2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

WIP: Framing for the Engineering Major Journey: An Orientation Course for First Semester Students to Deepen Motivation and Sociocultural Connection

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

Work in Progress: This paper reports the redesign of a one-credit, first-semester introductory engineering course at a regional campus. The redesign responds to student evaluations indicating the legacy course felt minimally useful, local retention concerns, and new faculty interest in student-centered, action-oriented pedagogy. The new course shifts from information-heavy lectures and tours to a model centered on motivation, belonging, identity development, and human-centered problem solving. The curriculum blends socially relevant engineering challenges with student-success skills such as digital literacy, time and project management, collaboration, and communication. We analyzed end-of-semester reflections from two redesigned using reflexive thematic analysis to develop themes about students’ evolving ‘why,’ collaboration practices, and understanding of engineering as a people-focused, iterative problem-solving process [8],[9]. To complement reflection data and address limitations, future iterations will incorporate pre and post survey measures of expectancy-value, belonging, and engineering identity, and will link findings to institutional outcomes [1],[5],[11]. This WIP presents the course structure, theoretical grounding, weekly activities, early findings, and planned revisions.

Authors

Dr. Stephany Santos University of Connecticut [biography]

Stephany Santos serves as the Executive Director for the Vergnano Institute for Inclusion in the College of Engineering at UConn. Dr. Santos is also a leader and thought partner in the Science Education Campaign for Research, Equity and Teaching (SECRET), as well as the International and Comparative Advancement of Racial Equity for Social Justice (ICARE4Justice). She leads dozens of programs, initiatives and classes that are designed to support, love on, and grow the community. She believes everyone who wants to be an engineer on in STEM deserves to be here and pursue their dreams. At UConn. Dr. Santos is faculty in Biomedical Engineering, and Affiliate Faculty for Engineering for Human Rights, and for the Engineering Education PhD Program. She is a leader nationally, including serving as the Incoming Chair for the CDEI Commission for the American Society for Engineering Education. She advocates for equality and for creating support networks and pathways forward so that as many students as possible persist and push through. Her research interests are in engineering identity and leadership development, engineering thriving, and understanding how programs and interventions can create positive, dignity-affirming experiences in engineering.

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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