2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Texas State University received an NSF S-STEM award to support two cohorts of talented, low-income engineering majors, with the second cohort starting their freshman year in Fall 2025. In addition to the scholarships awarded, this program aims to increase students’ engineering design self-efficacy, engineering identity, and improve persistence to graduation. The program includes unique strategies for achieving these goals, emphasizing mentoring and building a sense of community among participants. In particular, each SEED scholar was paired with a faculty mentor in their engineering major as soon as they were selected to participate in the program. Before arriving on campus for their freshman year, SEED scholars had a virtual meeting with their faculty mentor to receive initial orientation. Afterwards, they had three to four in-person meetings with their faculty mentor every semester (and virtual meetings during the summer). The faculty mentors provided guidance on academic and professional related matters and helped students navigate the campus resources available to support their success. Most scholars felt that having a faculty mentor was a highlight of the program since it provided them with access to a trustworthy source of information from someone who cared about them. Texas State University has a mandatory 1-credit university seminar course for first-time college students. A special section of this course was created for the SEED scholars, and the section was taught by a member of the project team. Participation in this special section provided a weekly point of contact for the new cohort of SEED scholars and allowed us to use some class sessions for presentations about topics such as the product development process and artificial intelligence. A brief description of the program and early results from the students’ self-reported sense of belonging in engineering, engineering design self-efficacy, and engineering identity are presented in this paper. In addition, lessons learned during the first project year are discussed.