2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Inspiring Early Engagement and Community Building Among First Year Students in a Multiyear Co-Curricular Program through A Summer Program: Successes Based on Ten Years of Implementation

This Complete Evidence-based Practice paper describes the design and implementation of a week-long summer program that aims to engage incoming first year students in the Grand Challenges Scholars Program (GCSP) in building a peer community on campus and learning about opportunities to engage in work addressing global challenges at Arizona State University (ASU). The GCSP Summer Institute (SI) is a program that has been hosted at ASU every summer since 2014 for 20-50 incoming first year students accepted into the GCSP, a multi-year co-curricular program, at ASU. The program aims to provide students with opportunities to become familiar with the GCSP at ASU and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Grand Challenges in Sustainability, Security, Health, and Joy of Living, and to develop a sense of community with other students in the GCSP. The program was originally designed and hosted in-person as a residential week-long experience, then later adapted to a virtual online experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, and recently returned to an in-person residential week-long experience. Program activities include faculty talks, lab tours, hands-on activities designed to explore global challenges from an interdisciplinary perspective, a team-based design-build challenge, panels (of current students and faculty), and social activities.

Program evaluation surveys were given to student participants and student staff (program counselors) at the end of the program each year and at the end of each program day (for in-person program only) to evaluate the effectiveness of the program at meeting the intended outcomes. Results of program evaluation surveys across ten years of program implementation indicate that the program successfully helped students connect with their peers, understand the NAE’s Grand Challenges for Engineering, gain awareness of research at ASU related to these Grand Challenges, and learn about GCSP opportunities. The results also show that the in-person programs consistently outperformed the virtual programs in meeting certain program objectives, specifically in building connections with other students and introducing students to ongoing research through interactions with faculty and lab tours. However, both virtual and in person participants felt the program was valuable for incoming students in the GCSP.

Authors

Amy Trowbridge Arizona State University [biography]

Amy Trowbridge is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University and is co-Director of the Grand Challenges Scholars Program (GCSP) at ASU, recognized by National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Her teaching focuses primarily on first year engineering students, and she is interested in curricular and co-curricular experiences that broaden students’ perspectives and enhance student learning, and the use of digital portfolios for students to showcase and reflect on their experiences. Amy has contributed to the development of an interdisciplinary grand challenges focused course and introduction to engineering course in both in-person and online (MOOC) formats at ASU. She is also actively involved in the ASU Kern project and Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), focused on students’ development of entrepreneurial mindset. Amy received the national 2019 KEEN Rising Star award from KEEN for her efforts in encouraging students in developing an entrepreneurial mindset. She is also a member of the current interim Executive Committee for the international GCSP Network, and mentors schools to develop GCSPs as part of the GCSP New Programs committee.
Dr. Haolin Zhu Arizona State University [biography]

Dr. Haolin Zhu earned her B.S.E. in Engineering Mechanics from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and her Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University, with a focus on computational solid mechanics. Dr. Zhu is an Associate Teaching Professor of the freshman engineering education team in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University (ASU). In this role, she focuses on designing the curriculum and teaching in the freshman engineering program and the mechanical engineering program. She is also the Co-Director of the Grand Challenges Scholars Program (GCSP) at ASU. In this role, she focuses on student support and tracking, curriculum, program requirements, as well as programming for current students in GCSP. Dr. Zhu was also involved in the ASU ProMod project, the Engineering Projects in Community Service program, the Engineering Futures program, the Global Freshman Academy/Earned Admission/Universal Learner Courses Program, and the ASU Kern Project. She was a part of the team that designed a largely team and activity based online Introduction to Engineering course. She has also co-developed two unique MOOCs, Introduction to Engineering and Perspectives on Grand Challenges for Engineering for the Global Freshman Academy/ASU Earned Admission/Universal Learner Courses Program. Her Ph.D. research focused on multi-scale multiphase modeling and numerical analysis of coupled large viscoelastic deformation and fluid transport in swelling porous materials, but she is currently interested in various topics in the field of engineering education, such as innovative teaching pedagogies for increased retention and student motivation; innovations in non-traditional delivery methods, incorporation of the Entrepreneurial Mindset in the engineering curriculum and its impact. She has published over 30 papers and presented at various conferences about her work. She was recognized as an Engineering Unleashed Fellow and won the Fulton Outstanding Lecturer Award for her contributions in Engineering Education.

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

For those interested in:

engineering
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undergraduate