2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Crossing the Threshold: Improving STEM Graduate Student Education through Project Management Skills Training

Presented at Graduate Studies Division (GSD) Technical Session 5: Skill Development in Graduate Education

Graduates Advancing Professional Skills (GAPS), a National Science Foundation-funded program, aims to bridge the professional skills gap in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) graduate education. GAPS is a one-credit course offered since the Fall of 2020, and it prepared 72 graduate STEM students to implement project management (PM) techniques to enhance their research competencies and adaptation to their future careers in both academia and industry. Our prior studies collected students' immediate feedback from four cohorts during their training, indicating GAPS' effectiveness through the short-term assessment of students’ positive transformative project management awareness and application regardless of their intended professional trajectories. The purpose of this study is to further assess the long-term effectiveness of GAPS by surveying alumni 3-24 months after completion and understanding their current PM application status in their professions. To achieve our goal, the threshold concept [17] is implemented to assess GAPS alumni’s perceptions of implementing PM techniques into their work by capturing the transformative, integrative, and possibly irreversible characteristics of the threshold concept [17]. Among the 70 alumni contacted, 22 responded to the alumni survey, including 73% of graduate students/postdoctoral students and 27% of industry practitioners. We analyzed their survey responses, and found GAPS's effectiveness in fostering project management skills, with notable preliminary findings: all industry practitioners and the majority of academy group participants acknowledged that GAPS prepared them in succeeding their current profession. More than 80% of industry and academy participants indicated GAPS changed their PM approach. The majority of alumni respondents indicated their shift of PM proficiencies, with very few of them having “low” proficiency levels. Finally, we found more than half of the academy respondents frequently utilize Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and Critical Path in their work. These results affirm the program's lasting positive effects on participants, underscoring its potential to enhance graduate STEM education by equipping students with essential professional skills for successful careers in both academia and industry. This study advocates for integrating professional skills training in graduate education to better prepare graduate students for success in their current work and future careers.

Authors

Yiqi Liang Iowa State University of Science and Technology [biography]

Yiqi Liang is a PhD student in Higher Education at the School of Education, Iowa State University, under the guidance of Dr. Ann Gansemer-Topf. She received both her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Aerospace Engineering from Iowa State University in 2020 and 2022, respectively. Her research interests include engineering education, international students, and graduate students success.
Dr. Qing Li Iowa State University of Science and Technology [biography]

Qing is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering at Iowa State University. Her team focuses on statistical quality assurance, statistics, machine learning, data mining in additive manufacturing (AM), and other fields such as health research. In 2021, she and her coauthors won the M&D Best Track Paper Award in the IISE annual conference proceedings. Dr. Li has received funding support from federal agencies including NSF and DON.
Ph.D., Statistics, 2015
Dissertation: Change-Point Detection in Recurrent-Event Context.
Advisor: Dr. Feng Guo, GPA: 3.9/4.0

University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
M.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Dr. Gül E. Kremer http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8070-825X University of Dayton [biography]

Gül E. Kremer received her PhD from the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering of Missouri University of Science & Technology. Her research interests include multi-criteria decision analysis methods applied to improvement of products and systems. She is a senior member of IIE, a fellow of ASME, a former Fulbright scholar and NRC Faculty Fellow. Her recent research focus includes sustainable product design and enhancing creativity in engineering design settings.
Prof. Nigel Forest Reuel http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3438-2919 Iowa State University of Science and Technology
Dr. Ann M Gansemer-Topf Iowa State University of Science and Technology [biography]

Ann Gansemer-Topf is a Professor in Higher Education and Student Affairs and Director of Graduate Education in the School of Education . She teaches courses in program evaluation and assessment, student affairs and higher education.
Prof. Shan Jiang http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8119-9012 Iowa State University of Science and Technology [biography]

Dr. Shan Jiang is currently an Associate Professor from the Materials Science and Engineering department at Iowa State University. Dr. Jiang earned his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After graduation, he furthered his study at MIT as a postdoc. Following his academic training, Dr. Jiang then worked at the Dow Chemical Company Coating Materials as a research scientist. Drawing on his industrial background, Dr. Jiang initiated the Graduate for Advancing Professional Skills (GAPS) program and received funding support from the NSF IGE program as the lead investigator.

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