2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Many researchers have implemented undergraduate research programs in STEM with the goal of investigating their impact on student success and persistence. These programs further aim to broaden participation in STEM and create pathways for first-generation undergraduate students to pursue a graduate degree in STEM. This paper builds on a previous work that developed an undergraduate research program targeted for first-generation or socioeconomically disadvantaged undergraduate students in engineering that comprised three key components: a lecture series, a research experience, and a research conference. In summer 2024, the program was expanded to include first-time undergraduate researchers and continuing undergraduate researchers. However, first generation or socioeconomic status was not a recruitment factor. The purpose was to uncover similarities and differences among the three different student backgrounds as well as to gain a better understanding on how the research program impacted students’ motivation and persistence goals towards graduate education. A total of 9 undergraduate students (4 first-time, 5 continuing) in engineering were recruited for the research program. Each student and faculty mentor underwent a rigorous matching process that allowed both student and mentor to agree on the pairing and the proposed research project. Pre- and post-attitudinal surveys were administered to the students to evaluate how student attitudes evolved throughout the lecture series component and the overall research program. The results showed that first-time and continuing researchers’ positive attitude toward STEM and satisfaction with STEM degree both increased, consistent with the trend observed among first-generation researchers. Student challenges in their STEM degrees also increased post-overall program. In contrast, student motivation to pursue their STEM degree decreased slightly, unlike the larger decrease for first-generation researchers. When the questions focused on graduate education, first-time and continuing researchers’ attitudes toward graduate school increased post-overall program similar to the results observed for first-generation researchers. The results on student motivation to pursue graduate education decreased for first-time and continuing researchers, which was not expected. In addition, students completed the Undergraduate Research Student Self-Assessment (URSSA) before and after the research experience, in order to quantify how much students gained in their skillset and their ability to do scholarly research. The mean scores showed an increasing trend between all three student groups for all four factors. Thus, first-time researchers gained more compared to first-generation researchers, which highlights the increased challenges first-generation researchers face in undergraduate research experiences. The findings from this work will help improve the objectives of the undergraduate research program and its impact on a diverse STEM student population (first-generation, first-time, and continuing undergraduate researchers) and support their pursuit of a graduate STEM degree.