2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 354: Organizational Partnerships S-STEM Research Hub

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

The objective of the Research on Organizational Partnerships in Education and STEM (ROPES) Hub is to advance understanding of organizational partnerships that support academic pathways for domestic low-income engineering students. Partnerships across the education system are essential for improving STEM; achieving the systematic, structural, or sustainable change desired by programs such as NSF’s Scholarships for STEM Students (S-STEM) program is seldom achieved by individual isolated units and often requires partnerships across silos within an academic institution (i.e., intra-institution partnerships) and across institutions (i.e., inter-institution partnerships). However, how such partnerships are built, designed, and sustained remains a great challenge facing the field. This Hub, led by a collaborative team from Virginia Tech, Weber State University, Northern Virginia Community College, and the University of Cincinnati, is working to organize groups to conduct research focused on supporting low-income undergraduate engineering, computer science, and computing students in ways that are congruent with the institutional context and resources while going beyond the direct impact on S-STEM Scholars to impact departments and institutions involved. We are zooming in on the institutional infrastructure and collaborative work between researchers, administrators and practitioners, and policymakers.
The overarching research question guiding the hub is: How can intra- and inter-institutional partnerships be designed, built, and sustained to systematically support low-income engineering student success? Answering this question requires a research hub because understanding different models of organizational partnerships—and linking such research to student outcomes across a variety of institutional contexts—requires a focus across S-STEM programs that is only enabled by a research hub approach; it cannot happen in a single S-STEM program. An important contribution of this work will be to characterize aspects of problems in which collaboration and partnerships can be most helpful—supporting low-income engineering students aiming to earn a bachelor’s degree fits these conditions, representing the kind of complex system of interacting, interdependent stakeholders with differing expertise and with no systematic organization of stakeholders.

Authors

Dr. David B Knight http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4576-2490 Virginia Tech [biography]

David Knight is a Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech and also serves as Special Assistant to the Dean for Strategic Plan Implementation in the College of Engineering. His research tends to be at the macro-scale, focused on a systems-level perspective of how engineering education can become more effective, efficient, and inclusive, and considers the intersection between policy and organizational contexts. Knight currently serves as the co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Engineering Education.
Dr. Bevlee A. Watford Virginia Tech [biography]

Watford is Professor of Engineering Education, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Executive Director of the Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity.
Dr. Walter C. Lee http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5082-1411 Virginia Tech [biography]

Dr. Walter Lee is an associate professor in the Department of Engineering Education and the director for research at the Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity (CEED), both at Virginia Tech.
Dr. Jacob R. Grohs Virginia Tech [biography]

Jacob Grohs is an Assistant Professor in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech with Affiliate Faculty status in Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics and the Learning Sciences and Technologies at Virginia Tech. He holds degrees in Engineering Mechanics (
Dr. Teri Kristine Reed http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6804-9826 OU Polytechnic Institute [biography]

Teri K. Reed is the inaugural Director of the OU Polytechnic Institute and Professor and George Kaiser Family Foundation Chair at OU-Tulsa.
Dr. P.K. Imbrie University of Cincinnati [biography]

P.K. Imbrie is the Head and Professor of the Department of Engineering Education and a Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
University of Cincinnati. He received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University. He is an advocate for research-based approaches to engineering education, curricular reform, and student retention. Imbrie conducts both traditional, as well as educational research in experimental mechanics, piezospectroscopic techniques, epistemologies, assessment, and modeling of student learning, student success, student team effectiveness, and global competencies He helped establish the scholarly foundation for engineering education as an academic discipline through lead authorship of the landmark 2006 JEE special reports “The National Engineering Education Research Colloquies” and “The Research Agenda for the New Discipline of Engineering Education.” He has a passion for designing state-of-the-art learning spaces. While at Purdue University, Imbrie co-led the creation of the First-Year Engineering Program’s Ideas to Innovation (i2i) Learning Laboratory, a design-oriented facility that engages students in team-based, socially relevant projects. While at Texas A&M University Imbrie co-led the design of a 525,000 square foot state-of-the-art engineering education focused facility; the largest educational building in the state. His expertise in educational pedagogy, student learning, and teaching has impacted thousands of students at the universities for which he has been associated. Imbrie is nationally recognized for his work in active/collaborative learning pedagogies, teaming and student success modeling. His engineering education leadership has produced fundamental changes in the way students are educated around the world.

Imbrie has been a member of ASEE since 2000 and has been actively involved with the Society in various capacities. He has served in multiple leadership roles in the ERM and FPD divisions, including: ERM board of directors (2002-2004), program chair for ERM (2005 and 2009), ERM program chair for Frontiers in Education (FIE) (2004), FIE Steering Committee ERM representative (2003-2009), as well as program chair (2016) and division chair (2016-17) for FPD. He has also served on two ASEE advisory committees.
Dustin Grote http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9189-2424 Weber State University [biography]

Dustin currently serves as an Assistant Professor in Teacher Education at Weber State University and leads the higher education leadership program. He holds a PhD from Virginia Tech in Higher Education. His interdisciplinary research agenda includes gradu
Mrs. Amy Richardson Virginia Tech [biography]

Amy Richardson is a Graduate Research Assistant at Virginia Tech in the Department of Engineering Education along with an Assistant Professor of Engineering at Northern Virginia Community College. She has been teaching math and engineering courses at com
Dr. Michelle D. Klopfer Virginia Tech
Dr. Saundra Johnson Austin http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6432-0896 Virginia Tech [biography]

Dr. Saundra Johnson Austin has dedicated her career to promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging of elementary, middle, and high school students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and careers. Her research is grounded in the effective implementation of STEM curricula in urban middle schools. She has published and presented on STEM education and organizational change. Dr. Johnson Austin earned a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University, a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Notre Dame, and Doctor of Education in Organizational Change and Leadership from the University of Southern California.

At the University of South Florida (USF) she leads the project coordination for the National Science Foundation Florida Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (FL-AGEP), a $2.4M award to Florida A&M University (with a subaward to USF and Virginia Tech), Bethune-Cookman University, Florida International, and Florida Memorial University. Also, Dr. Johnson Austin is the project coordinator and Co-Principal Investigator for the USF Project Racism In School Exclusionary Suspensions (RISES), a $30k grant awarded to explore the suspensions of African American middle and high school students in Hillsborough and Pinellas County Florida.

Dr. Johnson Austin held positions as: math faculty at Academy Prep Center of Tampa; executive director of Curated PathwaysTM to Innovation; senior vice president for operations at the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, Inc.; president and CEO of St. Michael’s High School; executive vice president of the Community Partnership for Lifelong Learning; executive director of the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science; and Minority Engineering Program director at The Pennsylvania State University. She began her career as a cost engineering at Bechtel Power Corporation. In 2007 she founded Charis Consulting Group, LLC.

Dr. Johnson Austin was recognized by numerous organizations for her work in promoting equity and access to STEM education. Her most notable award is the 2015 Outstanding Engineering Alumnus in Civil and Environmental Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University. In addition, she was awarded the 2004-2005 Selected Professions Fellowship by the American Association of University Women (AAUW). Dr. Johnson Austin was awarded in 2007 the Strengthening Our Communities Inaugural Community Educational Leadership Award at the 2nd Annual Celebrate Literacy Conference. In 1998, she was recognized with the National Society of Black Engineers’ (NSBE) Inaugural Golden Torch Award for Minority Engineering Program Director of the Year and the Outstanding Contribution by a Minority Engineering Program Administrator Award by the National Association of Multicultural Engineering Program Advocates (NAMEPA).

She is a member of various STEM organizations including the United States White House endorsed initiative under the Obama Administration, Algebra by 7th Grade, and advisory committee member for the Smithsonian Science Education Center’s ‘Zero Barriers in STEM Education.’ Dr. Johnson Austin is currently the President of the American Association of University Women Tampa, Inc., consultant to the board for the Caribbean Community Association of Tampa, and Treasurer for the Northeast STEM Starter Academy of Mount Vernon, NY.

Dr. Johnson Austin is a member of the editorial review board for the Caribbean Educational Research Journal (CERJ). She also served as a reviewer for the National Science Foundation’s CS for All Pathways, HBCU-Up, INCLUDES Conference and INCLUDES Launch Pilot.

She enjoys doing yoga, spending time on the beach, and mentoring young girls and women in STEM studies and careers.
Dr. Bruk T. Berhane Florida International University [biography]

Dr. Bruk T. Berhane received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland in 2003. He holds an M.S. in engineering management from the George Washington University and a Ph.D. in minority and urban education from the University of Maryland. In 2003, Bruk was hired by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), where he worked on nanotechnology and microsystems. In 2005 he left JHUAPL for a fellowship with the National Academies and researched methods of increasing the number of women in engineering. Later that year, he briefly served as a mathematics instructor in Baltimore City High Schools.

From 2005 through 2018, Dr. Berhane directed engineering recruitment and scholarship programs for the University of Maryland. He oversaw an increase in the admission of students of color and women during his tenure and supported initiatives that reduce the time to degree for transfers from Maryland community colleges. The broader implications of his research are informed by his comprehensive experiences as a college administrator. His areas of scholarly interest include: 1) Broadening participation in engineering through community college pathways and 2) Experiences of first and second-generation African diasporic Americans in engineering undergraduate programs.

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