2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

WIP: Evaluating announcements of student services for first-year engineering students using content analysis

Presented at FPD: WIP Papers - Belonging, Identity, Motivation, and Student Support

This work-in-progress paper evaluates student communications. Many support services, such as out-of-class engagement events, academic advising, mental health support, and career services, target first-year engineering students to help improve their transition from high school to college. These support services have been linked to increases in student engagement and retention in first-year engineering programs. However, it is not clear how these services are disseminated, what the best methods are for sharing information with students, and how students learn about these services. The objective of this research is to better understand how students learn about available support services. This work-in-progress paper describes the preliminary results of a qualitative content analysis conducted on timing and frequency of communications, and engineering/professional topics provided in the communications to support first-year engineering students. Weekly newsletters distributed to first-semester engineering students during fall 2024 were analyzed for the timing and frequency of communications involving student support. The types of student support considered were academic advising support, academic peer support, faculty support, engineering faculty connections, out-of-class engagement, engineering peer connections, engineering career development, and general career development. Preliminary results indicated out-of-class engagement and engineering career development services were most frequent throughout the semester. Items related to academic peer support, engineering peer connections, and general career development were observed throughout the semester, but with less frequency. Items related to academic advising support and faculty support were not found within the newsletters. This information provides us with a better understanding of opportunities and communications, so we can better target messaging those items to help support engineering identity development. Furthermore, this study can help us identify some of the services that should be continued beyond first-year engineering.

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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