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1. Understanding Engineering Identity in Undergraduate Students

   Schell, W.J.; Hughes, B.E.; Tallman, B. (October 2018, American Society for Engineering Management (ASEM) International Annual Conference (IAC))

   The process of becoming an engineer is fundamentally an identity development process and students who identify as engineers are more likely both to graduate and to enter the field upon graduation. Therefore an opportunity in engineering education is providing undergraduates experiences that bolster their sense of identity as engineers. In particular, experiences that offer authentic engagement in engineering work should be expected to promote engineering identity. This paper tests the relationship between collegiate experiences expected to promote engineering identity formation with change in engineering identity in a national sample of 918 engineering students using data from the 2013 College Senior Survey (CSS). The CSS is administered by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA to college students at the end of their fourth year of college; data from the CSS are then matched to students’ prior responses on the 2009 Freshman Survey (TFS) to create a longitudinal sample. Engineering identity is measured using a composite of items available in both surveys to assess change in engineering identity over four years, and intention to pursue an engineering career is also tested. Results show participation in undergraduate research appears to increase engineering identity, while participation in an internship increases likelihood of pursuing an engineering career. 

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2. Work in Progress: Using Experiment-centric Learning Pedagogy to Increase Student Understanding of Chemical Principles and Concepts

   Ibirinde, T. (June 2023, American Society for Engineering Education, 2023. https://peer.asee.org/44386)

   The hands-on approach in teaching and learning is an important resource to be explored because it offers a meaningful platform for student-instructor interaction that fosters sound scientific reasoning and improves the understanding of abstract chemistry concepts. Experiment-centric pedagogy (ECP) is a contemporary teaching approach that integrates active student participation in problem-based activities through hands-on mobile devices. This paper describes how experiment-centric pedagogy (ECP) has been used to teach key chemistry concepts to undergraduate students in the chemistry discipline at Historically Black University (HBCU). To assess whether ECP achieves a lasting increase in undergraduate student curiosity and engagement in the chemistry discipline, ECP was implemented from Fall 2021 to Fall 2022 using an inexpensive, safe, and portable electronic instrumentation system usable in both classrooms and laboratories. The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire developed by Pintrich, Smith, García, and McKeachie in 1991 was used to measure the key constructs associated with students’ curiosity and engagement. The classroom observation protocol (COPUS) was used to assess instructors’ effectiveness, and signature assignments were used to evaluate knowledge gains. 

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3. Maintaining a high degree of research productivity at a predominately undergraduate institution as your career advances

   https://doi.org/10.1002/qua.26370  

   Shields, George C.; Feller, Scott E. (July 2020, International Journal of Quantum Chemistry)

   Abstract In this perspective, two experienced academic administrators who are computational chemists discuss strategies for how to maintain an active research program at a predominately undergraduate institution as your career progresses. More responsibility equates to less time for research, so planning for research to remain a priority is essential. We all have the same amount of time, so figuring out how to use yours better is the key to remaining active. Professional organizations such as Council on Undergraduate Research, consortia of computational chemists such as Molecular Education and Research Consortium in computational chemistRY and Midwest Undergraduate Computational Chemistry Consortium, and attendance at professional conferences can help sustain your research program. Collaborations with faculty at other institutions provide a particularly effective accountability mechanism as well. Perhaps the best way to improve your productivity is to become a better mentor to your undergraduate students. Building a research group that is fun and exciting develops a culture that sustains itself and provides the momentum necessary to maintain progress toward scientific goals. 

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4. Approaching Convergence from an Undergraduate Engineering Perspective

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE61694.2024.10893391  

   Thompson, Michael S; Applehans, Sarah; Cheville, Alan; Thomas, Rebecca; Thomas, Stewart J; Nickel, Robert; Asare, Philip (October 2024, IEEE)

   This research-to-practice full paper presents and approach to bringing convergence to the undergraduate engineering context. Convergence is the process of integrating a variety of ideas, skills, and methods to create new ideas, skills, and methods in order to address complex, socially relevant challenges like the UN Sustainable Development Goals [1] and the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) Grand Challenges [2]. In the US, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has been a major driver of convergence related research and has focused on work primarily at the graduate level and beyond. To explore how convergence concepts translate to an undergraduate engineering context this research to practice paper describes a taxonomy that translates convergent knowledge, skills, and mindsets into the domain of undergraduate engineering education. While we do not believe it is reasonable to expect undergraduates to engage with convergence in the same way as graduate students or postdoctoral scholars, we believe that they can develop in areas that will allow them to engage in convergent work later in their careers. This paper first defines convergence and then examines the challenges and opportunities related to developing a student's ability to do convergent work in an undergraduate context. The developed taxonomy outlines the knowledge, skills, mindsets, and structures that support convergent work from the larger research literature, and adapts these to an undergraduate context. The taxonomy is then used to conduct a gap analysis of an undergraduate electrical and computer engineering degree program. This analysis is based on the syllabi. This work was conducted in the context of an electrical and computer engineering department situated in a medium-sized primarily undergraduate liberal arts institution in the mid-Atlantic region. As the challenges and opportunities are similar to but also unique to this institution this work forms a rich case study that can inform similar efforts in other institutions and contexts where a similar gap analysis may be beneficial. The goal of this work is to enable others to analyze an their existing student experience to see what aspects of convergence are currently included. 

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5. How Can We Identify Teams at Risk of Marginalizing Minoritized Students, at Scale?

   Dickerson, Darryl A. Masta; Masta, Stephanie; Ohland, Matthew W.; Pawley, Alice L. (July 2021, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   Teamwork is critical to engineering professional work. While some aspects of teaming with engineering students are well understood and implemented into instructional tools, tools for handling student teams dealing with implicit and explicit racism, sexism, and homophobia are infrequent. Instructors of large undergraduate courses need tools to help make team-level marginalization visible at the classroom level to interrupt discriminatory or marginalizing behavior amongst teammates, and to model allyship so teammates learn how to interrupt others' marginalizing behavior when instructors are not around. This paper describes the broader project, and describes some early results, focused on an algorithm that can help identify teams engaging in marginalizing behaviors against minoritized students, whether minoritized by race, gender, nationality, LGBTQ identity, or other categorization schemes. We describe how the algorithm is proving useful to identify student teams to focus on for analysis to answer some of our research questions focused on how engineering undergraduate teams marginalize minoritized members, and illustrate one such analysis. We describe our continuing work on the broader project. 

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