2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The belief that we can improve our skills through learning and effort corresponds to having a growth mindset, while the belief in the inherent nature of our skills aligns with a fixed mindset. As innovative design requires consistent effort and learning from failures, practicing a growth mindset can help undergraduate students in the chemical engineering program to become better designers in the long run. It can also aid in improving the retention of students in the major, especially those from marginalized backgrounds. With these goals in mind, we implemented growth mindset interventions in a core chemical engineering course in the undergraduate curriculum, which is offered twice in our institution. The control group (N=18) and the intervention group (N=17) consisted of students from the Fall semester and the Spring semester respectively. We performed quantitative analysis (chi-square test of independence) to study the impact of gender, under-represented minority (URM) background, and first-generation background on the students’ mindsets for both groups. We also collected qualitative responses from the students to strengthen our analysis. We previously reported a correlation between gender and mindset (p<0.05) about the chemical engineering major in the control group. Interestingly, we did not observe the same correlation in the intervention group. This suggested that the interventions were beneficial in reducing the gender gap related to the mindset about the major, although it would be important to verify the reproducibility of this observation with a larger sample size. The student responses in the qualitative data were mostly positive, indicating improved mindsets as well as better academic experiences. We are currently continuing this study with additional upgrades in our mindset interventions.