2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

BOARD # 430: Progress of an NSF BCSER Grant: Effective Strategies to Recruit Underserved Students to Engineering Bridge and Success Programs

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session II

This project is funded by the National Science Foundation EDU Core Research: Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (ECR: BCSER) program. The BCSER grant is twofold: (1) to build the Principal Investigator’s STEM education research skills, and (2) to conduct a research project. The research project of this BCSER award is to systematically study effective strategies to recruit underserved students into engineering bridge and success programs at 4-year institutions in the U.S. The research includes three stages: perspectives on recruitment from program leaders, perspectives from prospective underserved students, and comparison of both viewpoints. This paper reports on the progress made on this BCSER award, including preliminary research results (a case study), accomplishments, and future work of the project.

Authors

Dr. Xinyu Zhang Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE) [biography]

Dr. Xinyu Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Practice in Environmental and Ecological Engineering (EEE) at Purdue University’s College of Engineering. She received her Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a North Carolina-licensed Professional Engineer, and currently leads an NSF project on recruitment strategies for engineering bridge and success programs. Her research interests include engineering education such as broadening participation in engineering, teaching technology innovations, and engineering entrepreneurship, as well as EEE discipline-based topics such as energy-water-environment nexus and sustainable biomanufacturing. Previously, Dr. Zhang was a Teaching Assistant Professor of Engineering at West Virginia University and has successfully led and expanded their summer bridge program for incoming first-year engineering students called Academy of Engineering Success (AcES).
Lynnette Michaluk West Virginia University [biography]

PI, is a social sciences researcher at the West Virginia University Center for Excellence in STEM Education. Her research interests include broadening access to and participation in STEM. She is Co-PI of the National Science Foundation KY-WV Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation and Research Scientist for Secure and Upgrade Computer Science in Classrooms through an Ecosystem with Scalability & Sustainability. She is evaluator for RII Track 2 FEC: Enabling Factory to Factory (F2F) Networking for Future Manufacturing, and Department of Education Title III Strengthening Potomac State College, as well as several National Aeronautics and Space Administration STEM education initiatives.
N’Diya Harris Wright State University [biography]

I graduated from West Virginia University with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and minors in Criminology and Communication. I am currently a doctoral student at Wright State University in the School of Professional Psychology.
Ansley Lynn Shamblin West Virginia University [biography]

Ansley Lynn Shamblin is an undergraduate student in Sociology at West Virginia University. She participated in the Research Apprenticeship Program (RAP) at West Virginia University.

2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

BOARD # 430: Progress of an NSF BCSER Grant: Effective Strategies to Recruit Underserved Students to Engineering Bridge and Success Programs

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session II

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