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1. Building a Community of Mentors in Engineering Education Research Through Peer Review Training

   Jensen, Karin ; Ko, Evan ; Lichtenstein, Gary ; Watts, Kelsey ; Bates, Rebecca A ; Benson, Lisa ( August 2022 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   This paper describes the Engineering Education Research (EER) Peer Review Training (PERT) project, which is designed to develop EER scholars’ peer review skills through mentored reviewing experiences. Supported by the National Science Foundation, the overall programmatic goals of the PERT project are to establish and evaluate a mentored reviewer program for 1) EER journal manuscripts and 2) EER grant proposals. Concurrently, the project seeks to explore how EER scholars develop schema for evaluating EER scholarship, whether these schema are shared in the community, and how schema influence recommendations made to journal editors during the peer review process. To accomplish these goals, the PERT project leveraged the previously established Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) Mentored Reviewer Program, where two researchers with little reviewing experience are paired with an experienced mentor to complete three manuscript reviews collaboratively. In this paper we report on focus group and exit survey findings from the JEE Mentored Reviewer Program and discuss revisions to the program in response to those findings.
2. Building a Community of Mentors in Engineering Education Research Through Peer Review Training

   Jensen, K. ; Bates, R. ; Lichtenstein, G. ; Watts, K. ; Ko, E. ; Benson, L. ( June 2022 , 2022 Annual American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference and Exposition)

   This paper describes the Engineering Education Research (EER) Peer Review Training (PERT) project, which is designed to develop EER scholars’ peer review skills through mentored reviewing experiences. Supported by the National Science Foundation, the overall programmatic goals of the PERT project are to establish and evaluate a mentored reviewer program for 1) EER journal manuscripts and 2) EER grant proposals. Concurrently, the project seeks to explore how EER scholars develop schema for evaluating EER scholarship, whether these schema are shared in the community, and how schema influence recommendations made to journal editors during the peer review process. To accomplish these goals, the PERT project leveraged the previously established Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) Mentored Reviewer Program, where two researchers with little reviewing experience are paired with an experienced mentor to complete three manuscript reviews collaboratively. In this paper we report on focus group and exit survey findings from the JEE Mentored Reviewer Program and discuss revisions to the program in response to those findings.
3. “The lab isn't life”: Black engineering graduate students reprioritize values at the intersection of two pandemics

   https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20518  

   Coley, Brooke ; Thomas, Katreena ( April 2023 , Journal of Engineering Education)

   Black engineering graduate students represent a critical and understudied population in engineering education. Gaining an understanding of the lived experiences of Black engineering graduate students while they are simultaneously weathering two pandemics, COVID‐19 and systemic racism, is of paramount importance.

   Black engineering graduate students hold a unique duality, as both Black people in the United States and Black graduate students in US engineering programs that espouse white supremacist ideals. Their real‐world experiences necessitate understanding, and this paper highlights the related impact on the students themselves, their adaptations to the pandemics, and how those adaptations relate to and affect their support needs and navigation of their engineering academic environments.

   An interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach was combined with community‐based participatory action research and was situated in Boykin's Triple Quandary. A family check‐in was conducted with 10 Black engineering graduate students enrolled in doctoral programs across the country to delve deep into their lived experience as a cultural community.

   Findings include an emergent framework of Black engineering graduate student values in response to the pandemics. These values aligned with the Black Cultural Ethos, demonstrating an adoption of collectivistic cultural values in times of crises. Further, COVID‐19 and systemic racism differentially impactedmore »Black engineering graduate students and, thus, the manifestations of their values.

   For institutions to be able to effectively support their Black engineering graduate students, they must gain awareness of the students' experiences, values, and needs, in general, and amid crises specifically. The findings presented here provide a critical window into this information.

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4. Negotiating identity as a response to shame: A study of shame within an experience as a woman in engineering

   Beckmon, Mackenzie C. ; Huff, James L. ; Sochacka, Nicola W. ; Walther, Joachim ; Okai, Benjamin ( July 2019 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   This research paper presents the findings of an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) case study of the experience of shame in a woman engineering student. Our overarching research question that framed this study was: How do woman students with multiple salient identities psychologically experience shame in the context of engineering education? We present findings derived from in-depth analysis of an interview with a single case: A White, female student-athlete who majored in mechanical engineering at a private, liberal arts university (pseudonym: Nicole). We selected Nicole as a case in order to critically examine the tensions experienced among multiple salient identities in women engineering students. The findings demonstrate how the study participant internally negotiated the expectations of others with her own self-concept. That is to say, in reaction to a shame experience, the participant evaluated and often adjusted the value she ascribed to the expectations of others and the ways in which those expectations fit into her core identity. Overall, the findings provide a sensitive description with which connections can be forged between broader discussions of engineering education and how cultural expectations manifest within the lived experience of the individual student.
5. Building Research Skills through Being a Peer Reviewer

   Benson, L. ; Bates, R. ; Jensen, K. ; Lichtenstein, G. ; Watts, K. ; Ko, M ; Albayati, B. ( July 2021 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   This paper describes a peer reviewer mentoring program called the Engineering Education Research Peer Review Training (EER PERT) project and serves as a pilot study on longitudinal effects on researchers’ productivity and the impact of their work, differences in these factors for those who review journal manuscripts and those who review grant proposals, and what aspects of peer review training (knowledge, resources, collaborations, etc.) participants actually carry forward in their own research. Overall, the project seeks to investigate how engineering education research (EER) scholars develop skills and schema for reviewing scholarship, particularly in terms of developing constructive reviews that build expertise and advance knowledge. The Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) Mentored Reviewer Program constitutes the first phase of the EER PERT project. In this paper, we report on goals, structure and activities for the JEE Mentored Reviewer Program, pilot data from participants’ applications and exit surveys that will inform the EER PERT project in terms of participants’ developing skills and schema for reviewing and conducting EER, and provide initial suggestions from the training program that may benefit scholars new to EER.