2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The Value of Participating in the Grand Challenges Scholars Program: Students’ Perceptions Across Three Years

Presented at Best of Multidisciplinary Engineering Division (MULTI)

This work seeks to understand students’ perceived value of their participation in a multi-year co-curricular program, the Grand Challenges Scholars Program (GCSP), at Arizona State University (ASU) and explore how these perceptions vary between students at different class levels. Students in the GCSP engage in multidisciplinary, entrepreneurial, multicultural, research, and service learning activities throughout their undergraduate collegiate career, in order to gain diverse perspectives about global challenges related to a Grand Challenges theme (Health, Joy of Living, Security or Sustainability). At ASU, GCSP students are also encouraged to connect with their peers, faculty, and staff in the GCSP community through events and courses. There is interest in learning more about why students engage in the program, and what keeps them motivated to continue the program throughout their entire academic career to graduate as a Grand Challenges Scholar. According to Eccles’ Expectancy Value Theory, people are motivated to participate in and persist in a program or activity by a combination of their expectations for success and their perceived value of the activity or program (subjective task value). Motivated by this belief that students will participate and persist in programs or tasks that they believe bring value to them, a brief digital whiteboard activity was integrated into first, second, and third year GCSP courses to ask students about their perceived value of GCSP. The data collected from the digital white board activities is analyzed qualitatively using thematic analysis. Resulting themes are reported and also compared between student class levels. Results indicate that the perceived usefulness of participation in the program and becoming a Grand Challenges Scholar (utility value), motivation and access to participate in research and other extracurricular activities to achieve their personal goals, connections with members of the GCSP community, faculty, and industry professionals, and developing multidisciplinary global perspectives are common themes of students’ perceived value of GCSP. Implications of this work and findings related to students’ perceived value and success in multidisciplinary multi-year co-curricular programs such as the GCSP will also be discussed.

Authors

Amy Trowbridge Arizona State University [biography]

Amy Trowbridge is an Associate Teaching Professor and co-Director of the Grand Challenges Scholars Program (GCSP) in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. Her teaching focuses primarily on first year engineering students, and she is interested in curricular and co-curricular experiences that broaden students’ perspectives and enhance student learning, and the use of digital portfolios for students to showcase and reflect on their experiences. Amy has contributed to the development of an interdisciplinary grand challenges focused course and introduction to engineering course in both in-person and online (MOOC) formats at ASU. She is also actively involved in the ASU Kern project and Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), focused on students’ development of entrepreneurial mindset. Amy received the national 2019 KEEN Rising Star award from KEEN for her efforts in encouraging students in developing an entrepreneurial mindset. She is also a member of the current interim Executive Committee for the international GCSP Network, and mentors schools to develop GCSPs as part of the GCSP New Programs committee.
Dr. Haolin Zhu Arizona State University [biography]

Dr. Haolin Zhu earned her BS in Engineering Mechanics from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and her Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University, with a focus on computational solid mechanics. Dr. Zhu is an Associate Teaching Professor of the freshman engineering education team in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University (ASU). In this role, she focuses on designing the curriculum and teaching in the freshman engineering program and the mechanical engineering program. She is also the Co-Director of the Grand Challenges Scholars Program (GCSP) at ASU. In this role, she focuses on student support and tracking, curriculum, program requirements, as well as programming for current students in GCSP. Dr. Zhu was also involved in the ASU ProMod project, the Engineering Projects in Community Service program, the Engineering Futures program, the Global Freshman Academy/Earned Admission/Universal Learner Courses Program, and the ASU Kern Project. She was a part of the team that designed a largely team and activity based online Introduction to Engineering course. She has also co-developed two unique MOOCs, Introduction to Engineering and Perspectives on Grand Challenges for Engineering for the Global Freshman Academy/ASU Earned Admission/Universal Learner Courses Program. Her Ph.D. research focused on multi-scale multiphase modeling and numerical analysis of coupled large viscoelastic deformation and fluid transport in swelling porous materials, but she is currently interested in various topics in the field of engineering education, such as innovative teaching pedagogies for increased retention and student motivation; innovations in non-traditional delivery methods, incorporation of the Entrepreneurial Mindset in the engineering curriculum and its impact. She has published over 30 papers and presented at various conferences about her work. She has been recognized as an Engineering Unleashed Fellow and won the Fulton Outstanding Lecturer Award for her contributions in Engineering Education.

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