2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Graduate students in engineering often face significant uncertainty in research, particularly in the early stages of their thesis work. Many are accustomed to structured assignments and clear solutions from their undergraduate coursework, making the transition to independent research, where timelines are often shifting and undefined, particularly challenging. This study explores the impact of our half-day design thinking workshop developed to support graduate student resilience by helping Ph.D. and M.S. thesis students in engineering navigate ambiguity and build confidence in their research process. The workshop framed graduate research as a design activity and introduced five principles drawn from contemporary design literature: rapid prototyping, soliciting feedback, divergent and convergent thinking, avoiding fixation, and design by analogy. To demonstrate how these principles could be applied in the research process, we designed interactive activities such as brainstorming ideas and then sorting them on an impact versus feasibility axis to demonstrate divergent and convergent thinking. Eleven participants completed surveys before the workshop, immediately after, and three months later, allowing us to assess workshop impacts over time. Likert-scale ratings across the three surveys show that participants felt significantly more confident in their ability to navigate research uncertainties after the workshop and particularly valued the process of iterating multiple solutions. Qualitative analyses show that participants connected most with the principle of soliciting feedback, while expressing some hesitation toward rapid prototyping as a means to improve research resiliency. Additionally, participants emphasized the benefits of sharing their experiences with other graduate students. We show that the design workshop effectively engaged graduate engineering students with the five design thinking principles, fostering their integration into research practices immediately and three months after the workshop. This paper presents an overview of the workshop, the embedded design principles, and recommendations to support the development of resilient researchers.