2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This work-in progress paper describes the ideation and early development of an onboarding seminar for non-traditional and military students in engineering. Military students, including veterans and those serving while in college, are a subgroup of non-traditional students that deserve particular attention due to their unique identities and experiences that do not necessarily fit within “traditional” student programming and support. Some institutions have access to resources, such as private donations, military-supportive communities, and/or close proximity to military installations and Veteran Affairs centers, and are able to support military students across a range of potential needs. Others, however, may not have access to the same level and variety of resources for military students. For these institutions, previous research suggests that a viable avenue for supporting military students in engineering is to provide college-level programs that serve non-traditional students and military students together, as an interconnected group of undergraduates following similar academic pathways in engineering.

This ongoing study is situated within an engineering college at a four-year, public, land-grant university in the western United States. As with many U.S. western institutions, this engineering college has record of a comparatively small number of self-identified military students pursuing undergraduate engineering degrees; numbers have made it difficult for the engineering college leadership to justify allocating resources specifically for this student population. Therefore, to support military students within this institutional context, we are currently developing an onboarding seminar series purposed for supporting first- and second-year non-traditional students in engineering. This monthly seminar series addresses identified needs of non-traditional students entering higher engineering education and is based on documented success combining military and adult, non-traditional student support. To be supportive of military students in particular, this intervention has an added focus on military student inclusion through integrated peer awareness training, peer mentorship, and allyship. Using design-based research, a multi-disciplinary design and development research methodology advanced by the learning sciences and modeled after engineering design principles, we are developing the seminar series over multiple iterations with volunteer non-traditional and military student participants. During successive iterations, we are collaboratively developing the seminar curriculum, gathering student and partner feedback, and updating the curriculum based on recurrent data collection and analysis.

In this work in progress paper, we report on the on-going experience of working within an institution’s context to create sustainable support by building an environment wherein awareness of and mentorship and allyship for military students can be cultivated through the characteristics and experiences they share as non-traditional students themselves. Specifically, this paper presents early findings from the initial seminar iteration, including curriculum and structure, data collection from stakeholders and students, and lessons learned for student participant recruitment with this population.