2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Motivations and Barriers to Participation in Community Outreach and Engagement Among Environmental and Water Resources Engineering Students

Universities serve as a hub for the advancement of water science and engineering knowledge and innovations. Communities outside of academia hold equally valid expertise on water and environmental topics. However, there is a lack of avenues for knowledge exchange between academia and non-academic communities including homeowners, industry professionals, policy makers, and K-12 students and teachers. Many universities and research centers attempt to enhance knowledge sharing by organizing broader impact outreach events such as lab tours, demonstrations, hands-on activities, and public presentations. This work studies water-focused students who we define to be students from all disciplines (engineering, biology, sociology, geography, planning, etc.) that study water resources, quality, treatment, and management. Anecdotally, we have seen that of a pool of approximately 100 water-focused students, only the same small subset participates in every event while over 70% of those invited never volunteer. Therefore, there is a need to assess why we see this occurrence. This study aims to survey undergraduate and graduate student water scholars’ motivations and barriers for participating in volunteer broader impact outreach events outside of their degree requirements. This study collected quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data were collected through Likert-scale type responses to motivating and hindering factors. Qualitative data were collected through written responses to questions on specific positive or negative student experiences and attitudes. Four main outreach trends emerged: 1) Students enjoy attending outreach events and find it helpful to themselves and to society; 2) Attending events leads students to want to participate in more; 3) Lack of time is by far the top hinderance; 4) Students are motivated by mentor support. Study findings suggest three possible steps to implementing a targeted strategy for broader impact student outreach that aligns with student desires at university research centers: 1) Choice of outreach events should emphasize the contribution to society; 2) Outreach recruitment should emphasize skills students will gain; 3) Faculty mentors should genuinely support their students’ outreach endeavors including finding relevant outreach opportunities.