2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Eighteen STEM major undergraduate and graduate students at two Texas regional institutions conducted a public research survey on rural flooding in the spring of 2022. This was accomplished in the largest regional flood planning area in Texas, the Canadian – Upper Red River Basin Regional Flood Planning Area, or Region 1. The student participants interviewed rural residents in portions of Western and Central Texas, using both phone and in-person interviews. The survey provided data that defined the nature of observed flooding in rural areas and needed mitigation efforts for future flooding risks. The students who conducted the public outreach study were from several different majors (Geoscience, Environmental Science, and Engineering) and cultural backgrounds.
The students who conducted the flood research interview were surveyed for a post-study assessment using two research instruments – a Qualtrics survey and personal interviews. All eighteen students were solicited for the Qualtrics survey and were asked questions related to the study’s effectiveness, strengths and weaknesses, and impacts on professional development. A subset of eight students (four from each university) were also interviewed and asked a set of 12 questions related to the project roles, expectations, training, difficulty of work, and personal and professional lessons. The questions from the personal interviews fell into three major themes: research enterprise, student experiences, and educational gains.
Preliminary results indicate that students who conducted the flood research interview work found that it was a positive experience in terms of building their skills and confidence in conducting outreach research. In terms of student pre-study expectations, about half of the students interviewed had their general expectations met, while the other half had their expectations challenged. Students who felt a strong connection to their local community and university had the most positive perceptions of their outreach work with respect to both effectively gathering data for the research and building skill sets for future careers. Students found that there was a stark contrast between the perceptions of flooding in rural, private locales versus urban, shared community regions. The strong ties of regional universities to local rural communities, as well as the increased willingness of the public to speak to student researchers, were both found to be important aspects of study effectiveness. Results from the student surveys also elucidate the importance of paying students to participate in the research so that they are able to recover lost wages from their regular day jobs, and to allow as much flexibility as possible in student research participation. The students who participated in the flood research interview found the study to be highly effective in both meeting project goals (obtaining flood outreach data from the public) as well as building a wide range of valuable student skills (e.g., interpersonal, teamwork, leadership, time management, and interviewing). Finally, the work we present here highlights the need to involve student researchers during times in the academic semester when general availability is highest (i.e., the beginning of the academic semesters) and to recompense students sufficiently to mitigate salary loss from their regular employment.