2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Development and First-Year Outcomes of a NSF-Funded Summer Research Internship Program to Engage Community College Students in Engineering Research

Presented at Engineering and Engineering Technology Transfer and the Two-Year College Student Part 2

Increasing the recruitment and retention of engineering students is essential to produce sufficient professional engineers for continued US economic growth and competitiveness in today’s technology sectors. Undergraduate engineering research experience has been identified as an effective approach to increase student engagement, academic performance, and retention rates. Community colleges play a significant role in today’s US higher education; however, conducting basic research at community colleges is challenging due to limited resources and opportunities. With support from the National Science Foundation’s Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (IUSE-HSI) Program, a collaborative summer research internship program between a public four-year degree institution and two local community colleges has been developed to provide community college students with impactful engineering research opportunities and hands-on experiences. In summer 2022, the 8-week research internship program engaged ten community college students from diverse backgrounds to participate in four engineering research projects across several engineering disciplines. Each project team was supervised by at least a faculty advisor and a student peer mentor enrolled in the four-year university. The research outcomes of the internship projects, as well as the external evaluation results based on both quantitative and qualitative methods, have shown that the summer research internship program was a great success in allowing the student interns to gain valuable engineering research experience and in strengthening their confidence and interest in pursuing an engineering degree. Furthermore, the program improved the students’ technical skillset, team collaboration, time management, and communication skills. The first-year development and implementation of the program, as well as its outcomes and lessons learned, will be presented in this paper.

Authors

Dr. Xiaorong Zhang San Francisco State University [biography]

Dr. Xiaorong Zhang is an Associate Professor in Computer Engineering in the School of Engineering at San Francisco State University (SFSU). She is the Director of the Intelligent Computing and Embedded Systems Laboratory (ICE Lab) at SFSU. She has broad research experience in human-machine interfaces, embedded systems, and engineering education. She is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award to develop the next-generation neural-machine interfaces (NMI) for electromyography (EMG)-controlled neurorehabilitation. She is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a member of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). She has served in the professional societies in various capacities including the Chair of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) San Francisco Chapter (2018-present), an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (2020-present) and IEEE Inside Signal Processing E-Newsletter (2016-2018), organization and program committee members of various international conferences, and a regular reviewer of a variety of journals and conferences in related fields.
Dr. David Quintero http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3400-9535 San Francisco State University [biography]

Dr. David Quintero received B.S. degree from Texas A&M University, a M.S. degree from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas all in mechanical engineering. He is now an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at San Francisco State University. He teaches courses in control systems and mechatronics. His current research interests include design of hybrid actuators for wearable robots, rehabilitation engineering, biomechanics, assistive robotics, and biomechatronic systems.
Fatemeh Khalkhal San Francisco State University [biography]

Dr. Khalkhal is an assistant professor in mechanical engineering at San Francisco State University (a primarily undergraduate and Hispanic-serving Institution). Her research experience is in developing structure-property relationships in complex fluids and polymer composites, broadening the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in engineering, and understanding the relationship between teamwork experience and team disagreements in the formation of engineering identity among diverse students.
Dr. Zhaoshuo Jiang http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-4931-1622 San Francisco State University [biography]

Dr. Jiang graduated from the University of Connecticut with a Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering. He worked as a structural engineer in multiple firms (e.g., Skidmore, Owings & Merrill), before joining San Francisco State University as a faculty member. As a licensed professional engineer in the states of Connecticut and California, Dr. Jiang has been involved in the design of a variety of low-rise and high-rise projects, including office towers, retails, hotels, courthouses, and theatres according to the U.S. and international building codes. He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC), Structural Engineers Association of Northern California (SEAONC), Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), and American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE).
Dr. Zhuwei Qin San Francisco State University
Dr. Jenna Wong San Francisco State University [biography]

Dr. Wong is an Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering at San Francisco State University (SFSU). Her research interests focus on traditional and sustainable structural resilience and engineering education. Her doctorate research at UC Berkeley investigated the applicability of seismic isolation and supplemental viscous damping to nuclear power plants with focus on seismic resilience and safety. After receiving her PhD, Dr. Wong began a post-doctoral fellowship at Lawrence National Laboratory focusing on computational analysis for nonlinear seismic analysis of Department of Energy nuclear facilities and systems. She has established an active research lab at SFSU with a diverse group of undergraduate and Master's level students. For her engineering education research, she is interested in exploring how to use technology such as virtual reality and 3D printing to enhance student engagement. She is an active member of ASCE, ASEE, and SEAONC.
Dr. Yiyi Wang San Francisco State University [biography]

Yiyi Wang is an assistant professor of civil engineering at San Francisco State University. In addition to engineering education, her research also focuses on the nexus between mapping, information technology, and transportation and has published in Accident Analysis & Prevention, Journal of Transportation Geography, and Annuals of Regional Science. She served on the Transportation Research Board (TRB) ABJ80 Statistical Analysis committee and the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) panel. She advises the student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) at SFSU.
Dr. Wenshen Pong, P.E. San Francisco State University [biography]

Wenshen Pong received his Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He joined the School of Engineering at San Francisco State University in 1998. He teaches courses in Civil/Structural Engineering. He has received many grants from NSF, Department of Education and NASA.
Dr. Robert Petrulis [biography]

Dr. Petrulis is an independent consultant specializing in education-related project evaluation and research. He is based in Columbia, South Carolina.

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