2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This works in progress paper is situated in a multi-year mixed methods external evaluation study of a mentored undergraduate research intervention based at a Historically Black University. This intentionally diverse setting has the potential to inform meaningful interventions to foster inclusive excellence in engineering. Researchers have found that engineering identity is important to enhance students’ success during and beyond their undergraduate studies (Espino et al., 2022; Fluker et al., 2022; Patrick & Borrego, 2016). Yet, the opportunities to develop, sustain, and grow one’s engineering identity are not uniformly distributed across students enrolled in engineering programs, nor even among those select students offered the opportunities to participate in mentored engineering research interventions.

Engineering students from underrepresented and structurally marginalized groups may have fewer access points to engage with engineering peers, mentors, and professionals prior to and during their collegiate studies; these challenges can compound for students who may be underrepresented on multiple dimensions in this field, seeing their personal identities reflected less often in their intended engineering careers (e.g., gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status). Effective broadening participation efforts ideally “shift the default” (Pawley, 2019, 2020) in who engineering faculty and supervisors invite into research spaces, and offer meaningful ways to welcome students from all backgrounds to materials engineering research learning beyond the classroom.

Here, we leverage original external evaluation research data from surveys and individual interviews to situate what we know over multiple years of research – our own collaborative, transdisciplinary research as well as the larger research literature – to briefly synthesize and identify patterns observed to date in how student background is associated with engineering identity and career plans, from ~60 students participating in mentored materials engineering research across five cohorts. This works of progress paper focuses more deeply on newer research this past summer and this fall, using individual and focus group interviews to investigate intersectional experiences of students in our newest cohorts that are additionally more inclusive of students who have enrolled in community colleges and navigated additional structural challenges during the pandemic.

We approach this manuscript critically, examining engineering students’ counterstories in context, from a critical, social justice perspective (see McGee, 2021). Drawing on intersectionality theory, we investigate multiple axes of identity, not limited to representation (Cho et al., 2013; Collins, 2015; Crenshaw, 1991). To date, across our analyses, we find evidence that stable and consistent support that fosters and sustains engineering identity, sense of belonging, and career ambitions. Implications are offered with respect to programmatic, research, and policy directions.