2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 10: Work in Progress: Design of a Full-Time Summer Research Program for High School Students

Presented at Biomedical Engineering Division (BED) Poster Session

To meet growing BME workforce needs, it is essential to support initial student interests in STEM to aid students’ decision making. Prior research has shown that STEM internship opportunities can increase students’ sense of self-efficacy in STEM fields, give students insight into career paths they might not otherwise be exposed to, and increase students’ interest in and pursuit of STEM-related majors and careers. At the high school level, authentic research internships have been successful in developing STEM identity and influencing the pursuit of STEM majors and careers. High school internships and summer research experiences are especially impactful for underrepresented minority (URM) female students in STEM. The PROPEL Careers Program at the University of Massachusetts Lowell is one such program that engages high school students to tackle real-world science and engineering problems by contributing to authentic laboratory research projects.

In attempts to remove barriers for underrepresented minority (URM) applicants, changes to the application process included more visual elements, less emphasis on prior STEM activities, and more emphasis on demonstrable enthusiasm for STEM topics. Students were actively recruited from a Title I school, with program administrators spending time and assisting with the application process and PROPEL offered a meet-the-faculty event at the high school. Programming focused on communication strategies for interns during orientation, and student program feedback indicated a positive view of STEM careers.

Authors

Marla Hilderbrand-Chae University of Massachusetts, Lowell [biography]

Marla Hilderbrand-Chae is a Ph.D. student in the UML Biomedical Engineering Program where she researches engagement and mentorship in engineering education at the high school level. Hilderbrand-Chae has consulted for and presented at conferences sponsored by J-WEL, the World Education Lab at MIT, and has worked in partnership with Boston Scientifics’ Division of Equity and Inclusion group in developing a high school science mentorship program for underrepresented minorities (URM). She was a founding member of a STEAM Innovation Program at an urban vocational technical school servicing URM in STEM, where she taught Biology, Chemistry, and Biotechnology. Hilderbrand-Chae has a Masters’ Degree in Genetics from Tufts University Medical School and now researches transfection efficiency influenced by substrate stiffness.
Dr. Adam St. Jean http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6111-1623 University of Massachusetts, Lowell [biography]

Adam St. Jean is an Associate Teaching Professor and the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Programs in Biomedical Engineering at UMass Lowell. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2012. His current research interests include 1) the influence of pre-college experiences on student career paths, and 2) engineering identity/experiences for the LBGTQ+ community.
Dr. Yanfen Li http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-9465-7147 University of Massachusetts, Lowell [biography]

Dr. Yanfen Li is an Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She received her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 2018. Dr. Li has extensive experience in engineering education focusing on recruitment and retention of underrepresented and under resourced students and engineering pedagogy. Her work spans the areas of curriculum instruction and design, program design and evaluation, and the first-year college experience. Dr Li’s research group aims to further the development of a diverse workforce in engineering and STEM. She is the PI of a NSF Scholarship in STEM grant aimed at supporting high achieving, low-income students to complete their bachelor’s degrees and continue on to graduate school. She has received several teaching awards including the UMass Lowell Award for Excellence in Innovative Teaching in 2021 and the Biomedical Engineering Teaching Award from the American Society for Engineering Education in 2021.

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