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1. Broadening the Participation of Rural Students in Engineering: Exploring Community Perspectives

   Vaziri, S.L.; Paretti, M.C.; Grohs, J.R.; Baum, L.M.; Lester, M.M.; Newbill, P.L. (July 2020, Zone 1 Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education)

   Interest in increasing both the number and diversity of students enrolling in engineering has resulted in significant research on students’ career choice decisions. Notably, however, while general trends have emerged, many of the models that have been developed focus on majority students. But an increasing body of work on students from a variety of specific demographic groups highlight unique socio-cultural experiences that influence individuals’ career choice decisions. Most relevant to this study, literature on rural students suggests that the lack of high-level STEM courses in rural schools and a desire to stay close to home played key roles in limiting students’ consideration of engineering as a potential career. However, little work has explored how rural communities support and promote engineering as a career choice for their students. Therefore, this study explored the ways in which rural communities provide support to help students make fully informed decisions about engineering as a college major. The findings presented here come from Phase 2 of a three-phase study exploring engineering career choice among rural students. Using interview and focus group data collected from current engineering students in Phase 1, Phase 2 turned to community members, including high school personnel, local industry leaders, members of local governments, and members of key community organizations (e.g., 4-H). Using interviews with 16 participants across 3 communities, we address the following question: What beliefs, experiences, and practices characterize community members or organizations who support or encourage rural students to choose engineering? The interviews explored the participants’ perceptions of their community overall, resources that helped students explore postsecondary options, barriers students faced to enrolling in postsecondary education/engineering, understanding of engineering as a field both generally and for students from that community, and ways Virginia Tech can be a better community partner and fulfill its mission as a public institution. This project aims to broaden participation in engineering by gaining a holistic understanding of the communities that effectively support engineering major choice for rural students and provide contextual methods of increasing support for students from these rural areas. 

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2. Communities Support Engineering as a College Major Choice

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34307  

   Vaziri, S.L.; Paretti, M.C.; Grohs, J.R.; Baum, L.M.; Lester, M.M.; Newbill, P.L. (July 2020, Zone 1 Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education)

   Broadening participation in engineering is critical given the gap between the nation’s need for engineering graduates and its production of them. Efforts to spark interest in engineering among PreK-12 students have increased substantially in recent years as a result. However, past research has demonstrated that interest is not always sufficient to help students pursue engineering majors, particularly for rural students. In many rural communities, influential adults (family, friends, teachers) are often the primary influence on career choice, while factors such as community values, lack of social and cultural capital, limited course availability, and inadequate financial resources act as potential barriers. To account for these contextual factors, this project shifts the focus from individual students to the communities to understand how key stakeholders and organizations support engineering as a major choice and addresses the following questions: RQ1. What do current undergraduate engineering students who graduated from rural high schools describe as influences on their choice to attend college and pursue engineering as a post-secondary major? RQ2. How does the college choice process differ for rural students who enrolled in a 4-year university immediately after graduating from high school and those who transferred from a 2-year institution? RQ3. How do community members describe the resources that serve as key supports as well as the barriers that hinder support in their community? RQ4. What strategies do community members perceive their community should implement to enhance their ability to support engineering as a potential career choice? RQ5. How are these supports transferable or adaptable by other schools? What community-level factors support or inhibit transfer and adaptation? To answer the research questions, we employed a three-phase qualitative study. Phase 1 focused on understanding the experiences and perceptions of current [University Name] students from higher-producing rural schools. Analysis of focus group and interview data with 52 students highlighted the importance of interest and support from influential adults in students’ decision to major in engineering. One key finding from this phase was the importance of community college for many of our participants. Transfer students who attended community college before enrolling at [University Name] discussed the financial influences on their decision and the benefits of higher education much more frequently than their peers. In Phase 2, we used the findings from Phase 1 to conduct interviews within the participants’ home communities. This phase helped triangulate students’ perceptions with the perceptions and practices of others, and, equally importantly, allowed us to understand the goals, attitudes, and experiences of school personnel and local community members as they work with students. Participants from the students’ home communities indicated that there were few opportunities for students to learn more about engineering careers and provided suggestions for how colleges and universities could be more involved with students from their community. Phase 3, scheduled for Spring 2020, will bring the findings from Phases 1 and 2 back to rural communities via two participatory design workshops. These workshops, designed to share our findings and foster collaborative dialogue among the participants, will enable us to explore factors that support or hinder transfer of findings and to identify policies and strategies that would enhance each community’s ability to support engineering as a potential career choice. 

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3. Community Cultures: Broadening Participation By Understanding How Rural Communities Support Engineering as a College Major Choice

   Paretti, Marie C.; Grohs, Jacob R.; Anderson, William Michael; Lester, Marlena McGlothlin; Baum, Liesl M.; Newbill, Phyllis Leary; Kelly, Stacey Leigh (July 2018, 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   his project is supported by an NSF BPE grant. Career choices, such as engineering, are influenced by a number of factors including personal interest, ability, competence beliefs, prior work-related experience, and financial and social supports. However, financial and social support, a particularly significant factor for rural students’ career decisions, is often overlooked in the literature exploring career choice. Moreover, little work has explored how communities serve as key influencers for supporting or promoting engineering as a career choice. Therefore, the goal of this study is to explore the ways in which communities provide support to students deciding to pursue engineering as a college major. To better understand how students from selected rural area high schools choose engineering as a major, we conducted focus group discussions consisting of 4-6 students each from selected schools to talk collectively about their high school experiences and their choice to major in engineering. Choosing focus group participants from different schools enabled us to elicit tacit perceptions and beliefs that may not be evident when students from the same community talk with one another. That is, as students share their experiences across schools, they may recognize differences in their experiences that, though otherwise unconscious or unacknowledged, proved significant in their choice of college and major. We expect that certain community programs and the individuals involved will have some influence on students’ decisions to study engineering at [University Name]. We anticipate that the results will yield two key outcomes: 1. A holistic understanding of the communities that effectively support and encourage engineering major choice for rural students. 2. Locally driven, contextually relevant recommendations for policies and programs that would better enable economically disadvantaged, rural schools in southwestern Virginia to support engineering as a career choice for high school students. By understanding the ways some economically-disadvantaged rural communities support engineering as a career choice and linking a broad spectrum of rural communities together around this issue, this project will broaden participation in engineering by increasing support for students from these areas. By shifting our focus from students to communities, this research broadens our understanding of career choice by capturing the perspectives of community members (including not only school personnel, but also community leaders, students’ families, business owners and others) who often play a key role in students’ decisions, particularly in rural communities. Our research will bring these voices into the conversation to help scholars learn from and respond to these essential community perspectives. In doing so, we will provide a more nuanced model of engineering career choice that can then be explored in other rural contexts. This work thus contributes to the research on career choice, rural education, and engineering education. © 2018 American Society for Engineering Education 

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4. Middle School Students’ Conceptions of Failure in Rural Communities

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2018.8658670  

   Paradise, Tawni; Grohs, Jake (October 2018, 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE))

   This work in progress paper in the research to practice category identifies trends in how middle school youth from rural schools conceptualize failure after engaging in engineering-related learning activities. These trends inform better strategies that can be used in the PEERS, Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural Schools, program to ensure the goals of the program are met. The PEERS program moves beyond single exposure activities by engaging students in approximately six engineering-related learning activities throughout the year. This program partners researchers, teachers and local industry representatives aiming to (1) challenge misperceptions and create relevant conceptions of engineering; (2) maintain and expand situational interest; and, (3) integrate with individual interests, values, and social identities. Since failure is an integral part of the learning experience, students' conceptions of failure can influence the way students interact in these activities and the outcomes they experience from this program. Interviews were conducted with 38 students across the three rural communities involved in the PEERS program on their perceptions of failure. This paper presents two themes that emerged from initial coding of the interviews and explains how these themes will be used to inform future decisions for PEERS. 

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5. On Transfer Student Success: Exploring the Academic Trajectories of Black Transfer Engineering Students from Community Colleges

   Berhane, B; Hayes, S; Koonce, D; Salley, C (June 2019, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   According to the National Science Foundation, 50% of Black engineering students who have received a bachelor’s and master’s degree attended a community college at some point during their academic career. However, while research highlights the importance of supporting underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities (URMs) in STEM disciplines, there is a dearth of literature focusing on URMs in community colleges who pursue engineering and other science/math-based majors. Further, Black undergraduates in community colleges are often homogenized by area of study, with little regard for their specific major/discipline. Similarly, while engineering education research has begun to focus on the population of community college students, less attention has been paid to unpacking the experiences of racial subgroups of community college attendees. The engineering student transfer process has specific aspects related to it being a selective and challenging discipline (e.g., limited enrollment policies, engineering culture shock) that warrants a closer investigation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the experiences of a small population of students who have recently transferred from several community colleges to one four-year engineering school. Specifically, we will present preliminary findings derived from interviews with three Black students who started their academic careers at several community colleges in a Mid-Atlantic state, before transferring to the flagship institution of that same state. Interview transcripts will undergo a thorough analysis and will be coded to document rich themes. Multiple analyses of coded interview data will be performed by several members of the research team, as well as external evaluation members who are leading scholars in STEM and/or transfer education research. This research is part of a larger-scale, three year qualitative study, which will examine the academic trajectories of two distinct groups of Blacks in engineering majors: 1) Blacks born and educated in the United States and 2) Those born and educated in other countries. By looking at these populations distinctly, we will build upon past literature that disaggregates the experiences of Black STEM students who represent multiple identities across the African diaspora. Through this lens, we hope to highlight the impact that cultural background may have on the transfer experience. The theoretical framework guiding this study posits that the persistence of Black transfer students in engineering is a longitudinal process influenced by the intersection of both individual and institutional factors. We draw from the STEM transfer model, noting that the transfer process commences during a student’s community college education and continues through his/her transfer and enrollment in an engineering program at a four-year institution. The following factors contribute to our conceptualization of this process: pre-college background, community college prior to transfer, initial transfer to the four-year university, nearing 4-year degree completion. 

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