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1. CAREER: ‘Support our Troops’: Re-storying Student Veteran and Service Member Deficit in Engineering through Professional Formation and Community Advocacy: YEAR 1

   Minichiello, A. ( August 2022 , 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   There is an urgent need to recruit, train, and sustain a diverse engineering workforce able to meet the socio-technical challenges of 21st century society. Together, student veterans and service members (SVSM) are a unique yet understudied student group that comprises substantial numbers of those historically underrepresented in engineering (i.e., due to race, ethnicity, gender, ability, orientation, etc.). That, in combination with technical interests and skills, maturity, life experience, and self-discipline, makes SVSM ideal candidates for helping engineering education meet these demands [1,2]. This NSF CAREER project aims to advance full participation of SVSMs within higher engineering education and the engineering workforce by 1) Research Plan: developing deeper understandings about how SVSM participate, persist, and produce professional identities in engineering and 2) Education Plan: putting new assets based understandings of SVSM experiences into practice through collaborative development, implementation and broad dissemination of evidence-based military ally and mentorship programs in engineering and awareness/support trainings for engineering faculty, staff, and administrators.
2. Enhancing Graduate Education by Fully Integrating Research and Professional Skill Development within a Diverse, Inclusive, and Supportive Academy

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34569  

   Santillan-Jimenez, E. ; Duan, Q. ; Dariotis, J. K. ; Crocker, M. ( January 2020 , 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   Graduate training often takes a monodisciplinary approach that is not informed by best practices, ignores the needs and preferences of students, and overlooks the increasingly interdisciplinary and international nature of research. This is unfortunate, particularly since graduate education that is fully integrated with interdisciplinary research can help students become part of a trained and diverse workforce equipped to meet society’s many challenges. Against this backdrop, a National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) program is being established at the University of Kentucky leveraging the most effective instruments for the training of STEM professionals, such as network-based graduate student mentoring and career preparation encompassing both technical and professional skillsets. Briefly, the training graduate students will receive – in a way that is fully integrated with the research they perform – includes: 1) tools such as individual development plans and developmental network maps; 2) a multi-departmental and interdisciplinary course on research-related content; 3) a seminar course on transferrable skills (ethics, research, communication, teaching, mentoring, entrepreneurship, teamwork, management, leadership, outreach, etc.); 4) a certificate to be awarded once students complete the two courses above and garner additional credits from an interdisciplinary curriculum of research-related courses; 5) summer internships at other departments and at externalmore »institutions (other universities, industry, national laboratories) nationwide or abroad; 6) an annual research-related symposium including all elements of a scientific conference; 7) internal collaborative research grants for participants to fund and pursue their own ideas; 8) fields trips to facilities related to the research; and 9) coaching on job hunting as well as résumé, motivation letter and interview preparation. Since a workforce equipped to meet society’s challenges must be both well trained and diverse, multiple initiatives will ensure that this NRT will broaden participation in STEM. Recruitment-wise, close collaboration with a number of entities will provide this NRT with a broad recruitment pool of talented and diverse students. Moreover, collaboration with these entities will provide trainees with ample opportunities to acquire, practice and refine their professional skills, as trainees present their results and recruit in conferences, meetings and outreach events organized by these entities, become members and/or join their leadership, and expand their professional and mentoring network in the process. In addition, minority trainees will be surveyed periodically to probe their feelings of well-being, preparation, acceptance, belonging and distress, as well as their perception of how well structured their departments and programs are. According to recent literature, these factors determine whether or not they perform (i.e., publish) at rates comparable to their male majority peers. Saliently, the evaluation of the educational model employed will afford a comprehensive understanding not only of the academy components that were more utilized and impactful, but will reveal the individual mentoring and skill-building facets of the program driving its successful implementation. The evaluation plan includes outcomes, performance measures, an evaluation timetable, benchmarks and a description of how formative evaluation will improve practice, the evaluation process also extending to research activities.« less
3. Partnering Undergraduate Engineering Students with Preservice Teachers to Design and Teach an Elementary Engineering Lesson Through Ed+gineering

   Gutierrez, K. ; Ringleb, S. ; Kidd, J. ; Ayala, O. ; Pazos, P. ; Kaipa, K. ( June 2020 , 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Online)

   Major challenges in engineering education include retention of undergraduate engineering students (UESs) and continued engagement after the first year when concepts increase in difficulty. Additionally, employers, as well as ABET, look for students to demonstrate non-technical skills, including the ability to work successfully in groups, the ability to communicate both within and outside their discipline, and the ability to find information that will help them solve problems and contribute to lifelong learning. Teacher education is also facing challenges given the recent incorporation of engineering practices and core ideas into the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and state level standards of learning. To help teachers meet these standards in their classrooms, education courses for preservice teachers (PSTs) must provide resources and opportunities to increase science and engineering knowledge, and the associated pedagogies. To address these challenges, Ed+gineering, an NSF-funded multidisciplinary collaborative service learning project, was implemented into two sets of paired-classes in engineering and education: a 100 level mechanical engineering class (n = 42) and a foundations class in education (n = 17), and a fluid mechanics class in mechanical engineering technology (n = 23) and a science methods class (n = 15). The paired classes collaborated in multidisciplinary teams ofmore »5-8 undergraduate students to plan and teach engineering lessons to local elementary school students. Teams completed a series of previously tested, scaffolded activities to guide their collaboration. Designing and delivering lessons engaged university students in collaborative processes that promoted social learning, including researching and planning, peer mentoring, teaching and receiving feedback, and reflecting and revising their engineering lesson. The research questions examined in this pilot, mixed-methods research study include: (1) How did PSTs’ Ed+gineering experiences influence their engineering and science knowledge?; (2) How did PSTs’ and UESs’ Ed+gineering experiences influence their pedagogical understanding?; and (3) What were PSTs’ and UESs’ overall perceptions of their Ed+gineering experiences? Both quantitative (e.g., Engineering Design Process assessment, Science Content Knowledge assessment) and qualitative (student reflections) data were used to assess knowledge gains and project perceptions following the semester-long intervention. Findings suggest that the PSTs were more aware and comfortable with the engineering field following lesson development and delivery, and often better able to explain particular science/engineering concepts. Both PSTs and UESs, but especially the latter, came to realize the importance of planning and preparing lessons to be taught to an audience. UESs reported greater appreciation for the work of educators. PSTs and UESs expressed how they learned to work in groups with multidisciplinary members—this is a valuable lesson for their respective professional careers. Yearly, the Ed+gineering research team will also request and review student retention reports in their respective programs to assess project impact.« less
4. Exploring the Effects of Additive Manufacturing Education on Students’ Engineering Design Process and its Outcomes

   Prabhu, R. ; Miller, S. ; Simpson, T. ; Meisel, N. ( October 2019 , Journal of mechanical design)

   Research in additive manufacturing (AM) has increased the use of AM in many industries, resulting in a commensurate need for a workforce skilled in AM. In order to meet this need, educational institutions have undertaken different initiatives to integrate design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) into the engineering curriculum. However, limited research has explored the impact of these educational interventions in bringing about changes in the technical goodness of students’ design outcomes, particularly through the integration of DfAM concepts in an engineering classroom environment. This study explores this gap using an experimental study with 193 participants recruited from a junior-level course on mechanical engineering design. The participants were split into three educational intervention groups: (1) no DfAM, (2) restrictive DfAM, and (3) restrictive and opportunistic (dual) DfAM. The effects of the educational intervention on the participants’ use of DfAM were measured through changes in (1) participants’ DfAM self-efficacy, (2) technical goodness of their AM design outcomes, and (3) participants’ use of DfAM-related concepts when describing and evaluating their AM designs. The results showed that while all three educational interventions result in similar changes in the participants’ opportunistic DfAM self-efficacy, participants who receive only restrictive DfAM inputs show the greatest increase inmore »their restrictive DfAM self-efficacy. Further, we see that despite these differences, all three groups show a similar decrease in the technical goodness of their AM designs, after attending the lectures. A content analysis of the participants’ design descriptions and evaluations revealed a simplification of their design geometries, which provides a possible explanation for the decrease in their technical goodness, despite the encouragement to utilize the design freedom of AM to improve functionality or optimize the weight of the structure. These results emphasize the need for more in-depth DfAM education to encourage the use of both opportunistic and restrictive DfAM during student design challenges. The results also highlight the possible influence of how the design problem is stated on the use of DfAM in solving it.« less
5. Understanding the Professional Formation of Engineers through the Lens of Design Thinking: Unpacking theWicked Problem of Diversity and Inclusion

   Zoltowski, Carla B. ; Buzzanell, Patrice M. ; Brightman, Andrew O. ; Torres, David ; Eddington, Sean M. ( June 2017 , ASEE annual conference & exposition proceedings)

   Three broad issues have been identified in the professional formation of engineers: 1) the gap between what students learn in universities and what they practice upon graduation; 2) the limiting perception that engineering is solely technical, math, and theory oriented; and 3) the lack of diversity (representation of a wide range of people) and lack of inclusion (incorporation of different perspectives, values, and ways of thinking and being in engineering) in many engineering programs. These are not new challenges in engineering education, rather they are persistent and difficult to change. There have been countless calls to recruit and retain women and underrepresented minority group members into engineering careers and numerous strategies proposed to improve diversity, inclusion, and retention, as well as to calls to examine socio-technical integration in engineering cultures and education for professional formation. Despite the changes in some disciplinary profiles in engineering and the curricular reforms within engineering education, there still has not been the deep transformation needed to integrate inclusionary processes and thinking into professional formation. In part, the reason is that diversity and inclusion are still framed as simply “numbers problems” to be solved. What is needed instead is an approach that understands and explores diversitymore »and inclusion as interrelated with the epistemological (what do engineers need to know) and ontological (what does it mean to be an engineer) underpinnings of engineering. These issues are highly complex, interconnected, and not amenable to simple solutions, that is, they are “wicked” problems. They require design thinking. Thus our NSF-funded Research in the Formation of Engineers (RFE) study utilizes a design thinking approach and research activities to explore foundational understandings of formation and diversity and inclusion in engineering while addressing the three project objectives: 1) Better prepare engineers for today’s workforce; 2) Broaden understandings of engineering practice as both social and technical; and 3) Create and sustain more diverse and inclusionary engineering programs. The project is organized around the three phases of the design process (inspiration, ideation, and implementation), and embedded within the design process is a longitudinal, multiphase, mixed-methods study. Although the goal is to eventually study these objectives on a broader scale, we begin with a smaller context: the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering (BME) at Purdue University. These schools share similarities with some common coursework and faculty, but also provide contrasts as BME’s undergraduate population, on average for recent semesters, has been 44-46% female, where ECE has been 13-14% female. Although BME has slightly more underrepresented minority students (7-8% versus 5%), approximately 60% of BME students are white, versus 40% for ECE. It is important to note that Purdue’s School of ECE offers B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering (EE) and Computer Engineering (CmpE), which reflect unique disciplinary cultures. Additionally, the schools differ significantly on undergraduate enrollment. The BME enrollment was 278, whereas ECE’s enrollment was 675 in EE and 541 in CmpE1. In this paper we describe the background literature and the research design, including the study contexts, target subject populations, and procedures for quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis. In addition, we present the data collected during the first phase of the research project. In our poster, we will present preliminary analysis of the first phase data.« less