2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

From Sink-or-Swim to Scaffolding: How Engineering Undergraduates Experience Faculty Mentoring

Presented at Mentorship and Student Support

With this empirical full paper, we examine how a single case of undergraduate engineering students experience faculty mentoring within an engineering education research (EER) context. Undergraduate research is widely used to support persistence and broaden participation in engineering, yet little is known about how students interpret specific mentoring practices or how those practices produce developmental benefits. Guided by Self-Determination Theory and mentoring competencies from the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER), we conducted an interpretive single-case study using semi-structured interviews with photo elicitation involving ten current and former undergraduate researchers mentored by the same faculty member at a large R1 Hispanic Serving Institution. We analyzed data using reflexive thematic analysis. Two themes captured variation in the enactment of evidence-based mentoring practices, from explicit to implicit. Students most readily recognized mentoring when it was visible and relational, particularly through scaffolded skill building, relationship building, empathy, and inclusive practices that supported belonging and confidence. In contrast, expectation setting, and autonomy support were often implicit and uneven, requiring students to infer goals and navigate decisions independently, leading some students toward empowerment and others toward overwhelm. Two additional themes captured benefits students described: a relational infrastructure and an opportunity infrastructure. Mentoring provided meaningful relationships, inclusion, legitimacy, identity development, personal and professional growth, material support, and access to professional engineering experiences and networks. Benefits were distributed across a broader mentoring ecosystem rather than originating solely from the faculty mentor. The EER context further contributed psychological safety and socially meaningful research topics that supported motivation and identity development, particularly for students who experience marginalization in traditional engineering spaces. Analyses show that mentoring effectiveness in this single case depended not only on mentor technical expertise and the presence of recommended practices but on how students interpreted them and how the mentor attuned practices to student readiness and work preferences. Overall, findings suggest undergraduate research mentoring in an EER context supports engineering persistence through best practices that are developmentally attuned, student-centered, and embedded within distributed mentoring ecosystems. Implications emphasize professional development that equips mentors to interpret student experiences and adapt their practices, departmental investment in layered mentoring networks that support students from multiple institutional actors, and recognition of EER contexts as promising sites for reflective, relational mentoring aligned with collectivist student values that may broaden participation in engineering.

Authors

Lori D. Rhea Ph.D. http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8174-4551 University of Houston [biography]

Lori D. Rhea is a postdoctoral research associate in the inaugural Authentic Community-Engaged Scholarship (ACES) in STEM Education Fellowship at the University of Houston (UH). She earned a Ph.D. in Higher Education Leadership and Policy Studies at UH, where she co-evaluated NSF-funded STEM mentoring initiatives, studied support for low-income parenting undergraduates, and expanded resources for nontraditional students. A licensed master social worker, Rhea applies a multidisciplinary lens to advance educational equity through research on STEM mentoring, education policy, and program evaluation. She has published in Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnerships in Learning and the American Journal of Education and served on committees for Research on Women in Education and the American Educational Research Association. In her fellowship, she partners with faculty, postdocs, and community leaders, particularly in Houston’s Historic Third Ward, to pursue collaborative inquiry, broaden participation in STEM, and build a human- and community-centered STEM education research ecosystem.
April L Peters-Hawkins http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2448-5893 University of Houston - COE
Dr. Mariam Manuel http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5380-5852 University of Houston [biography]

Dr. Mariam Manuel is a Clinical Assistant Professor specializing in engineering design education for teachHOUSTON, a secondary STEM teacher preparation program in the Department of Mathematics at University of Houston. In addition to preservice STEM teacher education courses, Dr. Manuel teaches Physics for Middle School Teachers and has authored/taught graduate level coursework in Engineering Design Education, for the UH STEM Master’s program. Dr. Manuel serves on multiple grants and actively publishes and presents at national research conferences. Her research interests include STEM teacher preparation, engineering design education, and culturally responsive pedagogy.
Dr. Jerrod A Henderson http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-0501-5805 University of Houston - COE [biography]

Dr. Jerrod A. Henderson (“Dr. J”) is an Assistant Professor in the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the Cullen College of Engineering at the University of Houston (UH).

He began his higher education pursuits at Morehouse College and North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University where he earned degrees in both Chemistry and Chemical Engineering as a part of the Atlanta University Center’s Dual Degree in Engineering Program. While in college he was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar which afforded him the opportunity to intern at NASA Langley. He also earned distinction as a Phi Beta Kappa member and an American Chemical Society Scholar. Dr. Henderson completed his Ph.D. in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his time as a graduate student, he was a NASA Harriet G. Jenkins Graduate Fellow.

Dr. Henderson has dedicated his career to increasing the number of students who are on pathways to pursue STEM careers. He believes that exposing students to STEM early will have a lasting impact on their lives and academic pursuits. He is the co-founder of the St. Elmo Brady STEM Academy (SEBA). SEBA is an educational intervention aimed at exposing underrepresented fourth and fifth-grade students and their families to hands-on STEM experiences.

Henderson's research interests are in engineering identity development among Black men and engineering student success. He was most recently recognized by INSIGHT Into Diversity Magazine as an Inspiring STEM Leader, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (LAS) Outstanding Young Alumni Award, and Career Communications Group with a Black Engineer of the Year Award for college-level promotion of engineering education.

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Broadening Participation in Engineering and Engineering Technology
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