2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Earlier studies have shown that participating in research as an undergraduate student can help students explore their interest in graduate school (Seymour et al., 2004), develop research skills (Thiry et al., 2012), and improve learning outcomes (Taraban et al., 2008). Further, undergraduate research has been shown to help students attain higher levels of competence in STEM, thus positioning them to be strong contributors to the STEM workforce (Gates et al., 1999). Thus, we argue that providing undergraduate engineering students co-curricular learning opportunities to deepen their knowledge of recent STEM advances will enable them to become young engineers who are primed to innovate and push the boundaries of existing knowledge. Accordingly, in this paper, we focus on an undergraduate research program housed in a Mechanical and Materials Engineering (MME) Department at a land-grant university in the mid-west. This program gives undergraduate MME students at this university the opportunity to conduct research with faculty members in the MME department. Students can initially enroll in the program for an academic year and are able to reapply for participation during the summer and subsequent academic years. The goal of the undergraduate research program is to enhance student outcomes, including retention, academic success, and the likelihood of pursuing graduate studies. In order to determine the impact of this program on student outcomes, the authors are in the early stages of conducting a longitudinal qualitative research study. This large-scale study will collect interview data from student participants over the course of their participation in the program as well as post-graduation. We are currently piloting entry and exit interview protocols with the 2022-2023 cohort of undergraduate student researchers. This work-in-progress paper will report preliminary findings from the entry interview protocols in order to validate the instruments and enable us to answer the research question: How does participation in a long-term undergraduate research experience impact student outcomes?