2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Investigating identity, sense of belonging, and early career transitions for Hispanic engineering graduates of an HSI (Work in Progress)

Presented at Minorities in Engineering Division(MIND) Technical Session 12

As of 2023, Latinos constitute 9.4% of the engineering workforce in the U.S., despite comprising 19.1% of the U.S. population and 18.5% of the U.S. workforce. Engineering programs at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) are in a position to meaningful contribute to meeting the talent needs of the engineering workforce while also broadening the participation of Hispanic engineers who have been historically and continue to be underrepresented in the practice of engineering. However, with a high proportion of Hispanic students commuting to campus, many Hispanic graduates of an undergraduate engineering program who seek to enter the engineering workforce are facing, for the first time, the prospect and challenge of relocating away from home. Recent interactions with one engineering department’s early career alumni have revealed that those who relocated for work sometimes struggle with cultural acclimation to a new environment, and the extent to which these early career engineers feel conflict between their cultural identity and their environment varies, even for engineers employed within the same industry.

To better serve our students and their future employers, we seek to understand what factors may influence Hispanic engineers’ acclimation to and retainment in a different region and cultural environment, especially for engineers who graduated from Hispanic-serving commuter campuses. As a starting point, in this paper we discuss a pilot study designed to answer the following research question: to what extent is the post-relocation acclimation by early-career Hispanic engineering graduates from an engineering department at an HSI commuter campus influenced by family cultural context, identity, and sense of belonging? Researchers have aggregated validated survey instruments that are well established in the engineering education literature for identity and sense of belonging in engineering undergraduates and adapted them to the early career environment. Data collection is ongoing for a pilot study of early career Hispanic engineers working in regions in the United States distinct from the region in which the university is located. This work-in-progress paper will present the methodology and initial results and insights from the pilot study.

The implications for this work are to provide targeted support at the university level leading up to the transition, as well as in the work environment after the transition, so that Hispanic engineering graduates of Hispanic-serving commuter campuses are better supported towards a transition to the national engineering workforce.

Authors

Dr. Lori Marie Houghtalen http://orcid.org/0009-0008-6382-1101 University of Texas at El Paso [biography]

Lori Houghtalen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Education and Leadership at The University of Texas at El Paso. Dr. Houghtalen’s research interests include career transitions of students and engineering faculty and engineering leadership assessment. Her teaching experience has been focused on designing industry-based senior capstone courses and leadership and professional development for undergraduate engineering students.
Dr. Roger V. Gonzalez P.E. http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0516-4437 University of Texas at El Paso [biography]

Roger V. Gonzalez is the inaugural chairman and professor of the Department of Engineering Education and Leadership. He is the Mike Loya Endowed Chair in Engineering. He also serves as the Director of the Engineering Leadership program for the College of Engineering. Dr. Gonzalez earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1986 from UTEP. He earned his M.S. in Biomedical Engineering and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the premier Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and Northwestern Medical School. Professor Gonzalez has been recognized for scholarly work, education innovation, and socio-entrepreneurial humanitarian efforts. He is known and respected for actively incorporating students into all three of these areas.

Among many highlights of his scholarly work, he is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and was awarded a prestigious National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Research Service Award for his work in neuromuscular control and musculoskeletal biomechanics in children with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Dr. Gonzalez’s scholarly work includes over 100 publications in journals and conference proceedings.

For his efforts and innovation in engineering education, Dr. Gonzalez has received the American Society of Engineering Educators (ASEE) Teaching Award, the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation Award, and LeTourneau University’s top research and scholarship award. He was also a Finalist for the IEEE Global Humanitarian Engineer of the Year award in 2013. He serves as an engineering program evaluator for the Accrediting Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET).

Dr. Gonzalez was awarded a faculty fellowship by UTEP and the University College London (UCL), where he served as a Visiting Professor, to spend the 22-23 academic year traveling throughout the United Kingdom visiting over 25 universities in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and The Netherlands. His research focused on how professional development plays a role in engineering education and how approaches to broadening access impact higher education.

Dr. Gonzalez is the Founder, former CEO, and President of LIMBS International (www.limbs.org), one of the most recognized international providers of low-cost prosthetic components. LIMBS is a 501(c)3 non-profit humanitarian organization that designs, creates, and deploys prosthetic devices to transform the lives of amputees in the developing world by restoring their ability to walk. Since its founding in 2004, the LIMBS Knee has helped thousands of amputees in over 50 countries on four continents.
Samahara Quintana Chavez University of Texas at El Paso
Juno Alvarez Morales University of Texas at El Paso
Guillermo Beckmann University of Texas at El Paso

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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