2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Work in Progress: Transformation Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (T-CURE)

Presented at Transfer issues between 2-year colleges and 4-year Engineering and Engineering Technology programs 3

Undergraduate research experiences are well-established as a high impact practice for students. Transitions, including those from community colleges, are often challenging for students to navigate and may lead to retention issues. In this project, we designed a summer course to leverage undergraduate research as a mechanism for supporting students during programmatic and campus transitions. We recruited from dual credit (e.g., “Running Start”) programs, incoming transfer students from local two-year institutions, and undeclared STEM students. In the course, we included transformational experiences and personal artifacts as a way to enhance research identity and build community. The personal artifacts were used as a tool to allow students to share an aspect of themselves with the research class.

Student worksheets and reflective essays were collected to assess identity related tasks and reflections in the course. Students completed a survey about the class experience, with 100% of students reporting agreement that the class had a positive sense of community and collaboration.

Authors

Dr. Heather Dillon http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4467-2306 University of Washington [biography]

Dr. Heather Dillon is Professor and Chair of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington Tacoma. Her research team is working on energy efficiency, renewable energy, fundamental heat transfer, and engineering education.
EC Cline University of Washington Tacoma [biography]

Associate Professor in Sciences and Mathematics, and Director of ACCESS in STEM, an NSF S-STEM supported program that supports students in natural science, mathematics, and engineering at UW Tacoma.
Dr. Emese Hadnagy University of Washington Tacoma [biography]

Dr. Emese Hadnagy is an associate professor and chair of the BS Civil Engineering program at the University of Washington Tacoma. Dr. Hadnagy received her Ph.D. at the University of New Hampshire. Her work falls in the broad areas of surface water quality assessment, physicochemical treatment technology development, and engineering education research.
Dr. Sarah L Rodriguez http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3409-7096 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

Sarah L. Rodriguez is an Associate Professor of Engineering Education and an affiliate faculty member with the Higher Education Program at Virginia Tech. Her engineering education research agenda centers upon engineering and computing identity development of historically marginalized populations at higher education institutions. Currently, Dr. Rodriguez is involved with several large-scale interdisciplinary research projects focused on institutional environments and STEM identity development are sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Kapor Center. In recent years, she was selected as an Early Career Awardee and Faculty Fellow with the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) and a NASPA Emerging Faculty Leader. She also received the Barbara Townsend Early Career Scholar Award by the Council for the Study of Community Colleges (CSCC) and gave the distinguished ASHE-CAHEP Barbara Townsend Lecture. To learn more about her current projects, visit http://sarahlrodriguez.com/
Amanda K Sesko http://orcid.org/https://0000-0001-7238-8962 University of Washington Tacoma [biography]

Dr. Sesko received her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Kansas in 2011 and is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington Tacoma. Dr. Sesko is a stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination researcher. Her work focuses on how stereotypes guide judgments of, memory for, and behavior directed at individuals belonging to stereotyped groups. For example, in her primary line of research Dr. Sesko examines the processes and outcomes of intersectional invisibility—a form of discrimination characterized by not being attended to, remembered, represented, differentiated from others, or given recognition for contributions—experienced by individual’s with multiple stigmatized identities (e.g., Black women; Sesko & Biernat, 2010, 2018).
Dr. Rebecca N Sliger Tacoma Community College
Noelle Wilson

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