2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This paper discusses the lessons learned and some findings from formative assessment of the first four years of a five-year National Science Foundation S-STEM project entitled “Creating Retention and Engagement for Academically Talented Engineers (CREATE)”. The project is located in the College of Engineering of a large western land-grant university and has retained 26 of the original 32 students (referred to as scholars) who were selected to be part of two cohorts of 16 each. The scholars were selected from a large pool of applicants based on academic talent and financial need. Six new scholars replaced the ones who left, with currently a total of 32 scholars in the program. Current scholars identify as 21 male, 11 female, 18 white, 8 Hispanic, 1 Black, and 5 Asian. Program numbers mirror similar enrollment trends to the College with the following exceptions: higher female and students of color enrolled.
Based on qualitative data collected during focus groups conducted every semester, as well as a site visit by the external project evaluator, we highlight the following findings: 1. CREATE has contributed to development of both scholars and peer mentors as engineers via the information they have learned at the theme seminars that are required of the CREATE scholars; 2. Third-year scholars found faculty mentors more useful than peer mentors as their focus shifted to learning about job opportunities, internships, undergraduate research and graduate school; 3. Scholars’ goals have become more defined in the later years through a mentoring process that asks scholars about their goals and examines progress toward those goals; and, 4. Undergraduate research funded by CREATE has been very well received by both scholars and their research mentors. After retrospection on 4 years of running the CREATE program, we identified a few lessons learned: 1. CREATE peer mentors were vital to the scholars during the first two years, but the mentorship program would benefit from some small changes: (i) CREATE could have provided more training to the peer mentors on how to deal with scholars’ personal issues; (ii) CREATE could have assigned fewer scholar mentees to their peer mentors; (iii) Matching scholars’ majors to peer mentor majors and updating the questions that peer mentors asked their mentees were also suggested by mentors and mentees; 2. CREATE may have given information on careers and graduate school a bit too early in the program to the second cohort and hence sequencing the timing of theme seminars could have been improved. However, scholars from both cohorts have garnered internships;
The mixed methods engineering educational research study that is part of the CREATE program has involved collecting quantitative survey and qualitative focus group data every semester and has resulted in several publications/presentations [1 – 4]. Recent important findings from this research are: 1. Students' perceptions of recognition changed as they gained experience with their engineering identities; 2. Students identified different performance/competence-related needs for identity growth as they went through their program; and 3. Students considered cost and their performance/competence beliefs as they made pathway decisions after they identified additional disciplinary interests.
References
1. K. Scalaro, I. Chatterjee, A-M. Vollstedt, J.L. Lacombe and A. Kirn, “A two-step model for the interpretation of meaningful recognition”, Proceedings of the 2021 ASEE Annual Virtual Conference, July 26-29, 2021.
2. K. Scalaro, I. Chatterjee, A-M. Vollstedt, J.L. Lacombe, A. Kirn, “Is this the real life? Exploring how virtual learning environments influence engineering identity”, Proceedings of the Frontiers of Engineering Conference, 2021, October 13-16, 2021, Lincoln, Nebraska.
3. K. Scalaro, I. Chatterjee, A-M. Vollstedt, J.L. Lacombe, A. Kirn, “From knowledge to doing: Changes in performance/competence beliefs of developing engineers”, Proceedings of the 2022 ASEE Conference & Exposition, June 26 – 29, 2022, Minneapolis, MN.
4. K. Scalaro, I. Chatterjee, A-M. Vollstedt, J.L. Lacombe, A. Kirn, “Engineering interests dynamic major pathways”, Proceedings of the 2023 ASEE Conference & Exposition, June 24 – 28, 2023, Baltimore, MD.