2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Student support and engineering identity in an undergraduate civil engineering program: Progress from year 2 of NSF RIEF

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session II

For college and university engineering departments with a common first-year engineering program, there is a notable change in student support services as students move from the common first-year engineering program to their specific engineering major. We hypothesize that overall student support decreases during students’ transition from a general first-year engineering program into their chosen engineering major, and that this transition may influence engineering identity. This paper summarizes research progress in the second year of the NSF REIF support, including preliminary results related to student interviews, faculty and staff interviews, and a content analysis of communications to students across the year. Student interviews are intended to better understand how students’ engineering identity shifts due to changes in support within their engineering programs. Faculty and staff interviews will help explain differences in students’ experiences. A content analysis of common communications (e.g., weekly newsletters, bulletin boards) will provide additional information about the timing, frequency of communications, and content of the communications regarding student support services. The knowledge gained from this research may help colleges and universities in developing or refining the support structures and systems necessary to improve retention at their institutions.

Authors

Dr. Leslie Hopkinson West Virginia University [biography]

Dr. Leslie Hopkinson is an Associate Professor in the Wadsworth Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, specializing in water resources. She received her B.S. in Biological and Agricultural Engineering at Louisiana State University and her Ph.D. in Biological Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech. Her research is related to hydrology, reclamation, ecological engineering, and engineering education.
Lynette 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.
Aimee Morewood West Virginia University [biography]

Aimee Morewood, PhD. is a Professor and Program Coordinator of Literacy Education in the School of Education, College of Applied Human Sciences at West Virginia University. Dr. Morewood has received awards for her research from the Journal of Research in Childhood Education, the Classroom Observation SIG of the American Educational Research Association, the Literacy Research Association, and the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers. She has over 70 peer-reviewed and public scholarship publications and over 90 presentations at national and regional conferences. Morewood has secured over $800,000 in grant funding and has served as the PI and Co-PI of multiple Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation grants, was a Co-PI on a West Virginia Department of Education grant and is the Co-PI on a National Science Foundation grant focused on engineering education. She has also been invited as an external evaluator for higher education programs and funded grant projects.
Heather Marie Rice West Virginia University
Dr. Lizzie Santiago West Virginia University [biography]

Dr. Lizzie Santiago is a Professor and the Director of the Fundamentals of Engineering Program in the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources at West Virginia University. She holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and has completed postdoctoral training in neural tissue engineering and molecular neurosciences.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026

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