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1. Empowering Students to be Adaptive Decision Makers: Finalizing a Multi-dimensional Inventory of Decision-Making Competency

   Orr, Marisa K.; Martin, Baker A.; Ehlert, Katherine M.; Brotherton, Haleh B.; Manning, Jessica A. (July 2021, Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition)

   The main objective of this project is to help students learn to make decisions that lead to academic success. Our first goal is to map curriculum pathways, which begins by studying overpersistence (when a student persists in a particular major but does not make timely progress toward a degree). We seek to identify curriculum-specific indicators of overpersistence and corresponding alternative paths that could lead to success. Our second goal is to improve the structure of the Decision-Making Competency Inventory (DMCI) so that it can explain student's decision-making competency in more detail and in congruence with the Self-Regulation Model of Decision-Making. This instrument will be used to map decision-making competency to academic choices and outcomes. The third goal is to develop an Academic Dashboard as a means for sharing relevant research results with students. This will allow students to have access to the strategies, information, and stories needed to make and implement adaptive decisions. This paper highlights our progress in the fifth year of the project and our plans going forward. 

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2. Teaching Engineering Students to Self-Transform: Parallelisms between Product Innovation and Student Career Path Planning

   Vargas_Hernandez, Noe; Fuentes, Arturo; Ortega, Javier; Lozano, Karen; Marquez, Eleazar (February 2023, 2023 UTRGV STEMED Conference)

   Focus/Problem Statement Freshman engineering students can have a hard time transitioning to college. The freshman year is critical to the students’ academic success; in this year they learn basic skills and establish essential networks with other students, faculty, and resources. How can we help these freshman engineering students in this transition? Theoretical or Conceptual Framework We propose that freshman students can learn from the engineering design innovation process and apply it by analogy to the design of their academic pathways. There are multiple similarities between product innovation (i.e., technology) and the continuous academic challenges faced by the student. Engineers as designers and innovators have a vast and rich repository of techniques, tools, and approaches to develop new technologies, and a parallelism can be drawn between the design and innovation of a technology (e.g., redesign of a kitchen appliance), and the “design” of the students’ academic career pathways. Methodology/Design of the Study or Organization The pilot for the Spring 2023 semester will have Intro to Mechanical Engineering (MECE 1101) students work in teams in a semester-long product innovation project to redesign a simple kitchen appliance. Students will learn theory and methodology of the design process (e.g., creative exploration of solutions, decision making, multi objective evaluation, etc.). These same students will concurrently take UNIV 1301 (Learning Frameworks) where they will have a semester-long project to define their career pathways. Both projects, product innovation and career pathways, will follow the Challenge Based Instruction (CBI) approach. Periodically, a connection will be established between the projects to show the students how to use the lessons from product innovation by analogy and reflection in their career pathways project. The authors believe that the MECE 1101 project initiates a process for students to become innovators and entrepreneurs, while the UNIV 1301 project prepares students as self-innovators for future academic, personal, and professional challenges. Findings/Conclusions In this session, the authors will share their experiences and plan of implementation as well as details from recent NSF IUSE HSI funding for this purpose. The authors expect audience engagement to receive suggestions and ideas to improve freshman student success. 

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3. Work in Progress: Teaching Engineering Students to Self-Transform: Parallelisms between Product Innovation and Student Career Path Planning

   Vargas_Hernandez, Noe; Ortega, Javier; Lozano, Karen; Fuentes, Arturo; Marquez, Eleazar (June 2024, ASEE Conference)

   Freshman engineering students can have a hard time transitioning to college. The freshman year is critical to the students’ academic success; in this year they learn basic skills and establish essential networks with other students, faculty, and resources. How can we help these freshman engineering students in this transition? We propose that freshman students can learn from the engineering design innovation process and apply it by analogy to the design of their academic pathways. There are multiple similarities between product innovation (i.e., technology) and the continuous academic challenges faced by the student. Engineers as designers and innovators have a vast and rich repository of techniques, tools, and approaches to develop new technologies, and a parallelism can be drawn between the design and innovation of a technology (e.g., redesign of a kitchen appliance), and the “design” of the students’ academic career pathways. During the Spring 2023 semester pilot, students in Intro to Mechanical Engineering (Course A) worked in teams in a 6-week product innovation project to redesign a simple kitchen appliance. Students learned basic concepts of the design process (e.g., creative exploration of solutions, decision making, multi objective evaluation, etc.). These same students concurrently took Course B (Learning Frameworks) where they worked on a 6-week project to define their career pathways. Both projects, product innovation and career pathways, followed the Challenge Based Instruction (CBI) approach. Periodically, participant students were shown how to use the lessons from product innovation by analogy and reflection in their career pathways project. The objective is for students to learn about the engineering design process and to apply it to their academic challenges by analogy. This prepares students with meta skills to help solve future problems in their academic path, and at each iteration, the students transform themselves, hence the use of the term self-transformation (also referred as “self-innovation”). Data collected from pre and post surveys will be presented to measure self-efficacy in engineering design, grit, motivation to learn, and STEM identity. Participant interviews provide a qualitative insight into the intervention. This project is funded by NSF award 2225247. 

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4. Creating Opportunities to Help Students Be Prepared for Careers in a STEM Field

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--36874  

   Reilly, Edel (July 2021, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access)

   This presentation reports on an ongoing National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) funded project in the Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP). The goals of the project include increasing the number of students graduating with a major, minor, or Master’s degree in mathematics; strengthening the academic culture in the department; and strengthening the relationships within the broader STEM community within and beyond the university. The project aims to achieve these goals by providing financial assistance to students in need to pursue their degree and developing a series of activities each semester designed to strengthen relationships within the academic and STEM communities. Ways in which the goals of the project are being met will be shared including: recruiting strategies used to get students into the program; offering of activities in the form of presentations and workshops to help students prepare for careers the STEM industry; peer-led tutoring sessions to help with academic success in mathematics classes, and monthly meetings in which participants present original research. Data collected from student surveys at the end of each semester will be reported. Finally, the impact of transitioning to online learning as a result of COVID-19 in the middle of a semester on a project that focuses on community development will be shared. In addition, to students’ responses to online learning data collected from faculty teaching in STEM disciplines will also be shared. The following sources of information were used for this presentation; quantitative and qualitative data gathered from End of Semester surveys, student reflection narratives concerning their small group activities, and reports that summarizes and evaluates the peer-led team learning sessions. 

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5. Success and retention model for biology and computer science majors in Two-year

   Ovueraye, Oberhiri Loretta (April 2019, Southeastern biology)

   STEM-Mia (“my STEM”) is a National Science Foundation funded project that provides scholarships and supports to academically talented, low-income STEM students at MDC InterAmerican Campus. Over a five-year period, the NSF - S-STEM funds will support 45 MDC students with scholarships and wrap around services toward preparing them for Science, Technology, Mathematics and Engineering (STEM) careers, which are in high-demand and critical to building a competitive workforce that will help grow America’s economy. The grant project will target two primary populations – biology and computer science majors. This presentation will discuss the impact of embedding faculty mentoring, discipline immersions, self-analysis, financial support, toward fostering and shaping student perceptions of their personal agency and empowering them to achieve their STEM-related academic and professional goals by helping them connect with the sources of their STEM self-efficacy and identity. What we are accomplishing in MDC serves as a model for two-year colleges seeking to incorporate curricular changes focused on success and retention in biology and computer science majors for populations who are underrepresented in STEM fields in general. 

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