2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Our S-STEM program Humanitarian Engineering and Science Ambassadors (HESA) supports the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated need at Colorado School of Mines. Our program is grounded in a funds of knowledge (FOK) approach to teaching and learning, mentorship, and student professional development. Funds of knowledge are “historically-accumulated and culturally-developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and wellbeing” (Gonzalez et al. 2005). Our previous research found that low-income engineering students who could make connections between their FOK and their engineering learning had stronger self-efficacy beliefs, interest in engineering, and a sense of graduation certainty. Whereas the students in our previous study had developed this “connecting” skill on their own, our program provides a formal platform for low-income students to learn and practice those connecting skills at the graduate level. This will allow us to investigate through pre- and post-surveys whether “connecting” skills can be developed through mentorship and whether connecting skills enhance their self-efficacy, STEM identities, and persistence beliefs. This poster shares the results from student surveys at the beginning of our first academic year of the program. Specifically, we highlight the particular FOK held by our students as they entered graduate school and we identify differences in student undergraduate experiences based on their intersectional identities. For example, we found that women were more likely than men to connect individual FOK with their graduate coursework and had strong STEM identities (including feelings of being recognized as being an engineer or scientist), even though they reported lower levels of belongingness in STEM. Students who identified as Latinx reported stronger FOK related to tinkering, strong internal and external recognition of being a scientist or engineer, and higher levels of grit; however, they simultaneously reported lower levels of belonging in their undergraduate science and engineering courses, graduation certainty, and university support. Students with the greatest financial need reported lower levels of belongingness, self-efficacy, recognition, and university support, but stronger tinkering funds of knowledge. This research underlines the demographic differences present among low-income STEM students and points to fruitful areas of mentorship and professional development that take into consideration the intersectionality of students’ identities.