2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) project aims to create a cultural shift in supporting student mental health and well-being (MHWB) in engineering. Reports of the rise in suicidal ideation, mental health diagnoses, and the seeking of mental health services amongst US college students suggest that higher education is facing a mental health crisis (Bork & Mondisa, 2022). Some evidence suggests that the rates of mental health challenges within engineering disciplines are high, yet recent literature suggests that engineering students are less likely to seek help for their mental health challenges (Sánchez‐Peña et al., 2025; Whitwer et al., 2025). One main deterrent for seeking help seems to be the engineering culture, which rewards and promotes overexertion to do "hard" work (Jensen et al., 2023). Some studies suggest that support from faculty in creating a positive classroom culture is a significant factor in the subjective well-being of engineering students (Asghar et al., 2022). Despite the important role that faculty serve in supporting student mental health and well-being, there is limited research on the barriers that faculty face in supporting student mental health and well-being. This three-phase project seeks to fill that knowledge gap. The first phase of the project focuses on understanding barriers that faculty, staff, and administrators face in supporting student mental health, and their challenges as agents of change around MHWB in engineering. The second phase focuses on how faculty and staff define measures of success in driving a cultural shift in student MHWB, their role in driving a cultural shift in student MHWB, and their experiences with student MHWB. The third phase focuses on a select group of instructors receiving mini-grants to implement student MHWB strategies in the classroom. The third phase will be geared towards understanding how mini-grant awardees experience their own MHWB while supporting their students’ MHWB. We have completed the data collection for the first study phase and are planning the implementation of our second study phase. In this paper, we share our insights and findings from the first phase of the study, in which we interviewed participants (n = 16) consisting of faculty, staff, and administrators. We sought to understand participants' views of being a MHWB advocate for students and what obstacles they encounter. Our preliminary findings suggest that participants with supervisors and chairs who supported efforts to help student MHWB were less inclined to identify significant challenges to being agents of change. Barriers identified by participants included lack of: 1) time, 2) funding, and 3) accessible resources and information on how to better support student MHWB.

References

Asghar, M., Minichiello, A., & Iqbal, A. (2022). Perceived factors contributing to the subjective wellbeing of undergraduate engineering students: An exploratory study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(23), 16284.

Bork, S. J., & Mondisa, J. L. (2022). Engineering graduate students’ mental health: A scoping literature review. Journal of Engineering Education, 111(3), 665-702.

Jensen, K. J., Mirabelli, J. F., Kunze, A. J., Romanchek, T. E., & Cross, K. J. (2023). Undergraduate student perceptions of stress and mental health in engineering culture. International Journal of STEM Education, 10(1), 30.

Sánchez‐Peña, M. L., McAlister, A. M., Ramirez, N. M., & Kamal, S. A. (2025). Elements of engineering culture affecting undergraduate students' mental health and their help‐seeking attitudes. Journal of Engineering Education, 114(3), e70017

Whitwer, M. D., Wilson, S. A., Hammer, J. H., & Gomer, B. (2025). Mental health and treatment use in undergraduate engineering students: A comparative analysis to students in other academic fields of study. Journal of Engineering Education, 114(1), e20629.