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1. Comparative Study of the Intersection of Engineering Identify and Black Identity of African-American Engineering Students at a PWI and an HBCU

   Berhan, L.; Kumar, R.; Goodloe, M.; Jones, J.; Adams, A. (June 2018, ASEE annual conference & exposition)

   This interdisciplinary, inter-institutional research initiation project is motivated by the need to develop practical strategies for broadening the participation of African American students in engineering. The central objective of the project is to conduct a comparative study of the factors affecting the success and pathways to engineering careers of African American students at a Predominantly White Institution (PWI), the University of Toledo, and a Historically Black University (Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University). Through this research we hope to gain insight into the factors affecting the social and academic well-being of students at PWIs and HBCUs from a psychological and anthropological perspective. For students from underrepresented groups in STEM at both HBCUs and PWIs it is generally recognized that social capital in the form of familial, peer and mentor support is critical to persistence in their major field of study. However, the role that embedded networks within student groups in general, and minority engineering affinity groups in particular, play in engineering students’ identity formation and academic success is not well understood. It is also not clear how other factors including institutional support and the attitudes and beliefs of faculty and staff toward underrepresented minority students affect the ability of these students to integrate into the social and academic systems at their institutions and how these factors influence the formation and development of their identities as engineers. Here we report on the role of membership in organizations for underrepresented minority engineering students such as the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) in contributing to the interlinking of personal and professional identities, and to the career pathways of African American students enrolled in PWI and HBCU, respectively. 

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2. Exploring I-poems to Explore the Identity of Underrepresented Engineering Student Makers

   Kellam, N.; Cirell, A.; Boklage, A.; Coley, B. (January 2018, Frontiers in Education)

   This Work in Progress Paper presents an NSF-funded study focused on understanding the role that makerspaces play in the identity development of engineering students from underrepresented groups (URGs). In recent years, makerspaces have become a popular addition to universities, with an implicit assumption that makerspaces will increase students choosing to major in STEM disciplines. The research question that guided this work is the following: How well do I-poems and thematic analysis help us uncover complex and nuanced understandings of the identities of engineering students and makers who are from URGs? For this paper, we share a passage from an interview and conduct an analysis of that passage using the I-poem analytic strategy and thematic analysis. In particular, we explore the possibilities inherent in using these analytic approaches to understand identity development. We discuss how the I-poem was effective in developing a more complex and nuanced understanding of the identity development of engineering student makers. Further implications of this novel approach are that I-poems show promise to resonate better with the reader and position the researcher and reader as ‘standing alongside’ the participant, instead of a more traditional approach of ‘gazing at’ our participants. 

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3. A Review of the Literature on Students’ Experiences in Historically Black Colleges and Universities Dual-Degree Engineering Programs

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--46485  

   Headley, Makayla; Fletcher, Trina; Benson, Lisa (June 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have faced challenges in developing and maintaining engineering programs due to the lack of equitable resources including funds and technology. Partnerships between HBCUs and Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) have emerged as a way to increase the number of Black students in engineering through Dual Degree Engineering Programs (DDEP), often classified as 3-2 programs. Students in these programs attend an HBCU to complete all pre-engineering courses (typically three years) and spend their final undergraduate years (typically two) at a PWI. At the end of the program, students would have earned two bachelor’s degrees, one from the HBCU in a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) field and the other from the PWI in an engineering discipline. While there are many advantages to institutional collaborations, HBCU students must learn to adapt to an entirely new system and culture at the PWI. This scoping literature review examines research on Black students as they matriculate into a PWI from an HBCU while pursuing an engineering degree. The primary objective of this literature review is to gain a deeper understanding of the experiences of Black students in DDEPs bridging HBCUs and PWIs. The review specifically sought to address students’ motivations for enrolling in DDEPs, the benefits and challenges involved with making the transition from an HBCU to a PWI, the factors contributing to their decision to pursue such a program, and their expectations regarding these experiences at the two distinct types of institutions. A total of 19 articles were identified and reviewed. Three main categories surfaced from the literature review, with two subcategories within the first theme: 1) references to HBCU DDEPs without the inclusion of student experiences; 1a) goal of increasing the number of Black students in STEM; 1b) engineering degree pathways; 2) HBCU student support and resources; and 3) the experiences of HBCU students in DDEPs. Synthesizing the literature revealed a crucial need for additional research on HBCUs in general. The study’s results emphasize the necessity for exploring the lived experiences of students in HBCU DDEPs. Further exploration could focus on the support and resources provided by institutions to students during their transfer to PWIs. This exploration of DDEPs promises to offer valuable insights into how DDEPs between HBCUs and PWIs can effectively and successfully prepare Black engineering students for their future careers. The findings from this literature review identify areas for future research. 

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4. Listening to Makers: Exploring Engineering Students’ Recommendations for Creating a Better Makerspace Experience

   Jennings, M.; Coley, B.; Boklage, A.; Kellam, N. (January 2019, 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   This paper explores the ways that students experience university-affiliated makerspaces as captured in interviews and during observations. Our research questions are focused on understanding the ways that engineering students have experienced makerspaces in a variety of institutions and institution-types, and their suggested ways of improving these makerspaces. In particular, we are interested in the ways that students from underrepresented groups have experienced these makerspaces and their suggestions for improvements to the makerspaces. Data collected for this study was gathered using semi-structured interviews with a diverse set of students from seven different institutions. An a priori codebook was developed to analyze transcribed interview data. The codes that are the focus in this study are the following: “experiences that shape identity,” “pathways to engineering,” and “recommendations for makerspaces” and the emergent patterns are around equipment-focused, logistical, curricular, and social recommendations for makerspaces. It was generally found that women and ethnic minorities tended to recommend social change in makerspaces, while men of all ethnicities tended to recommend equipment and technology changes. The implications of this study are to establish student makerspace recommendations in order to create more inclusive and welcoming environments in makerspaces and other engineering spaces. 

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5. Lived Experiences of African American Engineering Students at a PWI Through the Lens of Navigational Capital

   Damas, S.; Benson, L. (February 2022, 2022 CoNECD (Collaborative Network for Engineering & Computing Diversity))

   There are significant disparities between the conferring of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) bachelor’s degrees to minoritized groups and the number of STEM faculty that represent minoritized groups at four-year predominantly White institutions (PWIs). Studies show that as of 2019, African American faculty at PWIs have increased by only 2.3% in the last 20 years. This study explores the ways in which this imbalance affects minoritized students in engineering majors. Our research objective is to describe the ways in which African American students navigate their way to success in an engineering program at a PWI where the minoritized faculty representation is less than 10%. In this study, we define success as completion of an undergraduate degree and matriculation into a Ph.D. program. Research shows that African American students struggle with feeling like the “outsider within” in graduate programs and that the engineering culture can permeate from undergraduate to graduate programs. We address our research objective by conducting interviews using navigational capital as our theoretical framework, which can be defined as resilience, academic invulnerability, and skills. These three concepts come together to denote the journey of an individual as they achieve success in an environment not created with them in mind. Navigational capital has been applied in education contexts to study minoritized groups, and specifically in engineering education to study the persistence of students of color. Research on navigational capital often focuses on how participants acquire resources from others. There is a limited focus on the experience of the student as the individual agent exercising their own navigational capital. Drawing from and adapting the framework of navigational capital, this study provides rich descriptions of the lived experiences of African American students in an engineering program at a PWI as they navigated their way to academic success in a system that was not designed with them in mind. This pilot study took place at a research-intensive, land grant PWI in the southeastern United States. We recruited two students who identify as African American and are in the first year of their Ph.D. program in an engineering major. Our interview protocol was adapted from a related study about student motivation, identity, and sense of belonging in engineering. After transcribing interviews with these participants, we began our qualitative analysis with a priori coding, drawing from the framework of navigational capital, to identify the experiences, connections, involvement, and resources the participants tapped into as they maneuvered their way to success in an undergraduate engineering program at a PWI. To identify other aspects of the participants’ experiences that were not reflected in that framework, we also used open coding. The results showed that the participants tapped into their navigational capital when they used experiences, connections, involvement, and resources to be resilient, academically invulnerable, and skillful. They learned from experiences (theirs or others’), capitalized on their connections, positioned themselves through involvement, and used their resources to achieve success in their engineering program. The participants identified their experiences, connections, and involvement. For example, one participant who came from a blended family (African American and White) drew from the experiences she had with her blended family. Her experiences helped her to understand the cultures of Black and White people. She was able to turn that into a skill to connect with others at her PWI. The point at which she took her familial experiences to use as a skill to maneuver her way to success at a PWI was an example of her navigational capital. Another participant capitalized on his connections to develop academic invulnerability. He was able to build his connections by making meaningful relationships with his classmates. He knew the importance of having reliable people to be there for him when he encountered a topic he did not understand. He cultivated an environment through relationships with classmates that set him up to achieve academic invulnerability in his classes. The participants spoke least about how they used their resources. The few mentions of resources were not distinct enough to make any substantial connection to the factors that denote navigational capital. The participants spoke explicitly about the PWI culture in their engineering department. From open coding, we identified the theme that participants did not expect to have role models in their major that looked like them and went into their undergraduate experience with the understanding that they will be the distinct minority in their classes. They did not make notable mention of how a lack of minority faculty affected their success. Upon acceptance, they took on the challenge of being a racial minority in exchange for a well-recognized degree they felt would have more value compared to engineering programs at other universities. They identified ways they maneuvered around their expectation that they would not have representative role models through their use of navigational capital. Integrating knowledge from the framework of navigational capital and its existing applications in engineering and education allows us the opportunity to learn from African American students that have succeeded in engineering programs with low minority faculty representation. The future directions of this work are to outline strategies that could enhance the path of minoritized engineering students towards success and to lay a foundation for understanding the use of navigational capital by minoritized students in engineering at PWIs. Students at PWIs can benefit from understanding their own navigational capital to help them identify ways to successfully navigate educational institutions. Students’ awareness of their capacity to maintain high levels of achievement, their connections to networks that facilitate navigation, and their ability to draw from experiences to enhance resilience provide them with the agency to unleash the invisible factors of their potential to be innovators in their collegiate and work environments. 

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