2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This complete evidence-based practice paper examines the extent to which targeted curricular and co-curricular activities impact first-year students’ sense of belonging in engineering, and whether these impacts differ by gender identity. The focus on belonging was grounded in existing research suggesting that affective factors including sense of belonging, engineering identity, and self-efficacy play important yet not fully understood roles in engineering students’ academic progress and successful progression toward engineering careers.
A quasi-experimental, mixed methods design was employed with a sample consisting of first-year student participants in a grant-funded scholarship program (Scholars), plus a matched comparison group of first-year students who were not program participants (Comparison). All student participants were pre-major engineering students. The scholarship program provides curricular and co-curricular supports for pre-major students during their first and second year. These include a summer bridge program, cohort course structure, multilevel mentoring, social events, and 2 years of financial support. The summer bridge program is a week-long course that all scholarship students take prior to the start of the academic year. It includes math review, hands-on projects, cohort building activities, and social events. All scholars were enrolled in the same courses (math, physics, and engineering) during their first quarter to help support development of their cohort and were also provided with peer mentors and faculty advisors. Comparison students did not receive any of these support elements.
Both groups completed a pre-survey in the fall of the first academic year and a post-survey in the fall of their second academic year, with Scholars additionally participating in online focus groups held during the spring of their first academic year. A modified version of an existing instrument was used for survey data collection, while focus group protocols were developed by the project team. Due to small sample sizes within individual cohorts, three cohorts’ worth of survey data were combined before performing analyses. This resulted in a total n=28 Scholar responses (12 women, 16 men) and n=31 Comparison responses (10 women, 21 men) on the pre-survey along with n=21 Scholar responses (10 women, 11 men) and n=11 Comparison responses (5 women, 6 men) on the post-survey. Mean scores on the pre and post surveys were calculated for both individual items and composite factors assessing students’ sense of belonging and disaggregated according to student type (scholarship participant vs. comparison) and binary gender identity.
Comparing Scholars and Comparison students overall, mean scores on measures of belonging were similar between groups except for being accepted in engineering where Scholars scored higher on the pre-survey. The most noteworthy finding from survey data analyses was women Scholars scoring higher than women Comparison students on measures of belonging related to engineering. On the pre-survey, women Scholars scored higher than women Comparison students and men students (both Scholars and Comparison) on composite factors measuring sense of belonging in engineering major, engineering classroom, and engineering in general as well as individual items assessing feelings of enjoying being in engineering, being a part of engineering, being committed to engineering, being supported in engineering, and being accepted in engineering. A potential explanation for this finding is that participation in the summer bridge experience (which occurs before students complete their pre-survey in the fall of the first year) is particularly impactful on women engineering students’ sense of belonging. However, data also show that both Scholars and Comparison women see a decrease in belonging in the engineering major over the first year while men students experience an increase during this same period. This might be attributed to the impact of the first-year women students’ experiences as non-majority students in the department. Another interesting finding is that women Scholars scored higher on measures of “I am part of engineering” than men counterparts (both Scholars and Comparison) on both the pre and the post survey. This study helps us to gain insights into the women experience in the scholarship program, specifically related to belonging, which can help to inform future work related to supporting underrepresented students in engineering.