2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Increasing Teaching Efficacy in Engineering Graduate Students through the Development and Facilitation of Summer Middle and High School STEM Experience

Presented at Graduate Studies Division (GSD) Technical Session 6: Programs in Graduate Education

In order to enhance the graduate student experience in engineering and offer unconventional avenues to prepare for future roles as faculty members, a collaboration formed between three programs at a minority-serving institution: the middle/high school (MHS) summer experience, the graduate school through XXXX, and the College of Engineering. Together, they established an innovative fellowship opportunity focused on advancing scholarly research, teaching, and learning as well as graduate student career preparation. Diverging from conventional training, this professional development initiative is designed to engage engineering graduate students in the creation of evidence-based MHS lesson plans by drawing on the best practices from both higher education and P12 education. Importantly, the fellowship also provides graduate students the unique opportunity to act as a primary instructor for their created content.

In this program, students were required to present a proposal within their field of expertise for a one-week Middle Schoool/High School STEM summer course. In the fall of 2022, seven ideas were chosen out of a pool of 55 applications for experiences that would occur in the summer of 2023. Eventually, six courses were carefully curated. These courses were then promoted within the P12 community, and selected graduate students (“Fellows”) devoted the ensuing seven months to crafting their modules and lesson plans. They also actively engaged in mandatory professional development activities (workshops) related to teaching and learning:
-Course Design
-Lesson Plan Development
-Effective Instructional Strategies (lectures, discussions, labs, studios, case studies)
-Engaging Students and Promoting Learning
-Classroom Management
Workshops were facilitated by faculty and staff experts within and outside the host institution. Fellows were also required to attend a routine check-in meeting with the Program Coordinator and Director of the MHS summer academy experience. Fellows who completed the program earned a certificate from a nationally recognized organization, of which XXXX is a member.

Preliminary results and ongoing data collection
Upon completing the experience, the Fellows offered initial feedback regarding the professional development program. In general, they expressed a high level of satisfaction with various aspects of the program, including the call for participation, the selection process, the program's kickoff, the abstract development process, the professional development sessions, the course delivery, and the overall project management.

Moreover, feedback from participants in the summer program middle and high school students) highlighted their positive experiences and high levels of engagement. The week-long experiences received strong recommendations for inclusion in future summer sessions.

This research includes ongoing data collection on the teaching self-efficacy of the graduate student Fellows regarding their confidence in teaching using the STEM Graduate Teaching
Assistant, Teaching Self-Efficacy Scale (STEM GTA-TSES) [1].

[1] S. E. DeChenne, L. G. Enochs, and M. Needham, "Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduate teaching assistants teaching self-efficacy," Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 102-123, 2012.

Authors

Dr. Jamie R. Gurganus University of Maryland, Baltimore County [biography]

Dr. Jamie Gurganus is a faculty member in the Engineering and Computing Education Program. She is the Associate Director STEMed Research in the College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT). She also serves as the Director for the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) in the graduate school. Her research is focused on solving problems relating to educating and developing engineers, teachers (future faculty), and the community at all levels (k12, undergraduate, graduate, post-graduate and internationally). A few of these key areas include engineering identity and mindsets, global competencies, failure culture, first year experiences in engineering, capstone design thinking, integrating service and authentic learning into the engineering classroom, implementing new instructional methodologies, and design optimization using traditional and non-traditional manufacturing. She seeks to identify best practices and develop assessments methods that assist in optimizing computing and engineering learning. Dr. Gurganus was one the inaugural award winners of the Diane M. Lee teaching award in 2021 and received an Exemplary Mentor Award from the Center for Women in Technology in 2022. She earned a virtual mobility Erasmus+ grant in 2023 to continue global engineering work and connection with University of Porto and Universidad Católica Portuguesa where she was invited to serve on their advisory board. This work also expands to Germany where she is creating a Global Engineering Certificate in collaboration with Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg (H-BRS). She also received the Northern Maryland Technology Council Leader Award in STEM education in 2019. She has written curricula and published a number of works in engineering education in both higher education, P12 and international spaces. She is a co-founder and the Director of Innovation Programs and Operations for the non-profit research group, Advancing Engineering Excellence in P-12 Engineering Education and has launched PROMISE Engineering Institute Global, for international future faculty development. Dr. Gurganus teaches several first and second year Engineering classes along with the Mechanical and Multidisciplinary Engineering Senior Capstone design courses at UMBC. She is also leading and redeveloping a Global Engineering elective. She has also served as this year’s Program Chair for the Pre-College division and on the task force for Weaving in students versus weaving them out with the President of ASEE. This year she was elected as a team leader for CRITL national and the Editorial Board for the Engineering Education Review an International Journal.
Michael M. Malschützky http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5328-1529 Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Germany [biography]

Michael M. Malschützky is a Research Associate at the Centre for Teaching Development and Innovation (ZIEL) as well as Affiliate Faculty at the Department of Management Sciences at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, University of Applied Sciences (H-BRS), Germany. He received his Diplom-Ingenieur (FH) in Mechanical Engineering from H-BRS in 2005. After working as Test & Validation Engineer (TIER-1) and Program Management Engineer (OEM) in the automotive industry, he returned to academia in 2013, receiving his BSc (2017) and MSc (2023) in Business Psychology from H-BRS.
Dr. Neha B. Raikar University of Maryland, Baltimore County [biography]

Dr. Raikar is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in the Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering department. She has taught both undergraduate and graduate-level courses. Dr. Raikar also has 3 years of industry experience from working at Unilever Research in the Netherlands.
Mrs. Yarazeth Medina University of Maryland, Baltimore County [biography]

Multidisciplinary research interests aimed to diversify and increment access to higher education. Research interests focus on bringing the disparity of availability of information that improves programs that enforce participation in science, engineering, and technology.

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