2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Military student Veterans and service members (SVSM) are an ever present—yet often invisible— student group on campus. Collectively, SVSM possess a range of demographic characteristics that represent the nation’s cultural, social, and geographic heterogeneity. Via voluntary service, today’s SVSM develop intra- and interpersonal and technical capabilities that prepare them for engineering and technology-related careers. These factors, along with their concomitant need to transition to the civilian workforce once their military service is fulfilled, makes SVSM promising candidates to build strengthen the engineering and technology workforce of the 21st century.

The goal of this NSF RFE CAREER project is to advance full participation of SVSM within post- secondary engineering education. The project plan comprises a 1) Research Plan to develop deeper understandings about how SVSM participate, persist, and produce professional identities in engineering education, and an 2) Education Plan to move research into practice through collaborative development, implementation, and broad dissemination of evidence-based military awareness and mentorship interventions for post-secondary institutional agents (i.e., faculty, staff, and administrators) and non-military-affiliated higher education students.

According to our research plan, we conduct longitudinal, narrative inquiry research with undergraduate SVSM enrolled in engineering degree programs in the western United States. Using a relational ontology and a two-strand theoretical framework, we critically examine post-secondary engineering education structures that can inhibit SVSM participation. Concurrently, we interpretively explore the experiences that SVSM go through in negotiating military identities and the processes they use to develop engineering identities. Our research plan is guided by two overarching questions:

1. How do SVSM participate and persist in undergraduate engineering education?
a. How do personal and professional assets combine to create SVSM community cultural wealth in engineering?
b. How do SVSM negotiate educational structures in engineering?

2. During their undergraduate engineering education, how do SVSM produce engineering identities?
a. How do SVSM experience transitions between military, civilian, academic, professional, and engineering related contexts?
b. How do SVSM engage in engineering identity development?

The education plan employs design-based research and grounded theory methods to develop military awareness and community building interventions for higher education audiences. We use education plan activities to connect local theory to practice by characterizing support structures available for SVSM in engineering higher education and implementing new supports based on SVSM identities and their necessary/preferred resources.

In this paper, we identify our project accomplishments occurring during project YEAR 5. Specifically, we describe activities and outcomes that include: 1) Research Plan: a methodological exemplar (using project data) for examining longitudinally generated narrative qualitative data (i.e., stories) using narrative inquiry methodology; 2) Research Plan: narrative-based findings centered on veteran community cultural wealth and SVSM identity negotiation and development; 3) Education Plan: pre/post survey outcomes from a military student awareness training presented for a national workshop audience and a variety of department- and college- level academic units; and 4) Education Plan: findings from second year activities to design, implement, and iteratively refine a post-secondary onboarding seminar for SVSM and other post- traditional students in STEM higher education.