2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Sixteen engineering education programs across the United States came together in Fall 2023 to offer a virtual multi-institutional graduate program showcase for prospective graduate students. The purpose of the showcase was to provide an opportunity for potential graduate students to learn about the breadth of available programs, and through understanding programmatic offerings potentially identify programs that would align with their goals and interests. Although not originally situated in a servingness framework, we were inspired by current conversations and literature regarding inclusiveness to consider what it could look like to make this framework central to our recruiting work. Thus, our study aimed to understand how the materials developed as part of the multi-institutional graduate program showcase might reflect elements of servingness. The multidimensional conceptual framework of servingness includes both indicators of serving and structures for serving. Specifically, we asked (1) how relevant is the servingness framework to materials designed for a graduate program recruitment process; and (2) what adaptations may be necessary to allow for this framework’s application to the graduate program recruitment process context? We employed framework analysis to identify which, if any, elements of the servingness framework were represented in the showcase presentation. After completing content analysis of the institutional slides and thematic analysis of the program presentations, we conducted focus groups with graduate program leaders to receive their feedback on our emergent findings and to discuss applicability of servingness as a lens to thinking about the graduate program recruitment process context. Our results revealed that the framework was a useful lens as we saw some common elements of the framework across all programs that were also supported in the feedback from program directors when we asked them to specifically consider this perspective. However, it was clear that adaptations would be needed for the framework to be fully applicable. Thus, graduate programs can use servingness to prompt a focus on the student experience as part of their recruitment materials while ensuring that the underlying intent of the servingness framework is preserved.