesters.

This paper presents initial findings from the MCTQ and Engineering Identity Inventory to determine the perceptions graduate students have about their non-academic mentor and academic advisor. Results from these surveys will provide initial insight about the impact of the two mentor-advisee relationship model and identify potential areas of program improvement.

Authored by
Mrs. Brittany Lynn Butler-Morton (Rowan University), Darby Rose Riley (Rowan University), Ing. Eduardo Rodriguez Mejia (Rowan University), Dr. Cheryl A Bodnar (Rowan University), Dr. Kaitlin Mallouk (Rowan University), and Dr. Yusuf Mehta (Rowan University)

The first exposure to engineering that most K-12 students have is in the classroom. However, K-12 teachers typically have limited or no experience with engineering or engineering education. As a result, they commonly hold many misconceptions about engineering as a field and a low self-efficacy with teaching engineering, which makes them reluctant to include engineering in the curriculum at more than a very superficial level. This leads to a lack of interest in engineering among K-12 students. Consequently, there is an urgent and critical need to provide more exposure to engineering and training in how to teach engineering to both pre-service and in-service K-12 teachers.
In this study, a new course was created in which pre-service teachers and engineering undergraduate students collaborated to develop engineering-focused activities for use in K-12 classrooms and support local K-12 schools and communities by facilitating after-school engineering clubs and family STEM nights. This course intentionally created a hybrid community of practice, and this project explored the ways in which participation in this hybrid community of practice impacted pre-service teachers’ perceptions of engineering and engineering teaching self-efficacy. To assess this impact, a survey designed to measure engineering teaching self-efficacy was completed by pre-service teachers at the beginning and end of the course. In addition, pre-service teachers also completed reflective journals throughout the course in which they were asked to reflect on how specific aspects of the course impacted their understanding of the nature of engineering and confidence in their ability to teach engineering. All reflective journals were collected and analyzed qualitatively using an open coding method to identify common themes in the responses.
Based on quantitative survey results, the self-efficacy of pre-service teachers with teaching engineering increased as a result of participating in this course. Furthermore, qualitative analysis of reflective journal entries revealed that pre-service teachers felt more confident in their ability to teach engineering after completing the course, with many indicating that the course increased both their self-efficacy and understanding of engineering as a field. Participants also stated that they felt more prepared to talk about engineering with K-12 students, and that they understood the importance of incorporating engineering into their future courses.

Authored by
Dr. Betsy Chesnutt (The University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

This project is funded by the National Science Foundation EDU Core Research: Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (ECR: BCSER) program. The BCSER grant is twofold: (1) to build the Principal Investigator’s STEM education research skills, and (2) to conduct a research project. The research project of this BCSER award is to systematically study effective strategies to recruit underserved students into engineering bridge and success programs at 4-year institutions in the U.S. The research includes three stages: perspectives on recruitment from program leaders, perspectives from prospective underserved students, and comparison of both viewpoints. This paper reports on the progress made on this BCSER award, including preliminary research results (a case study), accomplishments, and future work of the project.

Authored by
Dr. Xinyu Zhang (Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE)), Lynnette Michaluk (West Virginia University), N’Diya Harris (Wright State University), and Ansley Lynn Shamblin (West Virginia University)

Carnegie Mellon University, Johns Hopkins University, and New York University created the Project ELEVATE Alliance (AGEP Grant – Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM in the Directorate for STEM Education) to develop a model promoting the equitable advancement of early career tenure-stream engineering faculty from historically underrepresented groups, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Native Pacific Islanders (AGEP) faculty. The goal of this AGEP Faculty Career Pathways Alliance Model (FCPAM) grant is to develop, implement, self-study, and institutionalize a career pathway model that can be adapted for use at similar institutions, for advancing early career engineering faculty from these groups. The Alliance interventions for this project focus on three major pillars of activity, 1) equity-focused institutional change designed to make structural changes that support the advancement of AGEP faculty, 2) identity-affirming mentorship that acknowledges and provides professional support to AGEP faculty holistically, recognizing all parts of their identity and 3) inclusive professional development that equips all engineering faculty and institutional leaders with skills to implement inclusive practices and equips AGEP faculty for career advancement. The main pillars have informed our efforts during the early years of the grant.

As we began collaborating in our alliance, we made observations about similarities and differences in institutional culture and decision making. While there were many similarities between search and hiring practices across the three institutions, there were also differences that may play into effective hiring of engineering faculty. There are also different activities at each institution that align with the institutionalization of equity-focused practices in areas such as supporting faculty success; reappointment, promotion, and tenure policies and guidance; mentoring and teaching evaluations. Some of these observations came from our self-study, while others came from discussions among the team.

In planning our professional development initiatives, our alliance realized there was insufficient personnel at some of the alliance institutions to implement the Project ELEVATE programs. At CMU, the College of Engineering re-envisioned its Center for Faculty Success (CFS), an entity designed to provide resources, training, and community building to promote and foster faculty success. A new Faculty Director and Managing Director have been hired to relaunch the center. In addition, NYU Engineering has hired a new full-time staff member funded by the school budget as the Associate Director for Faculty Development, to support the various new faculty development programs including those under Project ELEVATE. Lastly, JHU recently hired a Director of Faculty Recruitment who will support the Vice Dean of Faculty in recruitment and onboarding of early career faculty. In this paper we will discuss the steps taken at each alliance institution and our plans for sustainability of these initiatives at our institutions. The evaluation team will also provide an update and discuss how they have supported the team in its efforts.

Authored by
Dr. Alaine M Allen (Carnegie Mellon University), Darlene Saporu (Affiliation unknown), Yao Wang (Affiliation unknown), Dr. Linda DeAngelo (University of Pittsburgh), Dr. Andrew Douglas (The Johns Hopkins University), Ms. Nathalie Florence Felciai (New York University Tandon School of Engineering), Dr. Neetha Khan (Carnegie Mellon University), Stacey J Marks (The Johns Hopkins University), Ms. Lisa A. Porter (Carnegie Mellon University), Dr. William Harry Sanders (Carnegie Mellon University), Dr. Tuviah "Ed" E. Schlesinger (The Johns Hopkins University), Charlie Díaz (University of Pittsburgh), Blayne D. Stone (University of Pittsburgh), Prisca Collins (Affiliation unknown), and Dr. Katharine Phelps Walsh (Carnegie Mellon University, College of Engineering)

In order for the United States to remain competitive in the global market, it will need a diverse STEM workforce to tackle social, scientific, and technical problems that impact every aspect of our lives (National Science Foundation, 2020). Unfortunately, despite a plethora of initiatives and a surge of research activity within the last ten years, the number of Black women persisting in STEM disciplines remains low and in some fields continues to decline (Chen, 2013). In addition, most STEM jobs require postsecondary education, giving institutions of higher education (IHEs) a high level of power as gatekeepers to long-term financial and social well-being (Cabrera, 2014; Carnevale et al., 2020). When individuals are unable to successfully navigate racist and sexist experiences within IHEs and choose to leave STEM, the entire system of social inequality, from health care to housing to generational wealth, is maintained.

In this poster, we share findings from our Racial Equity in STEM Education project (Award #2319810). This exploratory, sequential, mixed methods, longitudinal study elevates the voices of forty (40) undergraduate Black women in STEM at three IHEs in Georgia and posits that the lack of progression for Black women in STEM is based upon what we have termed “interruption.” Although interruptions are daily occurrences in the lives of all people, Black women are interrupted more frequently than others as a matter of their sheer existence. By unpacking student experiences, we can define interruptions and begin to understand how repeated interruptions by peers, professors, and themselves, lead to so many Black women leaving STEM fields.

Authored by
Dr. Tamara Pearson (Georgia Institute of Technology), Dr. Pamela M Leggett-Robinson (PLR Consulting), Dr. Monica Stephens (Spelman College), and Dr. Kathaleena Edward Monds (Albany State University)

This work, funded by the NSF S-STEM program, is based on a scholarship program for low-income students transferring from community colleges to complete engineering degrees at a regional four-year institution in the South. In addition to financial support, the student experience includes a first-semester seminar to develop community and familiarize students with campus resources. The students are also assigned faculty advisors in their degree program with specific expertise in mentoring transfer students. They meet with those advisors three times in a semester and are held accountable for engaging in student organizations, taking advantage of resources, editing resumes, and applying for opportunities. The program has been successful. Now in its final year, 90% of scholars have graduated or are on-track in their degree programs, and 91% of graduates have either obtained employment as engineers or entered graduate or professional degree programs.
Much work in the area of transfer student success has focused on initiatives to engage transfer students in programs to inculcate a sense of belonging in their new environment. At the institutional level, such efforts are often patterned after those that engage first-year students in university culture. The question addressed here is whether engineering transfer students perceive need for that institutional identity. With constraints on student time and university resources, are efforts better focused at the college level?
In our program, the cohort of scholars meets in a focus group at the end of the first semester to evaluate what has supported their success through the transfer experience. Last year, in response to a question regarding sense of belonging at the institution, a student stated “We don’t go to [Name of institution], we go to [Name of College of Engineering building].” The rest of the cohort agreed, and generally considered that sense of belonging to the College to be sufficient. This led us to revisit transfer student survey data from a previous year to evaluate trends in identity and belonging. In that survey, nearly twice as many respondents reported feeling connected to other students in the College than reported either a sense of connectedness to the University or a sense of belonging at the University. They also reported that the most important contributors to their academic success were the other students in their classes and their assigned engineering faculty advisors.
To further understand the relative importance of integration into a college of engineering and the sense of belonging at the larger educational institution, we convened four focus groups of transfer students, each group composed of students at a particular point in their educational journey, ranging from first-semester transfers to recent graduates. This work will report the students’ reflections on their progression from transfer toward degree completion, how they engaged within the college and with the greater university community, whether those were reasoned choices, and their perceptions of what role their integration played in their success. Outcomes will inform efforts in colleges of engineering as they strategize to best use of their resources to support the success of their transfer students, particularly those from financially disadvantaged backgrounds.

Authored by
Dr. Christy Wheeler West (University of South Alabama), Nicole Carr (Affiliation unknown), and Dr. Eric Steward P.E. (University of South Alabama)

The [ERC Name] is a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded, third generation Engineering Research Center (ERC), comprising four partner universities: [University 1], [University 2], [University 3], and [University 4]. As the Center approaches its final year of funding, we reflect on a decade of educational programming. The Engineering Workforce Development (EWD) programs are designed to motivate and educate students from diverse backgrounds, inspiring a new generation of engineers interested in pursuing graduate degrees and careers in [engineering discipline] engineering.
Over the past ten years, the Center has actively recruited students, teachers, and professionals from underrepresented populations to participate in [ERC] EWD programs. The EWD has developed and honed a collection of programs and activities that prepare graduates and the professional workforce with the skills required for proficiency in the field: communication, engineering success, career connections, technical expertise, multicultural skills, and mentorship. Students participate in outreach by conducting lab tours and demonstrating their research at events. Activities of the EWD have produced expert-reviewed [engineering discipline] curricula (webinars, modules, courses, etc.) for pre-college, undergraduate, graduate, and practitioner levels. The EWD has fostered industry engagement with [ERC] students through research, internships, career connections, design challenges and more. Rigorous assessment and evaluation are seamlessly integrated into all aspects of the education and outreach programs, enabling systematic, ongoing improvement of activities and materials
Plans for sustainability of the [ERC] EWD partnerships and programs beyond the Center’s graduation into the [New Name] include disseminating research through the [Conference Name], sharing existing curricula through short courses and certificate programs, and continuing as the leader in [engineering discipline] engineering.

Authored by
Dr. Jean S Larson (Arizona State University) and Leah Folkestad (Arizona State University)

The National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Research in the Formation of Engineers (RFE) project titled “[Name of Project]” aims to address the need for comprehensive evaluation tools designed specifically for NSF Engineering Research Centers (ERCs). The primary goals of the project include the creation of a [Name of Product], a suite of both quantitative and qualitative instruments that ERCs can use to evaluate their educational efforts. The main survey, which is modular in nature, has been converted into an operational platform/website to streamline implementation.

The [Name of Product] has gone through several iterations internally, with a concentration this past year on addressing bugs and unanticipated errors. The quantitative survey on the platform currently includes 10 sections: research center affiliation, understanding of the research center, impact on skills, culture of inclusion, mentorship experience, industry engagement, innovation and entrepreneurship, STEM-related future plans, program satisfaction, and demographic information. Pilot data from participating ERCs and other large STEM-focused centers has been used to demonstrate initial validity and trustworthiness associated with the tools, which provide a foundation for expanded use. Modifications have been made to some of the qualitative instruments, which were updated and used to evaluate programs this year. To guide newly funded centers and enhance evaluation within and across ERCs, new content has been drafted for the NSF Engineering Research Centers’ Best Practices Manual. The next steps for the project are to address the sustainability of the [Name of Product]. Now that NSF funding is coming to an end, a permanent home for the [Name of Product] needs to be established, as is a model for ongoing technical support.

Authored by
Dr. Jean S Larson (Arizona State University), Dr. Leah Folkestad (Arizona State University), and Radhika Pareek (Arizona State University)

With appropriate scaffolding and prompt engineering, Generative AI has the potential to support engineering students to think comprehensively about stakeholders and society. In this paper, we present an initial toolkit and pedagogical suggestions for leveraging AI in engineering design across four design activities: (1) identifying stakeholders; (2) generating interview questions; (3) discovering solutions; and (4) assessing impacts. We first recommend that students generate ideas, such as potential stakeholders or solutions, without using Generative AI. Once students exhaust their immediate knowledge, instructors then introduce Generative AI and prompt queries for students to generate a diverse range of additional ideas. Lastly, instructors prompt students to filter unapplicable suggestions by using their engineering judgment. Building upon these suggestions, our funded project will leverage data gathered from students and design instructors to assess the strengths, limitations, and negative consequences of employing Generative AI in design pedagogy.

Authored by
Dr. Justin L Hess (Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE)), Dr. Robert P. Loweth (The University of North Carolina at Charlotte), and Udeme Idem (Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE))

It is well-established that students have difficulty transferring theory and skills between courses in their undergraduate curriculum. At the same time, many college-level courses only concern material relating to the course itself and do not cover how this material might be used elsewhere. It is unsurprising, then, that students are unable to transfer and integrate knowledge from multiple areas into new problems as part of capstone design courses, for example, or in their careers. More work is required to better enable students to transfer knowledge between their courses, learn skills and theory more deeply, and to form engineers who are better able to adapt to new situations and solve “systems-level” problems.

Various authors in both the cognitive and disciplinary sciences have discussed these difficulties with the transfer of knowledge, and noted the need to develop tools and techniques for promoting knowledge transfer, as well as to help students develop cross-course connections. This work aimed to address these barriers to knowledge transfer, and crucially develop the needed activities and practices for promoting transfer by answering the following research questions: (1) What are the primary challenges experienced by students when tasked with transferring theory and skills from prior courses, specifically mathematics and physics? (2) What methods of prior knowledge activation are most effective in enabling students to apply this prior knowledge in new areas of study?

In this paper we present a holistic summary of the work completed under this award. Initially, findings from a series of n=23 think aloud interviews, in which participants were asked to solve a typical engineering statics problem, is presented. These interviews evidenced multiple barriers to knowledge transfer (lack of prior knowledge, accuracy of prior knowledge, conceptual understanding, lack of teaching of applications, language of problem, curricular mapping) that hindered participant success in terms of using their mathematical skills to solve the problem.
Findings also indicated the importance of reflective thinking on behalf of the participants to their problem solving success.

Based on this initial work using think alouds, a further set of interviews (n=8) were conducted to more deeply examine student conceptions of important mathematical topics that are transferred into engineering such as integration and centroids. Findings indicated that participant knowledge and understanding of centroids in particular was generally based around more intuitive or geometrical conceptions rather than concrete physical or mathematical models. Following up on the initial study of problem solving, the importance of reflection on behalf of the problem solver was also examined in more detail. Comparison of expert (faculty) and novice (student) approaches to problem solving demonstrates how often experts reflect on their progress during the solving process and the manner in which they are able to connect problems in one context to similar problems they have encountered in the past in other areas of engineering. The ability of experts to “chunk” problems into smaller stages and reflect on individual elements of the problem at hand rather than the problem as a whole was also seen to be a differentiating factor in their approach as compared to novices.

Similar to this paper, the associated poster presentation will cover a holistic representation of the findings of this study.

Authored by
Dr. Alexander John De Rosa (University of Delaware), Dr. Teri Kristine Reed (OU Polytechnic Institute), and Samuel Van Horne (University of Delaware)

This paper outlines the Year 1 activities for a Research in Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning (RETTL) project about identifying threshold concepts in the field of cyber-physical systems (CPSs). Threshold concepts when mastered, are said to lead to a transformed understanding of the subject – in this case, CPS design – and a shift in the students’ identity within the field’s context. Given the cruciality of these concepts to a field, not just CPS, the premise of threshold concepts has been used to unpack student misconceptions and design the formative learning experiences necessary for students to master a subjects’ core ideas. In this project, we are developing a table-top testbed for learning the core concepts in CPS design and using the system to identify which of these concepts constitute threshold concepts within the field.

Year 1 focused on prototyping a tangible physical computing testbed that simulates real-world grid operations. The custom-designed tabletop platform replicates key cyber-physical grid components, including generators, consumer and prosumer entities, and grid control servers. These elements interact through a distributed node architecture, enabling the study of grid dynamics, fault management, and optimization strategies. The testbed can wirelessly collect and analyze real-time power metrics across the network. Custom-built fault injection mechanisms simulate critical events like short circuits, open circuits, and power overloads, with visual and auditory alerts providing immediate feedback on grid performance.

For the educational research component of our project, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) on threshold concepts discussed in the literature of fields related to CPS - such as systems engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering while prototyping was under way. Our SLR was motivated by fruitless direct searches for threshold concepts in the interdisciplinary and emerging field of CPS, leading us to curate a list of existing threshold concepts in CPS-related fields and determine their relevance to CPS characteristics grounded by the conceptualization of such systems by Horvath and Gerritsen. To expand on the findings of the SLR, we conducted a three round Delphi Study with 11 CPS experts working within different focus areas, including smart grids, autonomous systems, and machine learning. We completed the study in Fall 2024 and are currently conducting our final synthesis of the results.

This paper will present the preliminary results of the Delphi study, the major findings of our systematic literature review, and functionality of the prototype testbed. As we move forward in the project, we will integrate our findings from the educational research strand to inform the development of features within the testbed. We anticipate the testbed paired with our deeper understanding of the threshold concepts in CPS will enable more collaborative approaches to learning about such systems.

Authored by
Dr. David Reeping (University of Cincinnati) and Yunmeng Han (University of Cincinnati)

In this NSF Grantees Poster Session Paper, we describe our progress on a project funded by NSF Research in the Formation of Engineers (RFE) between engineering education researchers at Tufts University and machine learning researchers at the University of Massachusetts Lowell to use machine learning to understand student reasoning in short-answer responses written by students to challenging questions in mechanics and thermodynamics [1] - [4]. Concept questions are multiple-choice questions that require little to no math and ask students to problem-solve using recently learned concepts [5], [6]. Short-answer justifications to concept questions have been shown to improve student engagement and learning outcomes so these responses can provide a wealth of information to instructors and researchers regarding student understanding [7] - [9]. However, the large amounts of text are difficult to analyze. Researchers have utilized machine learning to automate feedback and grading, provide tutoring, and conduct additional analyses of short- and long-answer texts [10] - [19]. Recently, the application of Transformer-based large language models (LLMs) [20] to qualitative research has emerged due to their generative capabilities, prompting education and machine learning researchers to look further into their use. For this project, we have the following goals:
- For instructors: Gain information about patterns, trends, and ideas of student thinking that they could utilize in their instructional practices and pedagogical decision-making.
- For education researchers: Provide ways to analyze student understanding in various institutional contexts at a scale not feasible with manual coding.
Here, we describe our work applying state-of-the-art Transformer LLMs (including T5 [21], GPT-3 [22], GPT-4 [23], Mixtral-of-Experts [24], and ATLAS.ti Intentional coding powered by OpenAI [25]) to the task of analyzing student responses to concept questions in mechanics and chemical engineering thermodynamics. We then expand upon the work done in Year 2 to improve our language models and progress toward developing a generative AI tool to automate analysis of student responses for the [tool blinded for peer review].

References
[1] H. Auby, N. Shivagunde, A. Rumshisky, and M. D. Koretsky, “WIP: Using machine learning to automate coding of student explanations to challenging mechanics concept questions,” in Proceedings of the 2022 American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition, Jun. 2022. [Online]. Available: https://peer.asee.org/40507
[2] H. Auby and M. D. Koretsky, “Work in progress: Using machine learning to map student narratives of understanding and promoting linguistic justice,” in Proceedings of the 2023 American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition, Jun. 2023.
[3] H. Auby, N. Shivagunde, A. Rumshisky, and M. Koretsky, “Utilizing machine learning to analyze short-answer responses to conceptually challenging chemical engineering thermodynamics questions,” in Proceedings of the 2024 American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon, Jun. 2024.
[4] H. Auby, N. Shivagunde, A. Rumshisky, and M. Koretsky, “Board 408: Toward Building a human-computer coding partnership: Using machine learning to analyze short-answer explanations to conceptually challenging questions,” presented at the 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Jun. 2024. Accessed: May 01, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://peer.asee.org/board-408-toward-building-a-human-computer-coding-partnership-using-machine-learning-to-analyze-short-answer-explanations-to-conceptually-challenging-questions
[5] E. Mazur, Peer Instruction: A User’s Manual. in Series in Educational Innovation. Prentice Hall, 1997.
[6] C. H. Crouch and E. Mazur, “Peer Instruction: Ten years of experience and results,” Am. J. Phys., vol. 69, no. 9, pp. 970–977, Sep. 2001, doi: 10.1119/1.1374249.
[7] M. D. Koretsky, B. J. Brooks, R. M. White, and A. S. Bowen, “Querying the questions: Student responses and reasoning in an active learning class,” J. Eng. Educ., vol. 105, no. 2, pp. 219–244, 2016, doi: 10.1002/jee.20116.
[8] M. D. Koretsky, B. J. Brooks, and A. Z. Higgins, “Written justifications to multiple-choice concept questions during active learning in class,” Int. J. Sci. Educ., vol. 38, no. 11, pp. 1747–1765, Jul. 2016, doi: 10.1080/09500693.2016.1214303.
[9] E. Wheeler and R. L. McDonald, “Writing in engineering courses,” J. Eng. Educ., vol. 89, no. 4, pp. 481–486, 2000, doi: 10.1002/j.2168-9830.2000.tb00555.x.
[10] X. Zhai, Y. Yin, J. W. Pellegrino, K. C. Haudek, and L. Shi, “Applying machine learning in science assessment: a systematic review,” Stud. Sci. Educ., vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 111–151, Jan. 2020, doi: 10.1080/03057267.2020.1735757.
[11] X. Zhai, K. C. Haudek, L. Shi, R. H. Nehm, and M. Urban-Lurain, “From substitution to redefinition: A framework of machine learning-based science assessment,” J. Res. Sci. Teach., vol. 57, no. 9, pp. 1430–1459, 2020, doi: 10.1002/tea.21658.
[12] X. Zhai, K. C. Haudek, C. Wilson, and M. Stuhlsatz, “A framework of construct-irrelevant variance for contextualized constructed response assessment,” Front. Educ., vol. 6, 2021, Accessed: Feb. 08, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2021.751283
[13] X. Zhai, L. Shi, and R. H. Nehm, “A meta-analysis of machine learning-based science assessments: Factors impacting machine-human score agreements,” J. Sci. Educ. Technol., vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 361–379, Jun. 2021, doi: 10.1007/s10956-020-09875-z.
[14] X. Zhai, J. Krajcik, and J. W. Pellegrino, “On the validity of machine learning-based Next Generation Science assessments: A validity inferential network,” J. Sci. Educ. Technol., vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 298–312, Apr. 2021, doi: 10.1007/s10956-020-09879-9.
[15] K. C. Haudek and X. Zhai, “Examining the effect of assessment construct characteristics on machine learning scoring of scientific argumentation,” Int. J. Artif. Intell. Educ., Dec. 2023, doi: 10.1007/s40593-023-00385-8.
[16] S. Maestrales, X. Zhai, I. Touitou, Q. Baker, B. Schneider, and J. Krajcik, “Using machine learning to score multi-dimensional assessments of chemistry and physics,” J. Sci. Educ. Technol., vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 239–254, 2021.
[17] S. Hilbert et al., “Machine learning for the educational sciences,” Rev. Educ., vol. 9, no. 3, p. e3310, 2021, doi: 10.1002/rev3.3310.
[18] P. P. Martin, D. Kranz, P. Wulff, and N. Graulich, “Exploring new depths: Applying machine learning for the analysis of student argumentation in chemistry,” J. Res. Sci. Teach., vol. n/a, no. n/a, doi: 10.1002/tea.21903.
[19] B. J. Yik, A. J. Dood, D. C. R. de Arellano, K. B. Fields, and J. R. Raker, “Development of a machine learning-based tool to evaluate correct Lewis acid–base model use in written responses to open-ended formative assessment items,” Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 866–885, 2021.
[20] A. Vaswani et al., “Attention is All you Need,” in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, Curran Associates, Inc., 2017. Accessed: Aug. 09, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2017/hash/3f5ee243547dee91fbd053c1c4a845aa-Abstract.html
[21] C. Raffel et al., “Exploring the limits of transfer learning with a unified Text-to-Text Transformer,” Jul. 28, 2020, arXiv: arXiv:1910.10683. Accessed: Apr. 03, 2023. [Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/1910.10683
[22] T. B. Brown et al., “Language models are few-shot learners,” Jul. 22, 2020, arXiv: arXiv:2005.14165. Accessed: Apr. 03, 2023. [Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165
[23] OpenAI et al., “GPT-4 Technical Report,” Mar. 04, 2024, arXiv: arXiv:2303.08774. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2303.08774.
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[25] “AI Coding powered by OpenAI,” ATLAS.ti. [Online]. Available: https://atlasti.com/ai-coding-powered-by-openai

Authored by
Harpreet Auby (Tufts University), Namrata Shivagunde (University of Massachusetts Lowell), Anna Rumshisky (University of Massachusetts Lowell), and Dr. Milo Koretsky (Tufts University)

Intuition is well-documented as a defining characteristic of experts and as a skill used by professionals in specialized fields such as nursing, business management, and law (Benner, 1984; Richards, 2016; Simon, 1987). From prior work (Authors, 2023), we define intuition as an experience-informed skill subconsciously leveraged in problem solving by engineering practitioners when under pressure from constraints (e.g., lack of time). Practicing engineers use and develop intuition regularly on-the-job, but the use of intuition is often discouraged in undergraduate education. The disconnect between intuition’s use in engineering practice and in education, coupled with our limited knowledge of the relationship between intuition, expertise, and experience, presents an important gap in our existing understanding of engineering problem solving and future workforce preparation. Through a Research in the Formation of Engineers (RFE) grant, we seek to address this gap by examining the application of intuition by engineering practitioners to generate knowledge that promotes professional formation and development of a stronger engineering workforce through four research questions.

RQ1: How does the application of intuition manifest in engineering problem solving?
RQ2: How does the application of intuition vary when approaching “ill” versus “well” structured engineering problems?
RQ3: How does the domain of practitioner expertise influence the application of intuition when approaching “ill” versus “well” structured engineering problems?
RQ4: How does prior engineering experience influence the application of intuition when approaching “ill” versus “well” structured engineering problems?

To elicit expert knowledge, we are using Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA). CTA is a method that to our knowledge has not been applied to engineering education research but has a strong record of success in social science research, particularly in studies of expert task completion (Crandall et al., 2006). Per best practices, we are mixing CTA methods (Simulation Interviews, Critical Decision Method, and Knowledge Audit Method) to support robust data collection (Crandall & Hoffman, 2013).

Our key findings to date include the creation of an interview protocol and coding of three pilot interviews with engineering experts using the Leveraging Intuition Toward Engineering Solutions (LITES) framework (Authors, 2023). Pilot interview participants were asked to come prepared to discuss an engineering problem they solved in their career (e.g., flight test readiness and fixing manufacturing problems). All participants described ill-structured problems in which they as the problem-solver needed to gather information, collaborate with domain experts, and ultimately exercise their judgment to take action. Past experience emerged as a strong guiding force in each participant’s problem-solving approach and was often credited for how they “knew what to do.” These findings align with what is known about engineering intuition and are an important first step towards demonstrating its direct use in engineering problem solving.

References
Authors (2023).

Benner, P. (1984). From novice to expert: Excellence and power in clinical nursing practice. Addison-Wesley.

Crandall, B., Klein, G. A., & Hoffman, R. R. (2006). Working minds: A practitioner's guide to cognitive task analysis. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/7304.001.0001

Crandall, B. W., & Hoffman, R. R. (2013). Cognitive task analysis. In J. D. Lee & A. Kirlik (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive engineering (pp. 229-239). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199757183.001.0001

Richards, D. (2016). When Judges Have a Hunch: Intuition and Experience in Judicial Decision-Making. ARSP: Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie / Archives for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, 102(2), 245-260. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24756844
Simon, H. A. (1987). Making management decisions: The role of intuition and emotion. Academy of Management Perspectives, 1(1), 57-64. https://doi.org/10.5465/ame.1987.4275905

Authored by
Dr. Kaela M Martin (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Prescott), Dr. Elif Miskioglu (Bucknell University), Anu Singh (The Ohio State University), and Dr. Adam R Carberry (The Ohio State University)

The problems engineers solve go beyond simply completing the calculations; they need to be able to work with colleagues, clients, and communities to create solutions that are scientifically viable and socially useful. Additionally, engineers often will face setbacks, needing to learn from multiple iterations of experiments to achieve a suitable solution. In the engineering curriculum, the laboratory can provide an opportunity for students to develop these types of engineering practices. In this project, we investigate how students are developing productive engineering practices within both a simulation-based virtual laboratory and a hands-on physical laboratory. We do this by evaluating the engineering epistemic practices students use and the context of the discourse in which they occur. Engineering epistemic practices refer to the ways engineers develop, communicate, justify, and validate knowledge claims while completing engineering work. Epistemic practices are elicited socially and exist within the context of a given activity and social interaction. To connect student practice to this larger context we also look at the discourse moves student groups make through the lens of practical epistemology analysis.
The Jar Test for Drinking Water Treatment, a laboratory we have developed in both virtual and physical versions, is used in this study. A jar test is a typical environmental engineering procedure to optimize drinking water treatment operations by calibrating the chemical additives needed to facilitate the removal of contaminants through coagulation, flocculation, and sedimentation. The designs of the virtual and physical laboratories were based on the hypothesis that the two laboratory modes would elicit different but productive epistemic practices in students based on the affordances of that mode. The virtual mode is thought to be more suitable for engaging students in social and conceptual epistemic practices, while the physical mode more readily engages students in social and material epistemic practices.
Using a design based research approach, two rounds of data with a total of 21 participants (7 groups of 3 students) have been collected to date. Data in the first round were collected from chemical engineering students (N=12), while the second round data collection was from environmental engineering students who had taken a course in drinking water treatment (N=9). Based on our analysis of the first round, we added a “hybrid” day in between the virtual and physical laboratories for the second round. On this hybrid day students were given an incomplete set of data from a jar test; they needed to analyze these data to choose the dosages of chemical additives to use for their physical laboratory the following week.
Data sources include video recordings of the students completing each laboratory, transcripts of their discourse, submitted written reports, and semi-structured stimulated recall interviews with 18 of the 21 students. A visually enhanced version of the virtual laboratory created in the Unity game engine is currently being developed and will be used to collect a third round of data. The third round of data collection will investigate how a more immersive virtual laboratory will influence student epistemic practices and students’ perceptions of the laboratory experience.
Using discourse analysis methods within sociocultural frameworks, we are addressing the following research questions:
1. What epistemic practices are engaged by a group of engineering students completing an engineering task? How are these practices influenced by:
• Instructional design (e.g.: physical or virtual mode, inclusion of a hybrid day)
• Student exposure to disciplinary content
• A visually enhanced virtual laboratory with a 3D environment
2. How do students use epistemic practices in support of identifying and filling gaps as they complete an engineering laboratory? How is this process influenced by:
• Instructional design (e.g.: physical or virtual mode, inclusion of a hybrid day)
• Student exposure to disciplinary content
• A visually enhanced virtual laboratory with a 3D environment
While this study focuses on a specific laboratory topic within environmental engineering, the research seeks to provide transferable knowledge that can be applied in other STEM disciplines that employ laboratory activities.

Authored by
Dr. Jeffrey A Nason (Oregon State University), Samuel Gavitte (Tufts University), Sarah Simmons (Tufts University), and Dr. Milo Koretsky (Tufts University)

This poster will report on the progress made in the second (implementation) phase of a project funded through the NSF Research Initiation in Engineering Formation (RIEF) program. The project is focused on students’ problem-solving skill acquisition in a sophomore level engineering mechanics course (statics) with emphasis on building their skills related to problem abstraction. The first phase of the project involved planning and development of course materials and research studies. The second phase of the study involves teaching the course using instructional approaches that allow for students to practice developing problem abstraction skills through physical models and group problem solving. This poster will provide a summary of lessons learned in the implementation phase of the project, specifically the use of physical models, shared group explanations of problem framing and solutions, homework problems, test questions, reflection prompts and problem-solving assessment techniques.

Instructional approaches in this course were designed to encourage cooperative learning. Students were organized into teams by the instructor primarily based on compatibility of students’ schedules. Teams began working together by collaboratively developing team contracts outlining roles and expectations. Teams worked together in class on problems and outside of class on homework problems. In-class problems often included analysis and manipulation of physical models to aid in the development of problem abstraction skills. Groups were also responsible for reporting out to the class on their homework solutions.

Students’ problem solving skills were assessed using an established rubric that gives students feedback on how well they completed various steps in the problem solving process, including developing a problem statement, representing the problem with a free body diagram, organization of the information provided, use of equations and calculations, explanations of solution and checking for accuracy. Students were also prompted to rate their confidence in their knowledge needed to complete the problem, the amount of effort they put into the problem, their level of frustration, and their confidence in being able to solve a similar problem in the future.

Indicators of student learning and the success of instructional approaches used in the course include observations about student engagement in the course activities, student performance on homework problems and tests, students’ self-reported confidence in their knowledge and skills, and how well teams are functioning in the team-based approach to problem solving using an established teamwork survey (ITP Metrics).

Preliminary results show student engagement is as anticipated: students are explaining their homework problem solutions to peers, working on teams on homework problem sets, manipulating the physical models (with guidance) in class. All students completed team contracts and engaged with their teams effectively to submit assignments. Initial results from graded homework problems indicate that students are feeling confident in their knowledge to complete the problems and in their ability to solve similar problems in the future. Challenges to implementing these instructional approaches include timing of class activities, specifically the amount of time that students took to work with the physical models, and the time involved with developing class activities.

Authored by
Dr. Nigel Berkeley Kaye (Clemson University), Dr. Lisa Benson (Clemson University), Evan Taylor (Clemson University), and Makayla Headley (Clemson University)

This paper introduces a work-in- progress of our recent project in offering a chip camp to local high school students, which was funded by NSF SFS through a supplemental grant. The camp was held during the fall break of the local student district, making it convenient for high school students to attend. The camp introduces the full lifecycle of semiconductor chip design and microfabrication with short lectures, hands-on exercises, demos and videos. We also offer a tour to a class 100/1000 cleanroom facility at the Micro/Nano Technology Center. Student survey results show that the camp has increased students’ interest in studying and pursuing career in semiconductor or related field.

Authored by
Dr. Wei Zhang (University of Louisville)

The Scholarships to Accelerate Engineering Leadership and Identity in Graduate Students (ACCEL) program launched in Fall 2022. This paper presents the outcomes of the first two years of the Accelerated Engineering Leadership (AccEL) program. The inception of the AccEL program responds to projections by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicating a nearly 17% growth in employment for master’s-level occupations from 2016 to 2026, marking the highest growth rate across all education levels [1]. Among the disciplines experiencing the most significant growth in master’s degree awards, engineering is ranked fourth [1]. Despite intentions to pursue further education, the realities of full-time employment and the extended duration required to complete a degree part-time often deter these students from achieving their educational aspirations. Literature indicates that students who continue in engineering careers typically demonstrate high levels of self-efficacy and identify strongly with the engineering community [1,2]. Although research on self-efficacy and engineering identity has expanded, it predominantly focuses on the initial college experience [3,4]. Limited research exists on self-efficacy and engineering identity among students persisting in engineering education and into their professional careers [4,5]. This study aims to identify programming that will lead to more students staying to complete their Master’s degree as well as programming that prepares the MS students for the workforce or doctoral programs.

Authored by
Prof. Tracie Ferreira (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth) and Shakhnoza Kayumova (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth)

Texas State University received an NSF S-STEM award to support two cohorts of talented, low-income engineering majors, with the first cohort starting their freshman year in Fall 2024. In addition to the scholarships awarded, this program aims to increase students’ engineering design self-efficacy, engineering identity, and improve persistence to graduation. The program includes unique strategies for achieving these goals, emphasizing mentoring and building a sense of community among participants. The SEED scholars were paired with a faculty mentor in their engineering major prior to their arrival on campus for their freshman year. This early contact was intended to open lines of communication with a faculty member, so the students felt they had a trustworthy source of information from someone who cared about them. As Texas State University has a high number of first-generation college students, there was an expectation that this program would likely attract a fair number of first-generation students. Without another family member’s experience about how to be a college student, having this faculty mentor gave these students a person who could help them answer questions and navigate the process leading to their first semester on campus. For instance, mentors were able to talk with students about dorm selection, mathematics course placement (including strategies for placing into a higher-level mathematics course), and what to expect in their engineering coursework. Student participation in an Engineering Living Learning Community (LLC) is another unique program feature to enhance community among the SEED scholars. A general description of the program and preliminary results from the students’ self-reported sense of belonging in engineering, engineering design self-efficacy, and engineering identity are presented in this paper.

Authored by
Dr. Kimberly Grau Talley P.E. (Texas State University), Dr. Karim Heinz Muci-Kuchler (Texas State University), Dr. Damian Valles (Texas State University), Felipe Gutierrez (Texas State University), and Dr. Jitendra S. Tate (Texas State University)

With the growing demand for engineers, there is a need to recruit high-achieving economically disadvantaged school students who may not consider attending a 4-year university and to facilitate their success. Our SSTEM (NSF 22-527) Award# 2221623 award looks to identify and recruit high-achieving low-income students who show an interest in the advanced manufacturing industry and facilitate academic success using Tonso’s socialization theory of engineering identity development. We have also found that a foundational common first year seminar course combined with peer mentoring has become powerful tools in helping to enhance engineering identity.
Our recruitment strategy is to engage and recruit through local high school teachers. To assess high achievement, emphasis was placed on the teacher’s recommendations. This successful recruitment model was expanded with additional schools and teachers, which has resulted in a higher number of strong candidates for future cohorts.
SSTEM students meet initially in a common first-year program and continued to meet regularly on and off campus. Students had connections with industry partners in the spring 2024, with all students engaged in co-ops over the summer.
After the first year, Cohort 1 students (n=6) had 100% retention, compared to a college first-year retention average of 64.8%, with an average cumulative GPA of 3.57 compared with the college average GPA of 2.76.
Through group activities, Cohort 1 students have developed into a cohesive group. Cohort 1 students were included as part of the interviews and final selection of Cohort 2 and provided valuable input. Participation in the Cohort 2 selection process improved Cohort engagement with the SSTEM program activities. Cohort 2 selected Cohort 1 students to peer mentor. These connections proved important in forming a connection to the SSTEM program and reinforcing their engineering identities.
The limited data from the spring survey of Cohort 1’s perception of their SSTEM experience shows that the cohort feels a connection to their careers, and while they have an understanding of future difficulties, they have confidence that they will persist.

The key findings from our initial evaluation of the SSTEM program are that involving high school teachers in the selection process has been critical for the recruiting of appropriate candidates. In addition, involving the current SSTEM scholars in the selection process of future cohorts has helped to develop a strong sense of connection between students which has enforced their peer-mentoring relationships. We anticipate that this will help to enhance their connections to the SSTEM program, engineering identity, and retention.

Authored by
Dr. Gary Brooking (Wichita State University), Mrs. Samantha Corcoran (Wichita State University), and Dr. Jacob Charles Mendez (Wichita State University)

This S-STEM project addresses the national need for a well-educated engineering and computing workforce by supporting the retention and graduation of low-income students with demonstrated financial need and strong academic potential. The project focuses on creating pathways that allow students to progress from an associate's and bachelor's degree (at the regional campus) in technology to a bachelor's and possibly even a master's degree in engineering and computing at the main campus. This has been achieved by creating curricular pathways and providing infrastructure and support to encourage higher degree attainment by participating students while reducing graduation time. Over six years, this project aims to provide scholarships to 132 full-time students pursuing Associate, Bachelor's, and Master's degrees in Engineering, Computer Science, and related fields. So far, through this project, three cohorts of students have been recruited through a holistic review process, with recruitment strategies involving high school visits, outreach events, and collaborations with community colleges. As of Fall 2024, 45 students have been funded, with $256,125 in scholarships awarded. The diverse body of S-STEM scholars includes ~27% female, 11% African American/Black, 11% Asian, and ~7% Hispanic students. So far, ten students have graduated with a bachelor's degree who started with an associate's degree, and one student who started with an associate degree has completed a master's program. This supporting paper associated with the poster highlights the various aspects of this project, including recruitment strategies, curricular pathway development, cohort building, etc. We anticipate that this project will generate data on recruiting and retaining low-income, academically talented students, with findings related to fostering community and identity among scholarship recipients through mentoring and peer support, promoting excellent retention and workforce development.

Authored by
Dr. Kumar Vikram Singh (Miami University) and Dr. Fazeel Khan (Miami University)

There is a growing need to train a diverse range of students in engineering disciplines and a growing demand for a skilled workforce with graduate degrees (Pearson et al., 2022; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2019; National Science Foundation, 1996). A team of specialists in engineering and organizational systems worked together on a grant sponsored by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) program to explore how evidence-based strategies used successfully at the undergraduate level might improve the recruitment, retention, and outcomes of graduate programs. In this study, we interviewed a sample of the stakeholders who support low-income, first-generation, and/or rural graduate engineering students, to gain insight into the barriers they face in their efforts. We used a thematic analysis of transcribed interviews to draw conclusions. We found seven themes describing the facilitators and seven themes describing the barriers that stakeholders face in supporting these students. Our findings have implications for researchers who would investigate and implement future organizational support systems as well as for the leaders who would design and implement an array of interventions as part of an organizational support system.

Authored by
Dr. Lisa A. Giacumo (George Mason University), Dr. Arvin Farid (Boise State University), Dr. Mojtaba Sadegh (Boise State University), and Rafael Leonardo da Silva (Boise State University)

The Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) Computer Science, Mathematics, and Physics (CSMP) is an innovative scholarship program that exemplifies collaboration between CCSU, Manchester Community College (MCC), and Tunxis Community College (TCC). This partnership is designed to support academically talented, low-income students, particularly those from underrepresented groups, including women and minorities, by creating a robust educational ecosystem that enhances retention and graduation rates in STEM disciplines [1,2].

At the heart of the CSMP is a well-defined transfer pipeline that facilitates smooth student transitions from MCC and TCC to CCSU [3]. By leveraging the strengths and resources of all three institutions, the program ensures that students receive comprehensive support tailored to their unique educational journeys [4]. Faculty from each institution actively engage with students, providing mentorship and guidance to foster academic success and personal growth. This collaborative mentorship is especially critical for underrepresented students who may encounter barriers in reaching their academic goals [5].

Cohort building and promoting a sense of community among scholars from diverse backgrounds is a fundamental aspect of the CSMP program [6]. By forming a closely-knit learning community, students share experiences, collaborate on projects, and support one another throughout their academic journeys. The program encourages participation in co-curricular activities that unite scholars across institutions, such as research seminars, guest lectures, and industry visits. These experiences not only enhance academic learning but also foster lasting connections among peers and faculty.

The initiative emphasizes peer role modeling [7] by inviting past CSMP scholars, particularly those who transferred from MCC and TCC to CCSU, to share their success stories. These role models inspire current students, illustrating the possibilities that lie ahead and reinforcing the importance of perseverance and academic achievement. The strong connections between the institutions facilitate these interactions, creating a supportive environment where students can learn from each other.

Academic integration is further strengthened through the dedicated involvement of faculty across CCSU, MCC, and TCC. Each CSMP scholar is assigned a faculty mentor who monitors their academic progress, provides personalized support, and connects them with additional resources such as tutoring and counseling services. This collaborative approach ensures that scholars are well-equipped to navigate their coursework and succeed in their chosen fields.

The CSMP also prioritizes career commitment by fostering strong ties with local industries. The partnership among the three institutions allows students to access internships and job placement opportunities. Industry representatives are invited to engage with CSMP scholars, offering insights into potential career paths and creating networking opportunities that can lead to employment. This emphasis on career readiness not only enhances the educational experience but also prepares students for successful transitions into the workforce.

Assessment and evaluation play a crucial role in the CSMP, with ongoing tracking of graduation rates, academic performance, and institutional commitment. This data-driven approach allows the program to identify areas for improvement and adapt strategies to better serve students, ensuring the success of the transfer pipeline and the efficacy of cohort-building initiatives.

Authored by
Dr. Stan Kurkovsky (Central Connecticut State University)

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) has received an NSF S-STEM grant to support low-income, academically talented students. The department offers two undergraduate degree programs: BS in Computer Science and Engineering, and BA in Computer Science (BACS). Eligible Students in both programs can apply for the S-STEM scholarships.

This paper presents our initial study on how participation in co-ops and internships enhances the career readiness of S-STEM students. In the B.S. CSE program, S-STEM students are required to complete three co-op rotations, while those in the BACS program must complete two internships. Many students collaborate with the Engineering Career Office to secure these opportunities. Additionally, S-STEM cohort meetings provide a platform for new students to learn from junior and senior S-STEM students, who share their experiences in finding and participating in co-ops and internships.

Student survey results indicate that for 70% of S-STEM students in our program, the co-op or internship experience has significantly improved their technical knowledge and skills. All students responded agree that the co-op or internship experience has improved their professional skills and job readiness. In addition, 90% of the S-STEM students think working with the co-op and career office is effective or very effective. However, 20% of the S-STEM students believe it is very challenging to find their last co-op or internship, even with the help from the co-op and career office. This is not surprised, considering the recent national job market trend in computer science.

Authored by
Dr. Wei Zhang (University of Louisville)

Currently, participation of key student populations in the engineering workforce is limited, in large part due to student financial need1. Students from historically underrepresented groups (URGs) in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) including Latino/a/x, African Americans, and first-generation college students disproportionately experience financial need2, 3, higher levels of stress and anxiety4, and longer times to graduation5. To compound the problem, URGs, through no fault of their own, face additional challenges that decrease their persistence in engineering including inadequate mentoring and absence of a sense of belonging6. In a step towards addressing these challenges, this project provides financial scholarships to talented, domestic Biomedical and Chemical Engineering (BECE) students with documented financial need at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), to relieve some financial pressure and enable scholars to academically thrive and pursue successful careers as engineers. UTSA enrolls approximately 45% first-generation college-attendees and 49% of undergraduates come from low-income communities. Because of inadequate structural support in students’ educational pathways, an education debt7 prevents us from properly identifying students’ academic talents8. Current systems often identify academic talent with grades or test scores earned, but these methods may fail to acknowledge the lack of opportunity rather than the lack of achievement9. Additionally, traditional methods of instruction are still used in most engineering courses even in high poverty and low-income areas. Scholarships will be coupled with evidence-based, culturally-relevant and culturally-responsive (CR2) curricular and co-curricular activities informed by BCE specific needs. Using the theory of identity development and by implementing student-centered CR2 curriculum in core Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering courses, all BECE students will benefit from curricular and pedagogical course improvements. This paper will present the considerations, challenges, and decisions made in the initial stages of recruitment, selection, faculty CR2 professional development, research progress, and the ways used to leverage university resources to help identify and support students with financial need in the BECE Department. Additionally, the paper will provide lessons learned to inform the ways in which to tailor educational experiences to students with unmet financial need. Lessons learned are intended to inform other institutions and academic departments considering a need-based approach coupled with academic talent to provide financial assistance and new pedagogies in courses to students from low-income backgrounds. NSF #2322770

Authored by
Dr. Karina Ivette Vielma (The University of Texas at San Antonio), Dr. Nehal I. Abu-Lail (The University of Texas at San Antonio ), Dr. Mehdi Shadaram P.E. (The University of Texas at San Antonio), and Prof. Eric M. Brey (The University of Texas at San Antonio)

While other NSF NRT Programs have fully embraced interdisciplinary graduate research (1), our efforts have extended to developing and maintaining strong collaborative bonds across institutional programs. Through a multi-year collaboration between our two NSF NRT grant teams (2), we have developed and implemented a Rapid Research Proposal Design Workshop to support cross-institutional, interdisciplinary research project development. We’ve successfully run this workshop in 2022 (3 participating NRTs) and in 2024 (5 participating NRTs) with graduate students from across computational and physical science/engineering disciplines. Focusing on the purpose and motivations for their research, student teams brainstormed and developed new project ideas, wrote brief proposals, and presented them to the large group. Students were able to make new connections and face new challenges as they visualized how their knowledge and efforts align with other scientists and engineers. One participant reflected “The brainstorming session with people from different backgrounds really broadened my perspective. It was a great opportunity to learn from each other and propose a new idea within just 30 minutes. It was challenging, but the joy of collaboration and the chance to open up new horizons made it a standout experience for me." The workshop framework promotes knowledge sharing, builds participant confidence for finding collaborators, and inspires fruitful collaboration between participants. This paper and poster will emphasize curriculum sharing by providing a step-by-step guide for workshop implementation and scaling in various contexts along with lessons learned from our experience.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DGE-2022040 and DGE-2022023.

1. D. A. Fowler, R. Arroyave, J. Ross, R. Malak, S. Banerjee, “Looking outwards from the “central science”: An interdisciplinary perspective on graduate education in materials chemistry” in Educational and Outreach Projects from the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative Undergraduate and Graduate Education Volume 1, R. Waterman, A. Feig, Eds. (American Chemical Society, 2017), pp. 65–89.

2. A. Slates, S. McAlexander, J. Nolan, J. de Pablo, J. Chen, H. Johnson, L. Brinson (May 2024). Partnerships and collaboration drive innovative graduate training in materials informatics. Science Advances. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adp7446

Authored by
Dr. Shana Lee McAlexander (Duke University), Prof. Catherine Brinson (Duke University), Dr. Richard J. Sheridan (Duke University), Prof. Junhong Chen (University of Chicago), and Jennifer Nolan (University of Chicago)

The rapid expansion of the computing field creates a continuous demand for skilled computing workers. However, there is a dearth of postsecondary students in computing majors and the field lacks the diversity present in the U.S. population. This project, funded by the NSF DUE/HSI Program, developed artificial intelligence (AI) courses and a college credit certificate that will attract a diverse group of community college students to AI, build interest in the field, and start the development of a 4-year degree program. Increasing capacity to attract and train students in AI serves the national interest, and the Hispanic-Serving Community College (HSCC) context makes the learning accessible to more students. This collaboration between the community college, university and industry partners, a non-profit organization, and social scientists attempts to more fully understand how to implement, assess, and expand computing pathways for a diverse group of students, especially in the community college (CC) context.

One of the primary main objectives for the project was to develop and implement an interdisciplinary AI certificate, which was completed at the HSCC. Throughout the first years of the certificate courses offerings, the research team has conducted a phenomenological study using computing identity development theory (Lunn et al, 2021; Rodriguez et al., 2022) and Hispanic-Servingness frameworks (Garcia et. al., 2019) to inform semi-structured interviews with students. The team has interviewed 35 students from a range of majors (i.e., data analytics, cybersecurity, and philosophy) and various background demographics (i.e., race, ethnicity, age, nationality, socio-economic status).

Findings from the early interviews show that students pursued the computing certificate for career advancement or re-skilling purposes. Students applied their new-found computing skills in their small businesses, their jobs, and they expect those skills to assist them in future employment. Finally, throughout the coursework, students were often affirmed in their interests and provided opportunities to build computing identity by demonstrating knowledge from course content. We found that students were recognized by their family, friends, and coworkers as computing people, and these support systems reaffirmed their learning, aspirations, and identities within computing.

In addition to prior work highlighting student motivation for pursuing the certificate and applications of their newly developed skills and computing identities, in the past year of the grant we explored the experiences of men of color, how the HSCC serves its minoritized students, and what institutional practices created barriers to identity development. Our recent findings highlight the need for intentional HSCC servingness and consideration of the various social identities (i.e. Latine, men of color, working full time, low income, post traditionally aged) present in community college students to make the courses accessible and beneficial. The findings are significant in thinking about how the HSCC AI certificate is structured as well as its delivery to students. In addition, our work takes an institutional focus, reinforcing the responsibility for colleges and universities to prepare themselves for minoritized students to improve diversity in the computing field instead of expecting these students to change themselves to fit the institution's historical practices.

Authored by
Dr. Sarah Rodriguez (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), Paul Charles Bigby Jr. (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), and Antarjot Kaur (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)

Student Interest in STEM Careers: An NSF ITEST Project for High Schoolers’ Renewable Energy Technology Engagement

This NSF ITEST project focuses on engaging students in four Chicago public high schools in an afterschool STEM program where they experience hands on activities with renewable energy technologies and related sustainability-tied experiences. Using a micro:bit and kit materials, students code, build, and investigate technologies to explore phenomena like air quality, and the modeling of technologies like electric cars and environmentally responsive homes. The communities in which the schools are set are Communities of Color that have historically been positioned in the public through a deficit lens but have rich cultural and economic assets. Between 10 and 20 students met weekly afterschool during the first year of implementation, which was preceded by a planning year in which teachers provided feedback on activities, and connections to the communities of the schools were developed. Four faculty were involved in the design of the project and activities, and a group of undergraduate STEM majors were also involved in the design and pilot of all activities. Four goals frame this project and research. These are to learn how (1) high school students’ knowledge of STEM careers and STEM domains change across their participation; (2) the high school students improve their interest in STEM career attainment and their self-efficacy for career relevant skills; (3) the undergraduate STEM majors’ views about Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers develop across their participation; and (4) teachers’ knowledge of current STEM domains, skills, and careers change.

To examine the impact of the programming on each stakeholder group, PEAR’s CIS-S and CIS-E surveys, interviews, activity surveys, and workshop surveys were used. Research across the first year of implementation revealed improvements in participating students’ interest in a career in STEM in their future, their curiosity about STEM domains (with the exception of mathematics), and their attitudes toward STEM (Goal 1). While students’ interest in STEM career attainment improved, their self-efficacy for career relevant skills were mixed. The trend is positive overall, but interestingly the 21st century skills tied to work with peers declined (Goal 2). Interviews and CIS-E data demonstrate undergraduate STEM majors’ persistence in valuing the opportunity for access to STEM among high school students. The interactions among the undergraduate students and high school students were specifically valued in influencing some shifts in their views. For example, undergraduate student workers described in interviews how their knowledge about the high school students based on their interactions was informing new ideas about how to better support students (Goal 3). Among the teachers leading the afterschool club, their comfort, confidence, and self-efficacy around STEM and leading STEM activities improved after implementing the first year of the club. Their interest in leading STEM remained constant (Goal 4). This paper and poster will describe the data that informed these findings, descriptions of the activities and stakeholders, and implications for the subsequent years of the program and plans for sustainability.

Authored by
Allison Antink-Meyer (Illinois State University), Dr. Matt Aldeman (Illinois State University), Jeritt Williams (Illinois State University), and Dr. Jin Ho Jo (Affiliation unknown)

Engineering transfer students, particularly those from low-income or underrepresented backgrounds, often face significant challenges as they transition to four-year institutions. These challenges create what is commonly referred to as "transfer shock" and include adapting to different academic expectations, limited financial resources, lack of mentorship, and difficulty building social connections. In response to these issues, the EMPOWER program, a collaboration between UC San Diego, Southwestern College, and Imperial Valley College, was developed to support engineering transfer students through scholarships, mentorship, and high-impact practices aimed at easing their transitions. The program’s design is informed by Schlossberg’s Transition Theory, which emphasizes the situational, personal, and support factors that influence how individuals navigate major life changes [1]. This framework helps the EMPOWER program better understand and address the unique challenges faced by engineering transfer students.
The EMPOWER program, funded through the NSF S-STEM initiative and initially described in [2], assembles cohorts of Pell-eligible engineering transfer students and offers a structured support system, including financial assistance, faculty and alumni mentorship, cross-campus visits, cohort-building social events, and research opportunities. These activities are designed to help students navigate the transitions in, through, and out of their four-year institutions and into engineering careers.
In its third year, the program expanded its cohort of transfer students across all participating institutions and introduced enhanced mentorship activities, including incentives for one-on-one meetings between students and faculty. We also organized a range of professional development opportunities, including two cross-campus events and several workshops focused on career readiness, resume building, and industry engagement. These events provided students with valuable networking and mentorship opportunities while also building their confidence and preparedness for their future careers.
Ongoing program evaluation, including survey data from students, has demonstrated a positive impact of the EMPOWER program on students’ academic success, sense of belonging, and career development. This paper outlines these insights, detailing the design and implementation of the EMPOWER program, sharing results from Year 3, and highlighting future steps to continue supporting these diverse and ambitious students.

Authored by
Prof. Saharnaz Baghdadchi (University of California, San Diego), Dr. Karcher Morris (University of California, San Diego), and Bill Lin (University of California, San Diego)

The S-STEM supported program [program name blinded] started at the [location blinded] as a Track 1 grant in 2018 and continued as a Track 2 grant in 2022. Since its inception, it has supported 124 students over 7 cohorts. [Location blinded] is an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institution (AANAPISI) with a high proportion of racial minority and first-generation college students. The [program name blinded] is multidisciplinary across STEM majors including Mathematics, Environmental Science, Biomedical Sciences, Information Technology, Computer Science and Systems, Computer Engineering and Systems, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Civil Engineering. Program scholars receive full scholarships for their first two years, and partial scholarships for their third and fourth years. Students can participate in a summer bridge precalculus or research experience course, and project-based Introduction to Engineering or Introduction to Research courses in their first year. Individual faculty mentoring, quarterly Success in STEM seminar courses, and an optional on-campus STEM living learning community help scholars form a cohesive community through group mentoring. Our S-STEM program is distinctive in focusing on pre-STEM majors in their first and second years on campus to facilitate the entry into STEM majors, and we provide mentor training for ~30-40 faculty in teaching and mentoring diverse student populations, thus impacting all students in our majors.

Our goal was to evaluate how the program supports retention and academic success of our program scholars, and whether this program helps to close equity gaps for students who identify as low socioeconomic status, underrepresented minorities, women or non-binary, or first generation in college. We compared our program scholars to a comparison group of students who met eligibility requirements but did not participate in the program. Overall, program scholars had higher first year retention, and higher GPAs, particularly for individuals belonging to groups that are historically underrepresented in STEM. Retention was markedly higher for program scholars during the pandemic, suggesting that the program may have been particularly impactful for students as they endured the emotional and financial stresses of the pandemic. Survey and interview responses emphasized the importance of mentoring and access to resources, particularly during the pandemic. In future work, we will use survey and interview data to better understand student experiences and impacts on faculty mentors participating in the program.

Authored by
Erica Cline (Affiliation unknown), Dr. Heather Dillon (University of Washington), Amanda K Sesko (), Emily Cilli-Turner (University of San Diego), Zaher Kmail (Affiliation unknown), Seung-Jin Lee (University of Washington), and Raghavi Sakpal (Affiliation unknown)

The Husky PAWS (Pathways for Academic Wellness and Success) NSF S-STEM program at Michigan Tech was awarded in 2023. Our team reviewed initial applications in Spring 2024 and launched the primer 3-week Husky PAWS Summer Bridge in 2024. The inaugural cohort included 6 students at the 4-year scholarship level and 6 students receiving one-year finishing scholarships. The Husky PAWS S-STEM program is utilizing Yosso’s Cultural Wealth Model [1] to leverage scholar’s cultural wealth assets for their academic success. The overarching program goals are increasing retention and graduation rates of these Pell-eligible scholars to those of non-Pell students.

Centering the Husky PAWS S-STEM scholars as experts in their own lived experience, the Husky PAWS S-STEM program takes a participatory action research (PAR) approach to improving our program. We have included funding for one of the Husky PAWS S-STEM scholars to serve as a PAR co-researcher alongside our project team. At this point, we have identified our first PAR researcher, who is a co-author on this poster and paper.

This paper will highlight progress, and offer key takeaways of the Husky PAWS S-STEM program through its first year. Efforts include developing applicant screening materials, summer bridge metacognition programming, cohort activities to build community throughout the academic year, and our PAR approach to improving these activities for the second project year.

Authored by
Jose Manuel Padilla (Michigan Technological University), Dr. Michelle E Jarvie-Eggart P.E. (Michigan Technological University), Briana C Bettin (Michigan Technological University), Kathryn Laura Hannum (Michigan Technological University), and Dr. Adrienne Minerick (Michigan Technological University)

The goal of the NSF S-STEM funded [Project] is to increase the number of undergraduate students who complete cybersecurity-related degrees, thus cultivating the much-needed cybersecurity experts. The [Project] objectives are: (1) increase the annual enrollment of students in the B.S. and Area of Emphasis (AoE) in Cybersecurity at [University]; (2) provide co-curricular activities and student support services intended to bolster students' academic achievement and career prospects in cybersecurity; (3) establish partnerships with cybersecurity employers from the private and public sector; and (4) explore the impact of the [Project] activities on students' academic success and transition into graduate school or careers in cybersecurity fields.

Thus far, 96 annual scholarships have been awarded to 63 unique students from five cohorts. The [Project] has contributed significantly to the increase of enrollment in Cybersecurity B.S. degree and AoE - from 50 students (US citizens) at the start of the project in spring 2020 to 194 students (US citizens) in fall 2024. The successful recruitment and selection of scholars resulted from a wide range of outreach activities tailored to different student identities, across different academic stages. Over the five cohorts, 35% of new scholars were recruited while they were still in high school, which demonstrates the value of this scholarship for recruiting talented incoming freshmen who specialize in cybersecurity. To date, 20 [Project] scholars have graduated and gotten full-time positions or enrolled in graduate studies.

Overall, the gender diversity of scholarship recipients was greater than that of their peers enrolled in Cybersecurity B.S. and AoE at [University]. Specifically, 24% of the scholarship recipients of Cohorts 1 - 5 together are women compared to 11% among their peers. The percentages of students from underrepresented racial/ethnic backgrounds were similar among scholars and their peers (i.e., 19% versus 21%, respectively).

To aid students' success, the [Project] developed and offered numerous co-curricular activities and support services. These include social events like Award Ceremonies and "Get Together" meetings, which enabled community building. Furthermore, all scholars received faculty mentoring as part of the [Project], most scholars participated in the Cyber[University] student organization, and some scholars were involved in research.

The [Project] has strengthened the existing and created new partnerships with many cybersecurity employers. During eight semesters, prominent cybersecurity experts offered 19 seminars and panels for our students. These events were consistently ranked among the most appreciated activities, allowing students to gain practical knowledge and learn about career opportunities that they otherwise would not have known about. In addition, the partnerships with cybersecurity employers provided scholars with opportunities for internships and full-time employment.

Lastly, the [Project] research and evaluation teams worked together on exploring how [Project] activities affect students' success and on disseminating findings that could be valuable to other institutions.

Authored by
Prof. Katerina Goseva-Popstojanova (West Virginia University), Daniel Mackin Freeman (University of Washington), and Dr. Robin A.M. Hensel (West Virginia University)

In 2023, the four institutions of Kettering University, University of Northern Colorado, University of the Incarnate Word, and Western Carolina University formed the EMERGE cohort (Enabling Meaningful External Research Growth in Emergent Technologies) under the inaugural NSF Enabling Partnerships to Increase Innovation Capacity (EPIIC) program. Each institution in the cohort had its own plans and activities; however, the cohort also had a set of joint activities, and was encouraged under the program to provide mutual support and assistance to each other. In this paper, we set forth the goals for the cohort activities, discuss the success of the year one cohort activities, and indicate what additional benefits the cohort provided that were not planned in the grant proposal. Recommendations are provided for other institutions that may want to form similar cohorts,
under this program or others.

Authored by
Dr. Diane L Peters P.E. (Kettering University), Dr. Michael Frye (University of the Incarnate Word), Dr. Andrew Ritenour (Western Carolina University), and Prof. Isaac Wanasika (University of Northern Colorado)

Targeted Infusion Project: Using Immersive VR Environments to Improve Student Success for Online Students
Overview

In this project, North Carolina A&T State University will implement online, experiential information and electronics technology (IET) courses through virtual reality technology to measure impact on student success, retention, and engagement for postsecondary students from groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM. Metrics will include both quantitative assessments of annual enrollment that track individual demographic groups and qualitative assessments to capture student perceptions of equity and inclusion. Mixed-method assessment will include student perceptions of success correlated to class size to investigate best practices in future scalability. Our investigation will build knowledge with respect to STEM education by evaluating the effectiveness of our three objectives:
1. Enrich online technology course offerings with virtual reality technology to bolster attraction and persistence.
2. Strengthen the online student engagement to increase student knowledge and retention.
3. Investigate relationship between student perceptions of subject proficiency and levels of engagement and learning outcomes in the online VR courses.

Intellectual Merit – Innovation in instruction and curriculum development

The pandemic has provoked a paradigm shift in education towards cyberlearning. As such, this project proposes a strategic initiative that cultivates STEM talent from an under-utilized resource, online students at HBCUs, using an immersive virtual reality platform to foster student success in STEM education. Studying the experiences, challenges, and triumphs of the proposed project will advance future recruiters’ and researchers’ knowledge regarding how virtual reality can offer effective results for improving online STEM education at HBCUs. This project’s intellectual merit is in its use of cutting-edge strategies aimed at increasing the number of students in technology programs at HBCUs and other IHE, thereby promoting innovation leading to economic growth while relieving the forecast US shortage of skilled STEM professionals.

Broader Impacts
The project will impact the society by (1) diversifying the technology workforce, (2) supporting traditionally marginalized groups in STEM education, (3) enhancing online infrastructure for research and education and (4) improving faculty expertise and competitiveness. Understanding and addressing the fundamental barriers that under-utilized students’ groups face will contribute to decreasing the educational achievement gaps among US populations. This project will thus broaden immediate participation by attracting and guiding technologists successfully into the STEM workforce and increase future participation in the STEM workforce via the lessons learned from this project.

Authored by
Dr. Evelyn Sowells-Boone (North Carolina A&T State University), Ajeka Momoh Friday (North Carolina A&T State University), and Pal Dave (North Carolina A&T State University)

The purpose of this paper and poster is to summarize results of a workshop grant funded by the NSF S-STEM program. During 2022-2024, the project team developed, implemented, and refined capacity-building virtual workshops for three cohorts of participants to gather and effectively understand and use institutional data as they develop their S-STEM proposals. The workshops focused on the institutional data components of the S-STEM program, as this is an area that the project team saw as a challenging and undervalued aspect, and thus were not intended as comprehensive S-STEM proposal development.

The virtual workshop series addresses challenges from both project development and practical perspectives, with the goal of enhancing participants’ ability to effectively use institutional data in their S-STEM proposals. The intended outcomes for the workshop participants include: 1) articulating awareness of how institutional data can be used to inform their project plans and S-STEM program goals; 2) developing a plan for using institutional student data in project development, including identifying relevant questions that the student data can help answer while also addressing the S-STEM solicitation requirements; and 3) drafting a plan for requesting student data from their Institutional Research and Financial Aid offices. Details of the workshop design and implementation are described in Chan Hilton (2024).

Each workshop series included three virtual sessions with the goal of enhancing the participants’ recognition of the value of institutional data to their S-STEM project goals and increase their confidence to gather and use this student data. A total of 177 participants from diverse backgrounds and institution types were recruited to three workshop cohorts (winter 2022, 2023, and 2024), including faculty and administrators with limited or no S-STEM experience. This paper summarizes the institutional contexts and prior NSF S-STEM experience of the workshop participants. It also summarizes the results of evaluation surveys implemented each spring after each workshop series.

Authored by
Dr. Amy B Chan Hilton (University of Southern Indiana) and Dr. John Krupczak Jr (Hope College)

Despite increasing diversity across many institutions in the U.S., STEM departments remain disproportionately homogenous (O’Meara et al., 2019). While there have been advances in the representation of various demographics within higher education, the underrepresentation of Latine faculty in STEM positions persists (Bensimon et al., 2019). The NSF-funded UC Hiring Interventions for Representation and Equity (HIRE) Alliance addresses this issue by connecting four University of California campuses to examine current hiring practices in search committees focused on hiring teaching-focused faculty (TFF). The initiative also explores TFF experiences that lead to and shape their current roles in the professoriate. To ensure success, we have established a feedback loop among all teams involved in the grant. Additionally, we employ external evaluation methods to assess the effectiveness of our interventions in improving the hiring process for future Latine TFFs and supporting both current and future individuals in their TFF roles within STEM departments across the alliance campuses.

The UC-HIRE Alliance not only aims to increase Latine faculty representation in STEM departments but also to create a sustainable framework that higher education institutions can utilize to navigate the process of inclusive hiring. We have two main teams in our alliance: the faculty fellows team and the research team. Our faculty fellows team has collected data from multiple iterations of the literature-informed workshop interventions held in our Faculty Fellows Learning Communities (FFLCs). These communities comprise faculty who are currently or recently have been on teaching-focused faculty hiring committees. The goal is to empower our Faculty Fellows to become agents of change in their own search committees. Additionally, the UC HIRE Alliance seeks to provide support to both current and future TFFs by illuminating the stories of those who have successfully navigated this career path. Through 19 qualitative interviews with current Latine TFFs across the United States, our research team has taken inductive and deductive approaches to analyze the data. By sharing these stories, our alliance advocates for greater recognition of the vital contributions these faculty make in STEM departments.

There are two primary findings and products that have emerged from this project. First, in conjunction with the FFLCs, we have created a standardized approach to an inclusive TFF search. We developed four rubrics that can be utilized as guidelines for search committees to examine multiple hiring materials, including the job advertisement as well as the teaching statement, research statement, and diversity, equity and inclusion statement using existing literature and feedback from our FFLCs. Second, our work dedicated to examining TFF’s pathways to the professoriate has revealed the multiple forms of resources that these faculty leveraged to navigate the higher education space. We also highlight the often overlooked labor and additional service commitments that these Latine TFFs undertake at their institutions. Furthermore, we found that TFFs assume mentorship roles at multiple levels and endure cultural taxation. Our findings suggest that TFFs play a pivotal role in the overall success of STEM departments, effectively supporting all students as a whole, and Latine students in particular.

Authored by
Eva Fuentes-Lopez (University of California, San Diego), Mr. Joseph Leon Henry (University of California, Irvine), Prof. Natascha Trellinger Buswell (University of California, Irvine), Alegra Eroy-Reveles (University of California, Santa Cruz), Kameryn Denaro (Affiliation unknown), Erik Arevalo (Affiliation unknown), Stanley M. Lo (University of California, San Diego), and Mike Wilton (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Michigan Technological University (MTU) and Northern Michigan University (NMU) have partnered with support from the National Science Foundation to prepare middle school science teachers to become leaders in STEM education. Through this collaboration, the project will recruit, train, and retain high-quality STEM teacher leaders that can serve as effective mentors and address a systemic shortage of science teachers in the state of Michigan.

The Master Teachers Program (MTP) aims to recruit 30 experienced and effective science teachers to lead efforts to improve science education in grades 5-9 in diverse, high-need schools throughout Michigan. We anticipate 20 teachers will enter the program as master's degree holders and 10 teachers will earn a Master's in Educational Instruction Pedagogy, jointly developed and administered by MTU and NMU. The degree will be offered entirely online, making it accessible to teachers throughout Michigan.

Teacher involvement in the project is supported by annual participant stipends. Master's degree holders will receive a $10,000 stipend annually for 5 years in return for completing all program requirements. Bachelor’s degree holders will earn a master’s degree, with tuition completely covered by the grant. Bachelor's degree holders will receive a $10,000 stipend upon completion of the 2-year master's degree program and additional $10,000 stipends each year for 4 subsequent years.

Teacher participants will receive training in participatory action (PAR) research and develop a PAR research proposal for their STEM classrooms. Teachers will be mentored through the completion of PAR research projects and disseminating results in a conference presentation. We currently have full enrollment to commence both cohorts of teachers. This paper, and associated poster, will detail the project’s progress to date.

Authored by
Dr. Michelle E Jarvie-Eggart P.E. (Michigan Technological University), Stephanie Tubman (Michigan Technological University), Dr. Luke Bowman (Michigan Technological University), Marianne Semones (Affiliation unknown), Joseph Lubig (Northern Michigan University), Christi Underwood Edge (Northern Michigan University), Dr. Cody T Williams (Western Michigan University), and Dr. Jacqueline E. Huntoon (Michigan Technological University)

This work in progress identifies student levels of knowledge achieved during a Peer-Led Study Group (PLSG) intervention within a thermodynamics course at the institution. Following a study of student cognitive level of processing, this study continues an observational study using Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy as a methodological basis [1]. Specifically, this work aims to answer 1) What levels of knowledge are observed within question-prompted student discussions in PLSGs? and 2) To what extent do these knowledge levels observed impact student pass-rates and/or final grades?

Using a recently developed observational protocol, student question-prompted discussions were organized using Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy as a basis [1]. The Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy model is a tool for identifying student expected applications and understanding of course content through the knowledge and cognitive levels, respectively [2, 3]. Specifically, the knowledge dimension is organized into factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive levels; these correspond to recalling basic information, connecting concepts, solving using course techniques and methodologies, and self-awareness of cognition, respectively [2]. Student-prompted discussions were recorded weekly during 20-minute observation periods occurring within 50-minute recitations over a 13-week course. The eight selected groups were observed for an average of 10 weeks. All groups within the course were organized primarily by Beginning of Term (BoT) GPA, taking demographics such as race, ethnicity, and gender differences into account as a secondary factor. In addition, First-Time Full-Time (FTFT) and Transfer (TRN) student admission statuses were used as a point of group organization where applicable. The eight observed groups were selected based on the available student population enrolled in the course and the demographics of each group. In the cognitive processing level research, students question-prompted discussions were categorized based on 1-3 associated verbs [1]. These verbs corresponded to the remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create levels of the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy model [2].

Results from the study show a range of cognitive processing was observed. The most common level observed was the factual level of the knowledge dimension, with the “state” verb as the most utilized. However, there are several instances of student question-prompted discussions reaching as high as the procedural level of the knowledge dimension. Of the 1,300 question-prompted discussions recorded, the most prevalent cognitive levels observed were remember and understand, which made up ~38% and ~15% of discussions, respectively. Of the remember level, the factual knowledge level makes up a majority of the data, with procedural knowledge frequently being discussed from the understand level.

Authored by
Ms. Sarah M Johnston (Arizona State University), Ms. Thien Ngoc Y Ta (Affiliation unknown), Dr. Ryan James Milcarek (Arizona State University), Dr. Samantha Ruth Brunhaver (Arizona State University, Polytechnic Campus), Dr. Karl A Smith (University of Minnesota - Twin Cities), and Dr. Gary Lichtenstein (Arizona State University)

This work-in-progress paper explores the integration and centering of the lived experiences of low-income students into an existing Strengths-Based Approach in an NSF scholarship and mentoring program. Our current NSF S-STEM award ENGAGE (Engineering Neighbors: Gaining Access, Growing Engineers) (NSF DUE 1834128, 1834154) is a partnership between a public, primarily undergraduate, highly-selective, B.S.-granting institution in California and two California Community Colleges designed to support low-income, academically talented engineering and computer science students. In ENGAGE, we utilize an assets-based framework in student, mentor, and project team training, professional development workshops, and in program design and implementation. Our Strengths-Based Approach (SBA) utilizes Gallup’s Clifton Strengths assessment to identify the assets that students bring to their educational journeys. However, many implementations of assets-based approaches (including Gallup) do not attend to the varied lived experiences of students, which can shape student development and utilization of their strengths. For example, how has the experience of being a low-income student contributed to or possibly hindered ENGAGE student development and utilization of their strengths? Financial instability may impact students' ability to fully engage with strengths-based development. In our initial development and implementation of SBA, mentors and mentees engaged in training activities focused on exploring differences in lived experiences related to a wide variety of identities/factors designed to encourage participants to critically examine their pathways and positionality in higher education. However, we did not focus on what the students in our program had in common: the lived experience of being low-income in the Central Coast of California. Thus, moving forward in the collaboration, we are redeveloping our SBA to center attention to the experience of being a low-income student in one of the most expensive parts of the country and plan to start our strengths-based work with new students with this focus.

Authored by
Dr. Jane L. Lehr (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo), Dr. Daniel Almeida (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo), Prof. Dominic J Dal Bello (Allan Hancock College), Eva Schiorring (STEMEVAL), Dr. Fred W DePiero (Hancock College), Dr. Lizabeth L Thompson P.E. (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo), Stephen R. Beard (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo), Christine L Reed (Allan Hancock College), and Tina Cheuk (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo)

This works-in-progress poster presents early project data on the impact of a cohort-based mentoring approach to supporting S-STEM scholars. cohort-based curricula, and peer mentoring are all strategies used to establish and increase students’ sense of belonging in engineering [20], [21]. Sense-of-belonging is counter to the experience of MMUs, whose enculturation into STEM communities is often characterized by ostracization, exclusion, and microaggression. Our S-STEM approach seeks to increase students’ sense of belonging, self-efficacy, integration into their academic community, and development
of an engineering and computer science identity. These are important for the retention of MMU students both in academic programs and in the profession [22]–[28]. It is important that students believe in their own potential as engineers and computer scientists and feel welcomed into a community of scholars [4], [29], [53].

In this works-in-progress poster, we share year one retention and sense-of-belonging data, which shows that students enrolled in the S-STEM program have an overwhelmingly positive identification with their S-STEM cohort. Additionally, we offer a preliminary analysis of qualitative reflections and narratives from students, which share students’ ongoing commitment to social impact projects as well as the impact of both their cohort and mentoring support systems.

Authored by
Dr. Kristen Moore (University at Buffalo, The State University of New York) and Dr. Rajan Batta (University at Buffalo, The State University of New York)

Drawing on organizational climate literature and intersectionality theory, this 4-year mixed methods project aims to use a student-centered approach to shed light on the specific organizational climates present in doctoral engineering department by engaging with students from diverse groups. This project adopts an explicitly intersectional approach to the meaning and relevance of students belonging to multiple social categories, including gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation, considered within the context of engineering doctoral education. We aim to answer three research questions: 1. What specific climates are present in doctoral engineering departments? 2. How do organizational climate perceptions differ by intersecting social categories? 3. How do organizational climate perceptions relate to organizational commitment to degree completion?

Authored by
Dr. Julie L. Aldridge (The Ohio State University), Nicole M. Else-Quest (University of California, Los Angeles ), Dr. So Yoon Yoon (University of Cincinnati), and Dr. Joe Roy (American Society for Engineering Education)

This poster is focused on an S-STEM Computer Science and Information Systems (CSIS) Program that is held in a partnership between three institutions, all located in the Southeastern U.S. Institution 1 is a public university, Institution 2 and Institution 3 are public community colleges, and offer a range of credentials, including certificates, associates, and bachelors degrees. This program aims to provide 170+ scholarships to students pursuing CSIS degrees who have demonstrated financial need as defined by each of the participating institutions. In addition to the financial award of the scholarship, the S-STEM program provides co-curricular and professional development activities to promote the computing field and connect students with professionals in their desired fields of study. With these activities and holistic support of the students, the program aims to positively contribute to the recruitment, retention, and graduation of students from diverse backgrounds, and enhance computing education to implement effective academic and career pathways for CSIS.

In the first years of the program, the three institutions have coordinated and implemented a variety of activities, including the disbursement of scholarships. They have hosted coding camps for S-STEM students which concluded with awarding students with a digital badge indicating completion of the camp activities. Additionally, the research co-PI leading the computing identity study met with the program directors and coordinators to better understand the program components and speak with CSIS students about the study. Finally, the participating institutions also connected with K-12 partners to recruit students for the scholarship program and build better relationships with the partners.

The research team conducted phenomenologically-informed interviews with a semi-structured protocol to ask participants about their educational background, computing identity formation and components (interest, recognition, competence/performance, and sense of belonging), and their financial need and employment situation. In the first round of data collection, we had five interview participants -- two students from institution 1, two students from institution 2, and one student from institution 3. All students interviewed thus far were first-generation college students, had earned at least 60 academic course credits by the time of the interview, and worked at some point throughout the calendar-year. Within this initial sample of interview participants, the research team explored the tensions between computing identity development and work for program participants. The preliminary findings described three tensions: tension between work hours and S-STEM program activities, the tension between family financial responsibilities and S-STEM program activities, and the tension between seeking out internship opportunities and the short-term, although incredibly important, need for work to support their families and educational expenses. As the research team continues to collect data in the coming semesters for the CSIS S-STEM program, we hope to better understand how students who work are balancing their participation in the S-STEM program and developing their computing identities through the coursework, program activities, and additional professional development opportunities.

Authored by
Dr. Sarah Rodriguez (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), Taylor Johnson (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), and Amy Hays (East Texas A&M University)

The CC-PRIME project is a regional collaborative effort between Santa Barbara City College (SBCC) and the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) to provide educational pathways in the micro nano technology sector for community college students. This project is funded through the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program in the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). It includes several local industry partners, ranging from small to medium-sized companies, providing input through the project’s Industry Advisory Board into the local workforce needs in the field and associated training components. The project enables community college students to utilize advanced cleanroom facilities at UCSB with the goal to provide them training and experiences in semiconductor manufacturing. Additional project goals are to create a student educational pathway to acquire semiconductor manufacturing jobs in the region, and to build industry visibility in the community.
In the first two years of the project, existing training modules from the Support Center for Microsystems Education (SCME) have been adapted to meet local industry needs and develop an initial cleanroom training bootcamp. Project staff and faculty were initially trained on the SCME curriculum, which then was adapted and implemented on site at UCSB. Initial training included community college faculty and existing industry employees for upskilling purposes. Subsequent training bootcamps exposed community college students to work inside one of the cleanroom facilities at UCSB. With input from local industry partners and IAB members, additional training and modules are in development to further build-out corresponding educational opportunities for community college students and to broaden the initial cleanroom training.
This poster will summarize the project activities, results, challenges, and lessons learned from the first two years of the CC-PRIME project.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 2100405. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Authored by
Dr. Jens-Uwe Kuhn (Santa Barbara City College)

This EEC CAREER research project, now in its fourth year, has made significant strides in understanding how restrictive policies and institutional practices at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) impact the engineering trajectories of Latino/a/x students. Guided by Chicana Feminist Epistemologies, the project investigates the lived experiences of Latino/a/x engineering students through a qualitative approach that centers on testimonios, pláticas, and focus groups. These data sources have been invaluable for revealing the systemic barriers that disproportionately affect Latino/a/x students’ ability to thrive and persist in engineering.

One of the primary goals of the project has been to examine how conocimiento—or the process of developing critical awareness and knowledge from lived experiences—emerges for Latino/a/x students as they navigate complex educational pathways. The iterative process of data collection and analysis has highlighted the ways in which students are frequently confronted with exclusionary policies and practices, such as limited access to financial support, inflexible academic pathways, and inadequate mentorship. Such policies often function to restrict students’ ability to fully engage with and benefit from the educational opportunities at HSIs, creating a disconnect between the promise of “servingness” and the reality of students’ experiences. As a result, Latino/a/x students often find themselves in a constant state of navigating, resisting, and re-negotiating their place within engineering programs.

The findings suggest that to genuinely embrace the concept of “servingness” at HSIs, particularly in engineering programs, there must be an intentional effort to identify and reform these restrictive policies that undermine students' academic and professional growth. The data reveal that while many HSIs position themselves as inclusive spaces for Latinx students, institutional policies frequently perpetuate inequities by failing to address students’ unique socio-cultural and academic needs. This study also emphasizes that the current framing of “serving” at many HSIs is limited by a lack of understanding of how intersecting identities (e.g., ethnicity, gender, first-generation status) shape students’ experiences. Consequently, institutional support structures must be redesigned to center the voices, needs, and conocimiento of Latino/a/x students to cultivate truly inclusive engineering pathways.

Moreover, this research contributes to the broader discourse on equity and inclusion by showcasing how culturally responsive frameworks, such as Chicana Feminist Epistemologies, can serve as powerful tools for analyzing the experiences of marginalized groups in STEM. The testimonios collected thus far not only document the barriers faced by Latino/a/x engineering students but also illuminate their resilience, agency, and strategies for success in the face of adversity. The focus groups have provided additional layers of insight into how these students build community, resist deficit narratives, and work collectively to create spaces of belonging within engineering.

Authored by
Dr. Joel Alejandro Mejia (University of Cincinnati)

Civil engineers will play a central role in building the communities of the future, but to do so the modern civil engineer needs better training in computing and data science in order for these technologies to be utilized effectively and equitably. Rethinking civil engineering curriculum is a daunting problem, due to complexities with professional needs, accreditation, and instructor training. Civil engineers also tend not to have the extensive programming skills necessary to directly implement materials from computer science courses. Rather than replace curriculum, educators need to develop content that can be integrated into existing courses, effectively teaching data science in parallel with fundamental engineering concepts, and in a manner that is geared towards the skillsets of civil engineering students. Just as importantly, the data science topics must be contextualized for civil engineering applications to foster concept retention. The primary objective of this ongoing NSF project is to create "plug-and-play" educational modules that meet this need, implement and evaluate them, and share them openly. A pilot implementation of these modules revealed that not only did 80% of participants feel that the modules improved their knowledge of data science, but that an even larger percentage indicated that the modules also improved their knowledge of the related engineering fundamentals used to contextualize the modules.

Authored by
Prof. David Lattanzi (George Mason University)

The S-STEM funded RISE Scholars Program examines the effects of engaging undergraduate students in a structured practice of science communication on their academic performance, persistence, and graduation in a STEM field. The program includes a weeklong summer bridge experience intended to develop incoming students’ curiosity, introduce science communication, and build community within the cohort; two STEM communication courses (on public speaking and science writing); and a variety of co-curricular activities with STEM and communication themes.

This paper presents preliminary results on 4-year graduation outcomes. Data on academic performance and progress, as well as incoming student characteristics, were obtained from university records for the first two cohorts of fourteen RISE Scholars and for a control group of all 287 other students who entered the university in a STEM major in Fall 2019.

All but one RISE Scholar graduated within four years, each in the STEM major they started in. In contrast, only 56% of the control group graduated from the university in four years (p = .005), 43% in a STEM major (p = .0002), and 37% in the major they started in (p < .0001). The RISE Scholars’ mean GPA at graduation (or completion of fourth year, for one continuing student) was 3.39, compared to a mean GPA of 2.87 for the control group (p = .025).

To determine whether the superior outcomes attained by the RISE Scholars can be attributed to their participation in the program, and not solely to their academic talent (a criterion for any S-STEM program participant), linear and logistic regression analyses were performed to predict final cumulative GPA and four-year graduation in STEM, respectively, while controlling for factors related to student preparation (e.g., high school GPA, math SAT score), identity (e.g., gender, race and ethnicity), and environmental characteristics (e.g., participation in tutoring and other support programs).

The results suggest that participation in the RISE program independently accounts for 0.25 points of the difference in final cumulative GPA (p = .017). More strikingly, the logistic regression model showed that RISE participation increased the odds of graduating in a STEM major in four years by nearly 14 times (p = .0015). RISE participation was the third-strongest predictor in the model, after high school GPA and initial math course placement. We conclude that the RISE Scholars Program has been highly effective in promoting student persistence and graduation.

Authored by
Dr. William John Palm IV P.E. (Roger Williams University)

This project, funded by the National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education (NSF ATE) program, provides a mentoring program for community colleges teams submitting NSF ATE proposals. The project aligns with the NSF ATE program objective to provide leadership opportunities for faculty at two-year institutions and supports the national priority of educating the skilled technical workforce for the industries that keep the United States globally competitive. The key outcome of this project is an increase in the number of competitive NSF ATE proposals submitted by community college faculty.

Specific activities of the project include virtual mentoring and webinars as well as a virtual 2.5-day workshop where two-year faculty who are teaching technician education learn the strategies and NSF requirements for writing and submitting competitive proposals. Although this project was developed with an in-person workshop as one of its components, it was modified to a virtual workshop during the pandemic. Following the pandemic, the project leadership team decided to keep the workshop in a virtual format to accommodate potential participants who may face barriers to travel. Through these activities, participants learn strategies for institutional investment in pursuit of NSF ATE program grant funding and increase project team expertise in the NSF ATE proposal writing process. Participants also learn to address many of challenges faced by community college faculty in preparing and submitting NSF grant proposals. For community colleges awarded NSF ATE grants, this project results in improved student access to education and acquisition of skills needed to enter the workforce as STEM graduates whose contributions will advance the nation’s economic goals for meeting emerging workforce needs.

The project has served four annual cohorts from 2021 – 2024 with a total of 56 teams participating. Out of those teams, 38 submitted proposals. In 2024 a pre-application mentoring component was added to the project. Teams interested in applying to the 2024 cohort were able to work with a mentor for up to ten hours to develop a one-page project summary demonstrating workforce needs that would justify funding for the project and industry partnerships that have been established. Eight teams participated in pre-application mentoring, six of those teams applied to the regular cohort, and four of those teams submitted NSF ATE proposals.

Authored by
Dr. Karen Wosczyna-Birch (CT College of Technology)

This National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education (NSF ATE) National Center aims to address the need for a highly skilled advanced manufacturing technician workforce at the two-year college level through its network of advanced manufacturing stakeholders. It is imperative that educators are up to date on current and future skills needed in the manufacturing workforce when educating that future workforce. The Center partners with two NSF ATE funded projects to offer hands-on professional development opportunities for high school and community college educators from across the United States.

The virtual Summer Teacher Workshop for high school and community college educators provides lessons on both technology skills and professional skills for participants to implement in their own classrooms. Curriculum for the workshop is updated annually to address workforce needs trends in a timely manner. The curriculum was initially developed for a program for high school students and later incorporated into a program for community college students. With student feedback being positive, instructors for these programs developed a workshop to disseminate their curriculum through the Summer Teacher Workshop. The format has remained virtual for four years to accommodate educators from across the nation who have barriers to participating in activities that require travel such as funding and scheduling conflicts. For professional skills lessons, breakout rooms are used for activities that demonstrate teamwork. For technology skills, supplies are shipped to participates ahead of the workshop for use with instructors in real-time during the workshop.

The second professional development opportunity is a series of four in-person mechatronics workshops where participants learn about a dual enrollment pathway that gives high school students access to four online entry-level, hands-on mechatronics courses and best practices for delivering those courses. They also build a mechatronics trainer based on which of the four levels the workshop is covering. Participants keep the trainer for use in their own classrooms along with corresponding curriculum. Participants have been surveyed at the completion of the workshops and throughout the year after the workshop to determine impacts of the workshops.

Feedback for both professional development opportunities has been very positive. Suggestions are taken into consideration and changes are made in the workshops for continuous improvement when appropriate. Both workshops have been able to reach national audiences and provide professional development to educators who may not have local professional development opportunities.

Authored by
Dr. Karen Wosczyna-Birch (CT College of Technology)

The mission of the *** Consortium (***) is to enable Minority Serving Institution (MSI) Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) programs to produce more and better prepared graduates from groups that have been historically underrepresented in ECE careers. *** leadership hypothesizes that the key to achieving this goal is more fully engaging the students, staff and faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) in the broad ECE education and research enterprise by building partnerships with Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs), industry, government labs, etc. These partnerships must be equitable with all voices being heard and all relevant assets identified and utilized.

The equitable partnership concept came out of a series of *** workshops that addressed Anti-Racism Practices in Engineering. Since then, *** has been applying the ideas developed and collecting feedback, particularly on barriers to their effective use. Anti-Racism Practices in Engineering should apply to students, staff, and faculty in all activities in an ECE program. However, *** has focused on research because it is THE activity that is the most underdeveloped at most MSIs and the primary reason why PWIs usually contact MSIs. The most exciting and potentially impactful effort involves co-development and co-delivery of courses in support of students on pathways to research careers.

MSIs need investment to increase their research capacity and, thus, expand opportunities for their students. Personnel at PWIs must engage with their counterparts at MSIs so they will learn how to more effectively mentor and teach students from MSIs. Both types of institutions must invest in each other to achieve maximum benefit from the diversity of ideas, cultures, resources, etc. found at such different institutions. Equitable partners must be able to identify and articulate their assets and understand the assets of other participants. Finally, partnerships only work if there is sufficient trust, which comes from knowledge of and engagement with one another. The model for such partnerships is what *** calls ADEP – Asset Driven Equitable Partnerships.

ADEP principles have been developed and applied through additional workshops funded under this and other programs and developing partnerships. The partnerships take a variety of forms but generally involve either a small subset or all core *** MSI members plus some PWIs, with occasional industry or national lab participation. Recently, partnerships have been developed between core *** MSI members and their regional community colleges. There are also joint efforts with other non-profits and industry working to achieve similar outcomes. To guide these partnerships, the ADEP Rubric continues to be developed to identify what is helping or hindering the success of these collaborations. New proposals are being prepared and new programs begun. At the same time, the workshops that bring together as many *** members as possible, virtually, in person, and hybrid continue. There remain many barriers to be overcome, but the ever-evolving ADEP approach is working through the active exchange of ideas in the pursuit of common goals.

Authored by
Dr. Kenneth A Connor (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Prof. Miguel Velez-Reyes (University of Texas at El Paso), Dr. John C. Kelly (North Carolina A&T State University), Dr. Pamela Leigh-Mack (Virginia State University), Dr. Barry J. Sullivan (Electrical & Computer Engineering Department Heads Assn), Elizabeth Hibbler (Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration (CIEC)), Dr. Stephen M Goodnick (Arizona State University), Dr. Shiny Abraham (Seattle University), and Michelle Klein (Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. Heads Assoc. (ECEDHA))

Promoting ethical engineering research within a discipline requires a thorough understanding of the challenges and variations in ways engineering faculty members experience, understand, and practice ethical research within that discipline. Such understanding is particularly important in biomedical engineering given its novel and interdisciplinary nature, potential to affect human life and well-being, and the unique types of ethical issues biomedical engineering faculty members may encounter when compared to other types of engineering.

We seek to support the above understanding by addressing three sequenced research questions: (1) What are the qualitatively different ways of experiencing and understanding ethical engineering research by faculty members in biomedical engineering?; (2) What critical factors influence ways of experiencing and understanding ethical engineering research by faculty members in biomedical engineering?; and (3): How can faculty members’ experiences with ethical engineering research inform more effective educational heuristics for preparing ethical engineering researchers? We address our first research question via phenomenography, our second research question via Critical Incident Technique, and our third research question by identifying educational heuristics grounded in the phenomenographic and critical incident data.

We have conducted 25 phenomenographic interviews and used these data to develop emergent results associated with each research question. In addition, we have begun collecting a second round of interviews (focused on the second research question) with the same set of interviewees, .

To address our first research question, we have identified six distinct categories representing “ways of experiencing” ethical engineering research. The not-yet-final categories include: (1) working toward equity, (2) following the rules, (3) working within a good process, (4) stewarding a contributing lab, (5) working within roles and responsibilities, and (6) working within a challenging system. Our next steps involve finalizing the categories and developing an outcome space that represents variation in ways of experiencing ethical engineering research.

To address our second research question, we have extracted 145 critical incidents from the 25 phenomenographic interviews, grouped incidents into 14 incident types, and grouped incident types into five categories: (1) cultural immersions, (2) ethical actions, (3) novel perspectives, (4) training events, and (5) reflection associations. The next steps in this analysis involve completing a second round of interviews with participants, wherein participants interrogate this current set of findings and provide additional, potentially novel critical incidents.

To address our third research question, we have begun generating heuristics representing what faculty members have done, have experienced in their own development, or aspire to do to promote ethical engineering research. Accordingly, the heuristics represent what faculty members might do to promote ethical engineering research and how they might do it.

Upon completion of this study, we will have a better understanding of how biomedical engineering faculty experience and understand ethical engineering research; critical factors that influence ways of experiencing ethical engineering research; and educational heuristics grounded in the lived experiences of biomedical engineering faculty. We hope these findings will help promulgate evidence-based approaches to improving ethical engineering research in engineering disciplines, broadly.

Authored by
Dr. Justin L Hess (Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE)), Dr. Nicholas D. Fila (Iowa State University of Science and Technology), Dr. Andrew O. Brightman (Purdue University at West Lafayette (PWL) (COE)), Sowmya Panuganti (Purdue Engineering Education), and Tyler A Ramsey (Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE))

The NSF INCLUDES REM program for FuSe Interconnects: Enabling Transitions into the Microelectronic Ecosystem supplement is a direct result of the workforce development ideation workshop funded by the parent proposal Collaborative Research: FuSe: Interconnects with Co-Designed Materials, Topology, and Wire Architecture. On March 15th, 2024, the FuSe Workshop – Interconnecting the Next Generation Semiconductor Workforce from Thinkers to Doers to Innovators was held in Tucson, Arizona at the ECEDHA conference. Technical Research PIs and associated industry members worked together with 25 representatives from the *** Consortium (***) and *** Foundation (***) to ideate opportunities to engage students in the microelectronic ecosystem. The *** is a well-established network of core members from 21 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and 15 affiliate members from Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs), some of which are also HSIs. The *** is the student-facing arm of the *** with a Pathways to Success program that combines internship experiences with holistic, structured mentorship.

This NSF INCLUDES supplement funds results of the ideation workshop focused on increasing the microelectronic talent pool. The research plan intentionally positions engaging experiences at essential transition points throughout the microelectronic curriculum by embedding microelectronic-centered design opportunities in a collaborative cohort of students, academic mentors, industry mentors, and faculty at different locations. The experiences are co-designed, co-delivered educational modules from all stakeholders aimed at increasing the interconnection of personal interest, creativity, fundamental knowledge, and skills through the inspiration of design-based pedagogy. This effort will answer questions that affect the wide distribution of knowledge in the microelectronic field including: What is the minimum microelectronic and semiconductor practical skillset for undergraduate students to feel competent and confident before entering research or industrial experiences in the microelectronic area? How does this confidence in practical skills motivate deeper theoretical understanding? How do open-source (free or reduced price) design tools compare to proprietary software for creativity, system-level understanding, fundamental understanding, and industry readiness? What are the tradeoffs? How can co-curricular activities fulfill the above needs in a cheaper and more flexible way to widen participation at schools without resources to fabricate devices?

First year activities involving students, faculty and staff from several HBCUs, two PWIs, and multiple companies in a variety of activities, each of which will inform the planning and delivery of the activities that follow:
• Hybrid/Remote Multi-University Design Ideation Experiences for Faculty Mentors (Fall and Spring Semester)
• Faculty/Graduate Mentorship Training (Fall Semester)
• Hybrid/Remote Design Skills Development Workshops for Students (Between Fall and Spring Semester and after Spring Semester)
• Pre-Internship Experience University Cleanroom Training (Between Spring Semester and Summer)
• Internship within Microelectronic Ecosystem through Inclusive Engineering Foundation Pathways Program (Summer)
• Post-Internship Experience Peer Mentorship Training (End of Summer)

Authored by
Dr. Kenneth A Connor (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Prof. Shayla Sawyer (Rensselaer Polytechic Institute), Dr. Barry J. Sullivan (Electrical & Computer Engineering Department Heads Assn), and Elizabeth Hibbler (Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration (CIEC))

Since 2018, the Urban STEM Collaboratory has engaged faculty and students at three state- supported, urban campuses, in an NSF funded S-STEM project. Activities included collaborative research and student activities, designed to support and encourage engineering student success. The project research has focused on understanding factors that support engineering students in their development of STEM identity and particular interventions that result in positive outcomes in terms of academic performance, persistence, and success towards graduation. A total of 165 students have participated in the S-STEM project across the three campuses. Two campuses are in a final no-cost extension year with current scholar cohorts, while the third campus has completed its project’s efforts.

The developed interventions included: peer mentoring, Peer-led Team Learning, a STEM Ambassador program, a summer bridge program, an academic social networking platform (the CN), and academic year workshops, which were refined across the project period to address individual campus needs. Program refinement, due to COVID, and evolving needs of the scholars, were developed as necessary over the span of the project. The project has been successful in meeting its original objectives, including engaging a over 150 students, creating a community of scholars and faculty, and realizing increased academic and degree achievement outcomes for the scholars. Scholars at all three campuses have achieved higher GPAs and completed more credits toward their degrees than their S-STEM eligible peers. The individual interventions varied in effectiveness and impact.

This paper describes the final version of the Urban STEM Collaboratory model and the campus interventions. It discusses the elements that will be sustained beyond the project period at each campus. Lessons learned during the 6 years of collaboration are shared, with insights provided to support others in developing similar efforts on their campuses.

Authored by
Seyedehsareh Hashemikamangar (The University of Memphis), Dr. Stephanie S Ivey (The University of Memphis), Craig O. Stewart (University of Memphis), Dr. Karen D Alfrey (Purdue University), Prof. Tom Altman (Affiliation unknown), Dr. Michael S. Jacobson (University of Colorado Denver), Tony Chase (Indiana University (IUPUI)), Dr. Maryam Darbeheshti (University of Colorado Denver), and William Taylor Schupbach (University of Colorado Denver)

The Iron Range Engineering (IRE) STEM Scholars program is supported through NSF S-STEM award (Award #2221441). Over its six-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 120 full-time students pursuing a BS in Engineering at Minnesota State University, Mankato (MSU). The IRE STEM scholars program provides a financially sustainable pathway for students across the nation to graduate with a BS in engineering and up to two years of industry experience. Students typically complete their first two years of engineering coursework at community colleges across the country. Students then join IRE and spend one transitional semester gaining training and experience to equip them with the technical, design, and professional skills needed to succeed in the engineering workforce; it is during this semester that students receive financial support through the IRE STEM Scholars program. During the last two years of their education, IRE students work in paid engineering co-ops, while being supported in their technical and professional development by professors, learning facilitators, and their own peers. Additionally, the project provides personalized mentorship for IRE STEM scholars throughout their pathway to graduation.

Currently in its third year, the project has supported 47 students, including 4 graduated students. All IRE students have completed survey data documenting their co-op experiences, engineering identity and engineering sense of belonging. Additionally, we have qualitative data, through interviews, from select IRE STEM Scholars on the aforementioned constructs, and the impact of those experiences on thriving, specifically their identity, belonging, and subjective well-being (mental and physical health). As part of a larger concurrent mixed-methods research study, we are exploring the following research questions: RQ1: How do undergraduate students’ engineering identity and belongingness develop over time in a co-op-based engineering program? RQ2: How do undergraduate students’ motivation and identity connect to overall wellbeing in a co-op-based engineering program?

In this paper we present data on IRE STEM scholars’ co-op experiences (co-op attainment, income, company information) and compare that to all IRE students using descriptive statistics. We found high co-op attainment rates and a strong sense of engineering identity (5.2 out of 6) and belonging (5.5 out of 6). We present initial thematic analysis of n=6 interview data and open-ended survey questions that show the connection between engineering belonging and co-op experiences. Future work will utilize these values to identify ways to better support the IRE STEM scholars’ identity development as they move into their first co-op experiences.

Authored by
Dr. Catherine Mcgough Spence (Minnesota State University, Mankato), Dr. Emilie A Siverling (Minnesota State University, Mankato), and Dr. Michelle Soledad (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)

As students begin their undergraduate studies, they are typically trying to choose a major and career. For students who study engineering, much of their early coursework is often situated in other departments to establish foundations in science and mathematics. A student’s decision about whether to persist in the engineering major is necessarily influenced by their experiences in their classes.

Recent work by Ge, Kellam, Lönngren, Villavicencio, and others has highlighted the importance of engineering students’ emotions in their ability to think critically, consider wicked problems, and complete design challenges. Work by DeBellis and Goldin in the field of mathematics education has highlighted another potential influence of such emotions: the emotions that students experience while solving problems (local affect) can have cumulative effects over time on their global affect, or their more stable attitudes, values, and beliefs towards the discipline. Gaps in the literature on affect in engineering students motivated us to design a study that was funded through PFE:RIEF to answer the following questions:
1) How are 1st and 2nd year engineering students’ local affect different or the same while doing engineering work vs. mathematics and science work?
2) Over the course of their early college experiences with mathematics, science, and engineering, how do students’ global affect about mathematics, science, and engineering change?
Moreover, engineering identity, or a student’s sense of themselves as an engineer, is discussed as having affective components such as the interest component of Godwin’s widely-employed social identity model of engineering identity. However, the specific influences of local affect and other aspects of global affect like recognition and self-efficacy in engineering as a subject have not been systematically explored, which motivates our third research question:
3) How do students’ local and global affect about mathematics, science, and engineering contribute to/interact with their identities, including engineering identity?

Using a mixed-methods approach, our study has now followed one cohort of students for over two years and a second cohort for over one year. We have invited students to complete surveys and interviews at the end of each semester, in order to understand their local and global affect in their mathematics, science, and engineering coursework and how these interact with their developing engineering identities.

Our case study analysis has revealed differences between engineering students’ affect towards engineering coursework and the required mathematics and science coursework taken early in the major; students who do not enjoy engineering coursework tend to leave the major, while students can persist in engineering despite strong negative emotions and global attitudes related to mathematics and science, as long as the negative affect is balanced by strong positive affect towards engineering and/or strong engineering identity development. In addition to obvious interactions between global affect and identity (e.g., interest), we have found that local affect has the ability to influence students’ performance and competence beliefs. An important theme that has emerged from this work is the importance of meta-affect, students’ cognition and emotions about their own affect, in determining how students respond to and reframe negative local affect.

Authored by
Dr. Emma Treadway (Trinity University), Dr. Jessica Swenson (University at Buffalo, The State University of New York), and Elizabeth Kilcoyne (University at Buffalo, The State University of New York)

Engineers take various engineering science courses over the span of their undergraduate degree to learn the theories and mathematical models needed to solve common engineering problems. These courses, such as statics, dynamics, and fluids, are typically taught in a lecture and recitation format using close-ended “textbook” problems. However, ethnographic studies have shown that engineering professionals solve open-ended problems that involve not just performing calculations, but making decisions to develop an appropriate model. This can involve identifying relevant and important concepts, choosing a course of action, and assessing reasonableness. Engineering professionals must use their engineering judgment to make these decisions, and we pose that it is therefore critical that undergraduate engineering students have the opportunity to practice solving ill-defined problems throughout their degree program in order to develop their own engineering judgment.

Our study of undergraduate engineering students focuses on the productive beginnings of engineering modeling judgment when provided with the opportunities to practice within open-ended modeling problems (OEMPs) presented in engineering science courses. Our multi-institution collaborative team, funded by the NSF Research in the Formation of Engineers program, aims to address the following questions: (RQ1) In what ways do undergraduate engineering students display the productive beginnings of engineering judgment? (RQ2) What assignment scaffolding supports students in developing the productive beginnings of engineering judgment? (RQ3) What assignment scaffolding makes students’ productive beginnings of engineering judgment (or lack thereof) visible to instructors?

Since last year’s poster session, we have refined our analysis and discussion of 34 student interviews (RQ1) resulting in the Emerging Engineering Modeling Judgment (EMJ) taxonomy of four types and fifteen sub-types of engineering judgment. The four types consist of 1) Making assumptions, 2) Assessing reasonableness, 3) Overriding a calculated answer, and 4) Using technology tools. To begin answering RQ2, we have completed interviews with two instructors about their intentions behind OEMP design. We are currently conducting more intense, in depth research on scaffolding support of engineering judgment development (RQ2) through closely analyzing each interaction that one instructor has with students as they work on a specific OEMP in two sections of a statics class at purple university. We collected this data during observations of one-on-one meetings after lecture, group work during lecture, office hours, and project submission check-ins. To address RQ3, we are also currently using the EMJ Framework to interview instructors who assign OEMPs in their classes about occasions that they have noticed their students demonstrating the emerging engineering judgment types during OEMPs. We intend to share preliminary findings toward scaffolding (RQ2) and instructor noticing (RQ3) that can show the role of instructors in developing and supporting OEMPs that promote the productive beginnings of engineering judgment. Implications of this work include showing how to incorporate engineering modeling judgment practice for students throughout the degree program using well-scaffolded open-ended modeling problems in their engineering science courses. These results will be used to design faculty professional development that supports instructors in designing and implementing OEMPs and noticing and responding to students’ emerging engineering judgment.

Authored by
Mrs. Leah Maykish (University at Buffalo, The State University of New York), Ms. Oluwakemi Johnson (University of Michigan), Katelyn Churakos (University at Buffalo, The State University of New York), Dr. Jessica Swenson (University at Buffalo, The State University of New York), and Dr. Aaron W. Johnson (University of Michigan)

Introduction: Since the Fall of 2023, the community college has nurtured students through the NSF S-STEM Grant initiative called Scholarships, Mentoring, and Professional Support to Improve Engineering & Artificial Intelligence Student Success at Community Colleges. This grant, also known as Reaching Engineering and Artificial Intelligence Career Heights (REACH), empowers students with scholarships, personalized mentoring, and industry-oriented activities. This study delves into an Individual Development Plan (IDP) interactive dashboard used during the mentoring sessions.

Methodology: An interactive dashboard made on Google Spreadsheet was developed to record monthly academic data, contact with industrial, working hours, and key moments, and help the students reflect on their data. Each semester, the students and their mentors filled a different tab. Each month, they filled different columns of data. The data are divided into 3 groups: grade per course, confidence to complete the same course, and outside academic activity: work, industry visits, clubs etc. Three charts illustrate the trend of that information.

Results: 20 students (at the date of Fall 2024) are or were enrolled in the program, including 7 in AAS, Emphasis in Artificial Intelligence, and 13 in AS, Emphasis in Engineering, with 7 females, and 13 males. 94% of the IDP dashboard was filled and 100% of the students reported that the IDP tool was extremely useful or useful. The data also show that students completed 94% of the courses and their workload decreased on average from 22 hours to 17 hours per week over the semesters. One mentee reported the IDP as making them “want to continue their progress and keep their grades up and that it gives them (mentee and mentor) something to talk about right away.“ One mentor summarized the IDP tool as allowing them “to consider where they can support their mentee(s).”

Conclusion: The IDP dashboard makes the mentoring sessions more efficient, focuses on the challenges faced by the mentee(s) during this specific month, and tracks data. A mentor suggested breaking up the options of extra-academic activities as they are key to keeping students engaged in their academic journey. Metrics such as networking, volunteering, participating in professional organizations, listening to speakers' presentations, and touring university partners and industry companies will be added to the dashboard.

Acknowledgment: The authors would like to express their sincere thanks and gratitude to the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the Scholarship in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) award No. 2220959.

Authored by
Mrs. Fanny Silvestri (Maricopa Community Colleges), Mrs. Nichole Neal (), and Elisabeth Johnson (Affiliation unknown)

The NSF S-STEM scholarship at Western New England University provides financial aid to academically talented Mechanical Engineering students. In addition to the scholarship, evidence based educational programs are incorporated to enhance their academic experience and promote long term success. These programs include student services and cohort activities.
The student service program includes a comprehensive advising system, featuring faculty advisors, university advisors, and peer advisors, as well as career consultation resources to help students prepare for post-graduation opportunities.
Cohort activities include conference participation (Hoxby 2015, Ononye 2018) and community outreach (Yeh 2010, Eyler 2001), play a critical role in cultivating a sense of belonging among the scholars. These activities expose students to professional development opportunities and encourage engagement with the broader community, helping to strengthen their professional identity. Both the advising and cohort-building initiatives are designed to boost the self-efficacy of low-income students, particularly early in their college careers, by equipping them with the tools and confidence needed to overcome academic and personal challenges.
This work presents a detailed analysis of longitudinal data collected over three years through quantitative formative assessments conducted each fall and spring semester, as well as through focus group studies. The data offers insights into how the different components of the student support program contribute to key outcomes, such as retention and academic success, which are central to the objectives of the NSF project
The survey data will be analyzed to assess changes in student feedback over time and identify which aspects of the support program are most effective in retaining students. Specifically, the study will explore which team advisors—faculty, university, or peer—students most frequently consult, and how these interactions contribute to their persistence in the program. Additionally, the data will be used to evaluate the impact of various cohort activities on students’ sense of community and professional development. Based on the feedback, recommendations for potential revisions to the program will be discussed, with a focus on enhancing its effectiveness in supporting student retention and success.
Ultimately, this longitudinal analysis provides valuable insights into how targeted student services and cohort-building activities can contribute to improved outcomes for low-income, academically talented students in STEM fields. The findings will inform future iterations of the NSF S-STEM program, with the goal of optimizing student support systems to ensure scholars are well-prepared to thrive academically and professionally.
1. Hoxby, Caroline M., and Sarah Turner. 2015. "What High-Achieving Low-Income Students Know about College." American Economic Review, 105 (5): 514-17.
2. Ononye, L. & Bong, S. (2018). The Study of the Effectiveness of Scholarship Grant Program on Low-Income Engineering Technology Students. Journal of STEM Education, 18(5).
3. Yeh, T, (2010), “Service-Learning and Persistence of Low-Income, First-Generation College Students: An Exploratory Study”, Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, v16 n2 p50-65
4. Eyler, J; Giles, D. E; Stenson, C M.; and Gray, C J., "At A Glance: What We Know about The Effects of Service-Learning on College Students, Faculty, Institutions and communities, 1993- 2000: Third Edition" (2001). Higher Education. Paper 139.

Authored by
Dr. Jingru Benner (Western New England University), Dr. Raymond J. Ostendorf (Western New England University), and Dr. Michael J Rust (Western New England University)

This work in progress (WIP) paper focuses on summarizing key findings to date from an NSF RIEF grant (Award No. 2205033) focused on applying user experience (UX) methods to understand the process through which doctoral engineering students develop their identity as researchers. Although significant prior research has focused on engineering identity formation in undergraduate students, there is limited work on identity formation in engineering graduate students or working professionals, and few longitudinal studies of identity development in engineering students or professionals at any level. This research uses three primary methods (journey mapping, survey, and interviews) within the field of UX to investigate the longitudinal formation of researcher identity in two cohorts of doctoral students in an engineering department at a large state university, which is R1 under the Carnegie Classification: students enrolled in a traditionally structured on campus program and those enrolled in an online program. This paper summarizes key findings to date, referencing previous publications from this research stream where relevant and sharing additional findings not previously published. Future work will focus on disseminating the detailed findings of this study in additional conference and journal publications, as well as expanding the study to additional programs and universities. The ultimate goal of the study is to explore and design more effective engineering doctoral programs that better serve a diverse student population.

Authored by
Dr. Jennifer A Cross (Texas Tech University), Jason Tham (Texas Tech University), Dr. Mario G. Beruvides P.E. (Texas Tech University), Diego Alejandro Polanco-Lahoz (Texas Tech University), and Madison Hanson (Texas Tech University)

Students in a first-year engineering design course at two different universities were surveyed about their motivation (specifically, self-efficacy and utility value) for learning to use MATLAB and how it was related to their choice of major. Results do not indicate that variations in these motivational factors can be explained by students’ intended major within engineering. Follow-up interviews with students show that students demonstrate a growth mindset despite having immature conceptions of the ways they will use the computational thinking skills they are developing. This work thus presents the idea that students entering a course of study in engineering might generally believe that computational skills are important and trust that they can learn them – if they want to. If this is true, then how their thinking develops between their first semester and their last may be the most critical for developing more widespread skills in programming and automation for our students.

Authored by
Dr. Alison K Polasik (Campbell University)

Background: Racial inequality in engineering is persistent but under-studied. Everyday engineering classrooms are a primary site that can engage equitable interactions and inclusive and engaging experiences, or can perpetuate marginalization and inequity. Understanding classroom inequity, understanding engineering faculty learning about race and their capacity to change their classrooms, and building capacity for further equity focus with the engineering education community are crucial goals of this study.

Purpose: We report on the first year of a NSF CAREER project funded by Broadening Participation in Engineering that focuses on racial equity in engineering education.

Method: We report on research findings from our first site, a Hispanic Serving Institution, where we engaged 3 engineering professors in weekly conversations and embedded in their classrooms for observations. We also conducted educational activities including building curriculum for racial equity learning and conducting a capacity building session at 2024 ASEE.

Findings: We document the faculty learning trajectories about race and their situations of classroom racial equity or inequity that correspond to that learning. We note key emergent dimensions of learning that we find significant to begin to establish a framework for learning about racial equity. We also report out on the evaluation of impacts of educational events and research processes. Faculty have reported significant impacts on their noticing and considering of race within their pedagogy.

Significance: This project draws a significant and important focus to race in engineering education, situating it within the everyday classroom and faculty discourse. This novel approach sheds light on the subtle dimensions of inequity we perpetuate or resist through our respective actions.

Authored by
Dr. Stephen Secules (Florida International University), Dr. Atota Halkiyo (Florida International University), Mx. Nivedita Kumar (Florida International University), and Maimuna Begum Kali (Florida International University)

There is increasing agreement about the importance of integrating learning opportunities that foster students’ understanding of the impact of engineering decisions on people, communities, and society. So-called “sociotechnical engineering education” is thought to prepare students for an engineering field that is increasingly interdisciplinary and globalized, which requires engineers to develop critical evaluation skills beyond those that apply fundamental engineering science concepts. However, several contextual factors, such as institutional support for reform, the social and cultural context of an institution, and state and local legislation barring faculty from teaching about “divisive issues,” can support, or inhibit, faculty pedagogies aimed at developing sociotechnical engineering learning opportunities. As a result, universities, engineering programs, and the faculty that make up these programs, implement diverse pedagogical strategies for fostering engineering students’ sociotechnical design repertoires.

The purpose of this ongoing research project is to understand how contextual influences at the individual (e.g., faculty values and beliefs), institutional (e.g., department and institutional mission and resources), and regional (e.g., state and local policy) levels shape faculty pedagogical decision making, including the learning goals they adopt and the activities they plan, in engineering design education. Moreover, our goal is to examine how different contextual influences and resulting pedagogical strategies shape students’ learning outcomes in sociotechnical engineering design education.

In this paper, we describe an integrated framework for examining faculty pedagogical choices surrounding sociotechnical design education, as well as students’ learning in sociotechnical engineering design education. We intend to use Costanza-Chock’s Design Justice to curate a community of scholars and educators who are developing and implementing sociotechnical design education across contexts. Moreover, we seek to understand the various influences on faculty pedagogical decision making by drawing on the Academic Plan Model, “makes explicit the many factors that influence the development of academic plans in colleges and universities” (Lattuca & Stark, 2009, p. 5). Additionally, we draw on situated learning theory and the Weimer Framework for Student Resistance to examine patterns of student engagement and resistance to sociotechnical design education. Our goal is to study the manifestations of students' learning in their design thinking, engineering judgments, and decision making to contribute new knowledge about the pedagogical strategies that foster engineering students’ sociotechnical design repertoires.

Finally, in this paper, we introduce a mixed-methods approach to understanding these two strands–faculty pedagogical decision making and student learning and resistance. We will describe the development of interview, focus group, and observation protocols for studying faculty pedagogies and student learning, as well as new survey measures that capture student access to, engagement in, and resistance to sociotechnical design education.

Authored by
Dr. Trevion S Henderson (Tufts University) and Collette Patricia Higgins (Tufts University)

In academia, hierarchical structures often create rigid dynamics, where senior tenured faculty exert significant control over junior, non-tenured members and students. This top-down approach can stifle the growth and collaboration of junior faculty and students. Scrum, an Agile approach designed for flexibility and self-organization, contrasts sharply with this rigidity. Over the last four years, we have implemented Scrum in about twenty different projects, and in almost all cases, we have seen a better results, in a shorter amount of time. However, we also observed a number of additional side effects because of applying Scrum in the department service activities. This paper will describes four such side effects.
By applying Scrum in four different departmental service teams, the Scrum process fostered a sense of empowerment, which in turn encouraged greater involvement. This increased participation led to the growth of capabilities, particularly among younger faculty and students. As their skills developed, the teams’ overall performance improved, resulting in higher productivity and contributions that are more equitable across all teams. Furthermore, workload equity fostered an improved sense of belonging within the department's culture, reinforcing collaboration and inclusivity. This cultural shift ultimately reflects the broader positive impact that Agile methods have had across various industries, driving both individual and collective growth. Through examining four sample RED teams, we can assess how Scrum influences the professional growth and empowerment of both faculty members and students, potentially leading to a more dynamic and collaborative academic environment. Finally, by implementing Scrum, academic teams—comprising faculty and students—can experience a fairer and more empowering environment. Scrum encourages self-management, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Authored by
Massood Towhidnejad (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Daytona Beach), Sarah A Reynolds (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Daytona Beach), Dr. Omar Ochoa (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Daytona Beach), Lynn Vonderhaar (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Daytona Beach), Alexandra Davidoff (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Daytona Beach), and Dr. James J. Pembridge (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Daytona Beach)

Industry mentors can play a crucial role in facilitating the successful transition of engineering students into the workforce by expanding their professional networks and developing their soft skills. Prior research has shown that peer mentoring helps new students adjust to college life [1], and extending this concept to industry mentors gives students access to valuable professional knowledge and experience, easing their transition into the workforce. Ilumoka et al. [2] demonstrated that incorporating industry mentors led to a 55% increase in student interest and confidence in STEM subjects. Building on this, our project, funded by an NSF S-STEM grant, introduced an industry mentorship program in the third year of the XXXX S-STEM initiative.
The program targets students who have completed the Introduction to Engineering course and are, therefore, established in their chosen majors and becoming interested in internships and career paths. To initiate the program, we organized a forum where the principal investigators met with potential industry mentors to discuss our program expectations and industry’s goals for mentoring. Key takeaways included the importance of developing soft skills such as communication and teamwork, as well as providing students with opportunities to shadow engineers in the workplace.
Subsequently, a meet-and-greet session was held, where students interacted with each mentor, learning about their roles and experiences. After the event, both mentors and mentees completed surveys. Mentors provided feedback on their preferred modes of contact, the number of students they could mentor, and their willingness to host student visits. Students were asked to select five mentors based on traits critical to effective mentoring in the construction industry: being a good listener, willingness to share difficult information, comfort level, and knowledge sharing (Hoffmeister et al. [3]).
Once all the feedback is received, students will be matched with mentors based on their preferences, and the program will facilitate mentor-mentee interactions throughout the semester. Additional feedback from both mentors and mentees will be collected at the end of Fall 2024 to assess the program's impact, with the results to be included in the paper.
Preliminary feedback from students and industry mentors suggests that the industry mentoring program will positively influence student engagement and readiness for the workforce. Some students have already reported increased interest in specific industries or companies after the meet-and-greet event, and mentors have expressed satisfaction in contributing to the development of future professionals. Detailed results and recommendations for future iterations of the program will be discussed in the paper.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) S-STEM grant.
References:
[1] Leidenfrost, B., et al. "The Impact of Peer Mentoring on Mentee Academic Performance: Is Any Mentoring Style Better Than No Mentoring at All?" International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 26.1 (2014): 102-111.
[2] Ilumoka, A., Milanovic, I., & Grant, N. "An Effective Industry-Based Mentoring Approach for the Recruitment of Women and Minorities in Engineering." Journal of STEM Education: Innovations and Research, 18.3 (2017).
[3] Hoffmeister, K., et al. "A Perspective on Effective Mentoring in the Construction Industry." Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 32.7 (2011): 673-688.

Authored by
Dr. Dick Apronti (Angelo State University), Dr. William A Kitch P.E. (Angelo State University), and Stephanie Solis (Angelo State University)

This paper presents the findings from the ACCESS (Aligning Career & Campus Experiences for Student Success) project, funded under the NSF S-STEM program. The primary goal of ACCESS is to recruit, retain, and graduate low-income, academically talented (LIAT) students in high-demand engineering technology fields, specifically Electrical, Computer, and Mechatronics Engineering Technology. Over the course of the project, two cohorts of students have been enrolled, with a focus on providing financial support, academic advising, and professional development opportunities.

Key activities include the implementation of Appreciative Advising to foster personalized student support, as well as Supplemental Instruction in foundational courses critical to the engineering technology curriculum. Moreover, the project has established strong industry connections through workplace tours and guest speaker seminars, bridging the gap between academic learning and real-world STEM careers. Looking ahead, guided internships are being developed as part of a scaffolded suite of professional experiences, which will provide students with practical, hands-on exposure to industry environments, further preparing them for success in STEM fields.

Despite challenges related to FAFSA and Pell eligibility changes affecting recruitment, the project remains on track to meet its goals. Results from the first two cohorts demonstrate positive retention rates and significant progress in preparing students for their STEM careers. Evaluation data collected through VIA Evaluation has shown that workplace tours, seminar series, and planned guided internships have had a measurable impact on student self-efficacy and career awareness.

Authored by
Dr. Brenton K Wilburn (Pennsylvania Western University (formerly California University of Pennsylvania)), Dr. Jennifer Nicole Wilburn (California University of Pennsylvania), and Brenda Fredette (California University of Pennsylvania)

This paper presents updated findings on the NSF S-STEM-funded ECS Scholars Program, which supports high-achieving, low-income students in Engineering and Computer Science. The program provides scholarships, faculty mentoring, research and internship opportunities, professional development, and social support, all aimed at promoting academic success and STEM identity formation.

Over three years, 31 students participated; nine left the program—six due to academic performance, two to pursue non-STEM majors, and one for another scholarship. Most departures occurred early, but retention improved significantly for those who continued beyond their first year. Currently, 19 of 22 students are on track for on-time graduation, with all expected to graduate within 4.5 years. In the first cohort, 10 of 11 students graduated within four years, all securing professional placement.

A critical part of our research involved EAB's Navigate platform, initially adopted for its predictive analytics to guide early interventions. Although the predictive analytics feature did not deliver the early, actionable data we anticipated, it provided insights for refining our approach. We shifted focus to tracking student engagement, which proved valuable for developing a strong STEM identity.

A key element in developing a data-driven approach for student success is creating methods that are easy for faculty and staff to use. Last year, we submitted an ASEE paper that proposed using generative AI to reduce challenges in data collection and analysis. This paper reports on what we feel is a significant contribution by describing a "proof of concept" system that leverages generative AI to track course-level attendance and student engagement providing instructors with summarized insights via email. The system is designed to be easily implemented for instructors, offering a practical tool for monitoring student engagement.

This approach illustrates how generative AI enables us to explore solutions that were previously challenging due to the complexities of coding and data management. By simplifying data collection, generative AI has reduced technical barriers, allowing us to focus on practical tools that support student success.

As the ECS Scholars Program concludes, we have effectively supported the academic and professional growth of our students. Emphasizing the development of engineering and computer science identity has been a key finding that will guide our future efforts to sustain the program. The combination of Navigate and generative AI shows promise in tracking student engagement and streamlining data collection, offering insights for future initiatives aimed at supporting underrepresented students in STEM.

Note: We submitted a paper last year. This paper will document that additional progress for the project. In our view, the results that will describes the specifics of how we used generative AI in and attendance monitoring system is a significant new contribution. I didn't reference the paper from last year because my understanding is that the process is supposed to be anonymous.

Authored by
Dr. Michael W. Thompson (Baylor University), Dr. Anne Marie Spence (Baylor University), Nathan F Alleman (Baylor University), William A Booth (Baylor University), Dr. Sarah E Madsen (Baylor University), Taylor Wilby (United States Military Academy), and Pacey Ham Mitchell (Baylor University)

This five-year, parallel, mixed-methods research study funded by the investigates the influence of community cultural wealth (CCW) ([deidentified], 20XX; Yosso, 2005) on the persistence of Black and Hispanic women in the computing pipeline, to inform strategies that promote equity in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and computing (STEM+C). Given the persistent underrepresentation of women of color in STEM+C, this study draws on the CCW framework to analyze the role of cultural capital in supporting the persistence of Black and Hispanic women in computing.

Four key research questions guide this examination of: (1) how CCW impacts a national cohort of Black and Hispanic students in grades 9-12 in persisting through STEM+C degree programs and/or entering the workforce; (2) how CCW supports a Texas cohort of women at Hispanic Serving institutions (HSIs) and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in pursuing computing degrees, graduate education, or careers; (3) their successful educational and career trajectories from grades 8-17; and (4) how CCW shapes their counter-life-herstories in computing education and careers.

This study utilized a mixed-methods approach, incorporating secondary data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) along with primary data collected through the [deidentified] survey and semi-structured [deidentified] interviews with Black and Hispanic women studying computing at HSIs and HBCUs. A modified community cultural wealth model was applied to analyze the HSLS:09 cohort, 209 survey respondents (males and females), and 35 female interviewees, offering insights into better-supporting women of color in STEM+C education.

Among the cohort of 209 participants, statistical analyses revealed that aspirational, social, and familial forms of cultural capital significantly influenced Black and Hispanic students’ enrollment and persistence in computing majors. Through qualitative thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), it was found that aspects of aspirational (e.g., career and financial aspirations), social (e.g., peers, educators, and role models), and navigational (e.g., independent information gathering), capitals strongly influenced the persistence of women of color in undergraduate computing programs, with aspirational capital playing the most significant role in helping them overcome intrinsic barriers and lack of support in this male-dominated computing field.

Findings from this study contribute to fundamental research in STEM+C education, and products including an online [deidentified] portal and an annual [deidentified] conference will build capacity for K-16 educators, researchers, policymakers, and industry leaders in formal and informal settings to positively impact the persistence of Black and Hispanic youth in STEM and computing. This award is supported by the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) and EHR Core Research (ECR) Programs.

Authored by
Ruchi Dilip Kukde (Texas State University), Dr. Twyla Hough (Texas State University), and Dr. Shetay Ashford-Hanserd (Texas State University)

This paper presents a comprehensive case study of institutional transformation efforts at one of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), a critical group in advancing diversity and inclusion in higher education. Using data collected from a project funded by the National Science Foundation’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program, we share key observations, challenges, and proposed actions for institutional change. The AGEP program, which aims to increase the number of underrepresented minority faculty members in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, plays a pivotal role in shaping the outcomes of this study, as it supports the broader goal of fostering diversity in academia.

These findings are framed within the university’s strategic efforts to attain Carnegie R1 status, which signifies the highest level of research activity among U.S. institutions. A major focus of this pursuit is understanding and improving outcomes for doctoral students and postdoctoral scholars, groups essential to the institution’s research productivity and academic reputation. In our analysis, we explore various aspects of graduate student success, including degrees awarded, student attrition, time to degree completion, and equitable access to professional development opportunities and financial support. The insights gained from these metrics will highlight factors contributing to student retention and success, as well as obstacles that may impede academic progress.

Additionally, our analysis examines the career trajectories of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, including the paths they follow after leaving the institution, whether in academia, industry, or other fields. We also highlight demographic changes over time, providing a nuanced understanding of how the university’s efforts impact the diversity of its graduate programs and research outputs. By closely monitoring these trends, we aim to inform institutional strategies that support the successful transition from Carnegie R2 to R1 status.

Beyond serving as a roadmap for our own institution, the results and recommendations of this study may offer valuable insights for other HBCUs with similar aspirations. As many of these institutions face comparable challenges in resource allocation, faculty development, and student support, our findings could inform broader strategies for enhancing research capacity and improving graduate student outcomes in underrepresented communities. Ultimately, this work contributes to the national conversation on the role of HBCUs in the research enterprise and their potential to achieve excellence at the highest levels.

Authored by
Dr. Wei Wayne Li (Texas Southern University), Desirée Jackson Ph.D. (Texas Southern University), Dr. Mahesh Vanjani (Texas Southern University), Dr. Yvette E. Pearson P.E. (University of Texas at Dallas), Dr. Lila Ghemri (Affiliation unknown), Shishir Shishodia (Texas Southern University), Dr. Huan Xie (Texas Southern University), and Linda Michelle Gardiner (Texas Southern University)

The authors had a prior NSF STEM grant, where several lessons were learned: there was a significant increase in female students, but concentrated in life sciences or biology, not in engineering and technology; female students dropped out of engineering pathways after the first calculus course at the rate of 33.3%, indicating a need to redesign the activities and implement more student-centered practices in the Calculus I; and peer and faculty mentoring were important for retaining students. Based on the lessons learned, a stronger evidence-based approach was added to the current grant to leverage the infrastructure that was built with a persistence of interest framework [1]. Prenzel’s Persistence of Interest model [1] is defined as a special persistence and selective relationship between a person and an object, where persistence in this context means “the maintenance of the relation by repeated, active engagements” [1,2,3].

The current project objectives are to increase enrollment, retention, and the graduation rates of academically talented, low-income students who aim to pursue baccalaureate degrees in a STEM major through a focus on the persistence framework throughout their undergraduate program. To support the persistence model, we are focusing on four key components: Scholar Support; Team-Based Cohorts; Engagement Activities; and Multi-Level Mentoring. These program components provide opportunities for the scholars to foster their persistence related to the rigor of the academics, and their commitment to the STEM programs.

Based on surveys, applied by an external evaluator, of student perceptions on factors associated with persistence, he found students held very positive perceptions regarding the quality of their relationships, instructors, and academics. Students had moderately strong perceptions of academics outside the classrooms and finances. The area with the lowest level of agreement was activities outside the classroom. These results suggest the faculty have built a strong program that students find helpful. Furthermore, students had a very strong agreement about the utility and importance of Calculus, a strong agreement for the enjoyment of Calculus and confidence in Calculus. Some students found the Calculus course to be difficult.

From a focus group of students, the evaluator found that students held very high perceptions about the mentoring, tutoring, and other academic support provided to them. Students found some instructors to be fantastic and others to be average. Not all the faculty identified were associated with the program. He also found that faculty associated with the program provide outstanding support for all students and especially to students struggling academically.

References
[1] Prenzel, M., “Conditions for the persistence of interest”, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA, 1988.
[2] Graham, M. J., Frederick, J., Byars-Winston, A., and Hunter, A. Increasing persistence of college students in STEM. SCIENCE, 314(6153), 1455-1456, 2013.
[3] J. L. White and G.H. Massiha, “The Retention of Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics: A Framework for Persistence,” International Journal of Evaluation and Research in Education (IJERE) Vol.5, No.1, March 2016.

This work is funded by NSF DUE Division Award number xxxx

Authored by
Dr. Sedig Salem Agili (Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, The Capital College) and Dr. Aldo Morales (Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, The Capital College)

he United States has and will continue to have an increase of English language learners, or emerging multilingual students, in elementary school classrooms. Typically, these students are not given the same access to science and engineering lessons as their English speaking peers, as some argue they do not have the lingual resources, or enough English, to participate in these activities. Our project, along with a growing number of scholars in science education and engineering education, posits that these students can bring all their linguistic and cultural resources, including their home languages, to their engagement in engineering work.

Despite the introduction of engineering into state and national standards through the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), professional development in engineering education for elementary teachers has not typically focused on engineering. This grant aims to serve the increasingly diverse school districts in our geographic region, and to develop a model for incorporating engineering into local classrooms, especially those with linguistically diverse students.

Our National Science Foundation Discovery Research PreK-12 funded project works with local elementary school teachers to create a sustained professional learning experience (PLE) for teachers of multilingual students to learn how to incorporate engineering lessons into their classrooms. Our project integrates translanguaging, or using all the language resources in any language that a student brings to the classroom, into engineering design activities. As we document our teachers learning to teach engineering with translanguaging, we examine their shifts in beliefs, values, and attitudes about how and where language can be used in the classroom, or their language ideologies. Currently in our second year of the project, our partner teachers have increased from two to ten in total, with a majority of project participants third grade classroom teachers. The project’s research questions are:
Do the teachers’ language ideologies shift, and if so, how?
How do teachers’ language ideologies, and possible shifts in language ideologies, map onto elements of the PLE?
How do teachers’ language ideologies, and possible shifts in language ideologies, map onto teachers’ engineering pedagogies?

This paper will share our current PLE model as well as the beginnings of the menu of engineering lessons, a resource for teachers. Our preliminary PLE model begins with three full-day meetings in the summer where we introduce engineering, engineering design, translanguaging, and language ideologies. During the school year, we also have half-day workshops once or every other month, and offer consultations with teachers as they plan their lessons. Our paper will also share our current draft of our engineering lesson menu, a resource we co-constructed with our year one participants after reflecting on their experiences teaching engineering during the first year. This resource organizes activities by length of time or that introduce engineering to and engineering design to students. Implications of this work include developing a better understanding of how elementary school teachers develop into teachers of engineering and creating a new model of engineering professional development.

Authored by
Dr. Jessica Swenson (University at Buffalo, The State University of New York), Dr. Mary McVee (Affiliation unknown), and Mr. Duncan H Mullins (University at Buffalo, The State University of New York)

This paper provides insight into recent work of our NSF Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) grant *******. We are in a five-year process of transformation with the following goals: #1 Enhance critical consciousness and expand group capacity - Make visible personal and institutional structures and Grow faculty capacity for revolutionary justice-based change; #2: Interrupt structures that inhibit action - Deepen relationships between and among students, staff, and faculty and Heal from oppression; and #3: Dismantle and Reimagine - Identify and understand structures of oppression within, impacting, and impacted by **department** and Ideate, prototype, and test alternative structures in a continual reflective process. Significant work this past year includes department-driven calls around supporting (new) faculty in their success, engagement, sense of belonging, and any other way (new) faculty might define their experiences in the ****** department. Faculty identified three key areas to be attentive to: onboarding (from informational to creating the conditions for transformation), mentoring, and community through facilitated dialogue sessions. We initiated research strands on the student experience and equitable teaching practices in our department. This paper and accompanying poster highlights key aspects of our work during the past year.

Authored by
Dr. Lynne A Slivovsky (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo), Dr. Lizabeth L Thompson P.E. (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo), Dr. Jane L. Lehr (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo), Dr. Andrew Danowitz (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo), Dr. Bridget Benson (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo), Dr. John Y Oliver (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo), and Prof. Nina J. Truch (Affiliation unknown)

This paper describes an effort aimed at understanding and highlighting the relationship between robotics and students underrepresented in engineering in a new setting: undergraduate research. Recently, a unique research community emerged as a result of two previously funded projects: (1) a soft robotics undergraduate research group for students underrepresented in engineering and (2) a robotic wheelchair project, [redacted project acronym]. The [redacted] project has educational goals for undergraduate students and created a dedicated maker lab on campus. Both projects have attracted students with physical disabilities to participate in undergraduate research working on assistive technologies. We aim to use qualitative engineering education research methods developed in the NSF RIEF program, to study this unique cohort to understand supports and barriers for students with physical disabilities to contribute to research. Grounded in Social Cognitive Career Theory we set out to understand factors that influence research in human-centered engineering design as a support for career success for students with disabilities. The research design set out to answer the research question, What factors impact self-efficacy and career interest as a result of a human-centered robotics design research experience?

Authored by
Prof. Holly M Golecki (University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign), Prof. Elizabeth T Hsiao-Wecksler (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Yvonne Ilozuluike (The University of Illinois at Chicago)

The TURNPIKE (Transfer Undergraduate Rural/Nontraditional Student Pathways through Identity, Knowledge & Engagement) S-STEM project is a collaboration between a community college, Polk State College (PSC), and the University of South Florida (USF) College of Engineering (CoE). This community college is in a largely rural county with significantly higher poverty rates and lower education attainment rates compared to state and national averages. Many students from Polk State College are low-income, first-generation-in-college, and part-time. Most recently, during the 2022-2023 academic year, 58 percent of its first time, in-college, full-time students were awarded Pell grants, while 84 percent overall received some type (e.g., scholarships, loans, work-study, and grants) of financial aid [1]. Due to the financial challenges, non-traditional students often find it difficult to transfer to a four-year university to complete their studies. The students participating in the S-STEM program may receive up to $10,000 per year of scholarship depending on their unmet financial need. The duration of the scholarship support is two years at PSC and two years in USF. Overall, the objective of this program is to create a successful bridging pathway from associate to baccalaureate degree completion through curricular, co-curricular, social, and financial interventions for academically talented, low-income transfer students from community college to the University of South Florida. Addressing this targeted population, we focus on increasing the retention and graduation rates for financially challenging students [traditional and non-traditional students] pursuing engineering and computing degrees. Aligned with this goal, we seek to provide students access to co-curricular activities and university-wide resources that will enrich their education and career development.

The co-curricular supporting activities include learning teams/tutoring sessions, biweekly professional development meetings, and intrusive academic support through one-to-one personalized advising and mentorship. This paper outlines how implementing and developing these program's intervention activities, specifically learning teams/tutoring sessions and professional development meetings increases the retention of traditional and non-traditional students in engineering majors and their impact on the students’ education and academic development. In this paper, the students participating in our program are referred as scholars.

Authored by
Mrs. Maile Sinclair-Baxter (University of South Florida), Dr. Sanjukta Bhanja (University of South Florida), and Mr. Bernard L. Batson (University of South Florida)

This poster paper details the goals, execution, and intended outcomes and deliverables for Year 2 of the project: “Greenway Institute of Elizabethtown College Center for Sustainability and Equity in Engineering.” This project has been funded by the Division of Engineering Education and Centers (Award #2219807) and was initiated due to calls to integrated hands-on learning, sustainability, and equity into the undergraduate engineering curriculum. In Year 1, the Greenway Center for Equity and Sustainability (GCES) ran a pilot semester focused on project-based mastery-assessed learning (Atwood et al., 2024). In Year 2, GCES is pivoting to a work-integrated learning model where students will spend 20-40 hours at a worksite with integrated engineering coursework. Initial data and outcomes have been collected for both the project-based learning and the work-integrated learning pilot semesters, in Year 1 and 2 respectively.

Specifically, this poster paper will focus on two studies to explore each pilot semester. Project 1 will explore the outcomes from the project-based learning pilot and compare the experiences with students who remained at the main campus location. Project 2 will focus on exploring the pivot to a work-integrated learning model for the Spring 2025 pilot. Our preliminary findings demonstrate that students valued the project-based learning and mastery-assessment approach. We also found that the opportunity to “earn while you learn” is attractive to students in signing up for the work-integrated pilot of the program and increased recruitment yield from Year 1 to Year 2. Furthermore, in addition to the pay, students valued the opportunity to engage in an engineering role that aligned with their coursework and career exploration. The initial findings and results for this work will support future iterations of the GCES and have implications for engineering education research and practice. While project-based learning and cooperative education programs have both been implemented and studied across engineering disciplines and programs, true work-integrated learning is less common in undergraduate engineering education in the United States. Based on this work, we recommend engineering education continue to move past traditional models of instruction and work, to consider innovative approaches such as work-integrated learning.

Authored by
Dr. Sophia Vicente (Elizabethtown College), Hannah Root (Affiliation unknown), Annick J Dewald (Affiliation unknown), Dr. Sara A. Atwood (Elizabethtown College), Rebecca Holcombe (Affiliation unknown), and Dr. Brenda Read-Daily (Elizabethtown College)