2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Education research in rural communities often delivers a deficit perspective on professional opportunities for teachers and students, regularly underscoring the challenges of recruiting and retaining a college-educated workforce in rural spaces. Recent literature in rural education urges the cultivation of a positive outlook: recognition of what existing community assets can provide to rural residents in order to combat “rural outmigration.” In this paper, we discuss curricular development and participant perceptions during an asset-focused, community-based engineering design program, “DeSIRE” (Developing STEM Identity through Research and Exploration). As a National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) project, DeSIRE is a school-university-community collaboration (SUCC) with goals to broaden participation in engineering and strengthen the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) identity of minoritized middle school students and teachers in a rural southeastern state. Operating in two middle schools since 2020, DeSIRE features a formal, three-part manufacturing engineering curriculum that was designed around the commodities of local industry partners in the areas of biopharmaceuticals, food process engineering, and energy systems. Through collaboration with companies including Pfizer, Cummins, Kaba Ilco Corporation, LS Cable & System, Hitachi, and Poppies International, students were exposed to project-based content grounded in local STEM career opportunities that would enable them to pursue fulfilling careers within the community they are from.

Using a Rural Cultural Wealth framework, we provide a lens on how curricular development and implementation of the DeSIRE course highlights rural ingenuity and resourcefulness in order to address the community’s need to bolster the engineering workforce. Further, using qualitative data analysis of student focus groups and teacher interviews, we present multilevel findings of how the program has supported and strengthened the way students and teachers think about opportunities in their rural space. This paper serves as an informational tool for K-12 schools, universities, and engineering industry and community partners toward the development of new partnerships, as well as a hopeful demonstration of how SUCCs can shift the mindset of participants to potentially reduce rural flight.