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1. Work in Progress: Understanding Student Perceptions of Stress as part of Engineering Culture

   Cross, Kelly J. ; Jensen, Karin J. ( January 2018 , American Society of Engineering Education Conference Proceedings)

   High levels of stress and anxiety are common amongst college students, particularly engineering students. Students report lack of sleep, grades, competition, change in lifestyle, and other significant stressors throughout their undergraduate education (1, 2). Stress and anxiety have been shown to negatively impact student experience (3-6), academic performance (6-8), and retention (9). Previous studies have focused on identifying factors that cause individual students stress while completing undergraduate engineering degree programs (1). However, it not well-understood how a culture of stress is perceived and is propagated in engineering programs or how this culture impacts student levels of identification with engineering. Further, the impact of student stress has not been directly considered in engineering regarding recruitment, retention, and success. Therefore, our guiding research question is: Does the engineering culture create stress for students that hinder their engineering identity development? To answer our research question, we designed a sequential mixed methods study with equal priority of quantitative survey data and qualitative individual interviews. Our study participants are undergraduate engineering students across all levels and majors at a large, public university. Our sample goal is 2000 engineering student respondents. We combined three published surveys to build our quantitative data collection instrument, including the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS), Identification with engineering subscale, and Engineering Department Inclusion Level subscale. The objective of the quantitative instrument is to illuminate individual perceptions of the existence of an engineering stress culture (ESC) and create an efficient tool to measure the impact ESC on engineering identity development. Specifically, we seek to understand the relationships among the following constructs; 1) identification with engineering, 2) stress and anxiety, and 3) feelings of inclusion within their department. The focus of this paper presents the results of the pilot of the proposed instrument with 20 participants and a detailed data collection and analysis process. In an effort to validate our instrument, we conducted a pilot study to refine our data collection process and the results will guide the data collection for the larger study. In addition to identifying relationships among construct, the survey data will be further analyzed to specify which demographics are mediating or moderating factors of these relationships. For example, does a student’s 1st generation status influence their perception of stress or engineering identity development? Our analysis may identify discipline-specific stressors and characterize culture components that promote student anxiety and stress. Our objective is to validate our survey instrument and use it to inform the protocol for the follow-up interviews to gain a deeper understanding of the responses to the survey instrument. Understanding what students view as stressful and how students identify stress as an element of program culture will support the development of interventions to mitigate student stress. References 1. Schneider L (2007) Perceived stress among engineering students. A Paper Presented at St. Lawrence Section Conference. Toronto, Canada. Retrieved from: www. asee. morrisville. edu. 2. Ross SE, Niebling BC, & Heckert TM (1999) Sources of stress among college students. Social psychology 61(5):841-846. 3. Goldman CS & Wong EH (1997) Stress and the college student. Education 117(4):604-611. 4. Hudd SS, et al. (2000) Stress at college: Effects on health habits, health status and self-esteem. College Student Journal 34(2):217-228. 5. Macgeorge EL, Samter W, & Gillihan SJ (2005) Academic Stress, Supportive Communication, and Health A version of this paper was presented at the 2005 International Communication Association convention in New York City. Communication Education 54(4):365-372. 6. Burt KB & Paysnick AA (2014) Identity, stress, and behavioral and emotional problems in undergraduates: Evidence for interaction effects. Journal of college student development 55(4):368-384. 7. Felsten G & Wilcox K (1992) Influences of stress and situation-specific mastery beliefs and satisfaction with social support on well-being and academic performance. Psychological Reports 70(1):291-303. 8. Pritchard ME & Wilson GS (2003) Using emotional and social factors to predict student success. Journal of college student development 44(1):18-28. 9. Zhang Z & RiCharde RS (1998) Prediction and Analysis of Freshman Retention. AIR 1998 Annual Forum Paper. 

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2. S-STEM Student Reflections and IDP Process

   Fiss, L. K. ; Irwin, J. L. ; Tan, S. ( July 2021 , 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. https://peer.asee.org/37693)

   Student reflections and using individual development plans (IDPs) for mentoring have been an integral part of an NSF S-STEM project focusing on students pursuing baccalaureate degrees in Engineering Technology (ET). The Engineering Technology Scholars – IMProving Retention and Student Success (ETS-IMPRESS) project provides financial support and offers students several high-impact curricular and co-curricular activities to increase the success of academically talented students. This interdisciplinary project brings together the Electrical Engineering Technology, and Computer Network and System Administration programs in the College of Computing and the College of Engineering’s Mechanical Engineering Technology program, with programs in the Pavlis Honors College, an inclusive and unique college designed around high-impact educational practices. An IDP is commonly used in business and industry to assist employees in meeting short- and long-term goals in their professional career. This tool has been adapted for use in the educational setting in a faculty mentoring capacity. The ET program advisors assign the freshman or transfer S-STEM student scholars with faculty mentors to match their area of research interest. The faculty mentors meet with the students a minimum of three to four times a year to review their IDP, make suggestions, and provide input for reaching their goals. The goals of the IDP process are to develop a deeper more meaningful relationship between the advisor and student, reflect and develop a strategy for the scholar’s educational and career success, and manage expectations and identify opportunities. In the initial meeting there are several prompts for the student to write about their goals, strengths, weaknesses and perceived challenges. In subsequent meetings the advisor and student revisit the IDP to discuss progress towards those goals. This study will describe some outcomes of the IDP process providing specific examples from each of the ET programs. Although it is difficult to measure the effect of these relationships, it is one of the high impact practices that have been noted as increasing student engagement and retention. The consequences of COVID-19 introducing a virtual environment to the IDP process will also be examined from the viewpoint of both student and advisor. An advantage of the IDP meetings for students is that advisors may provide personal business connections for internship opportunities and/or research projects that otherwise would not be discussed in a typical office hour or classroom session. One of the innovations of the ETS-IMPRESS program was requiring participation in the Honors Pathway Program, which generally emphasizes intrinsic motivation (and does not use GPA in admissions or awarding of credentials). The honors program consists of three seminar classes and four experiential components; for all of these, students write reflections designed to promote their development of self-authorship. Preliminary survey results show no difference between ETS and other honors students in the areas of student motivation, intention to persist, and professional skill development. ETS students see a closer link between their current major and their future career than non-ETS honors students. A comparative analysis of reflections will investigate students’ perceptions of the program’s effect. 

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3. Work in Progress: Formation of an engineering identity in first-year students through an intervention centered on senior design projects

   Richards, Abigail M ; Anderson, Ryan ; Myers, Carrie B ( July 2020 , ASEE annual conference exposition)

   Abstract This “work in progress” paper describes a multiyear project to study the development of engineering identity in a chemical and biological engineering program at Montana State University. The project focuses on how engineering identity may be impacted by a series of interventions utilizing subject material in a senior-level capstone design course and has the senior capstone design students serve as peer-mentors to first- and second-year students. A more rapid development of an engineering identity by first- and second-year students is suspected to increase retention and persistence in this engineering program. Through a series of timed interventions scheduled to take place in the first and second year, which includes cohorts that will serve as negative controls (no intervention), we hope to ascertain the following: (1) the extent to which, relative to a control group, exposure to a peer mentor increases a students’ engineering identity development over time compared to those who do not receive peer mentoring and (2) if the quantity and/or timing of the peer interactions impact engineering identity development. While the project includes interventions for both first- and second-year students, this work in progress paper focuses on the experiences of first year freshman as a result of the interventions and their development of an engineering identity over the course of the semester. Early in the fall semester, freshman chemical engineering students enrolled in an introductory chemical engineering course and senior students in a capstone design course were administered a survey which contained a validated instrument to assess engineering identity. The first-year course has 107 students and the senior-level course has 92 students and approximately 50% of the students in both cohorts completed the survey. Mid-semester, after the first-year students were introduced to the concepts of process flow diagrams and material balances in their course, senior design student teams gave presentations about their capstone design projects in the introductory course. The presentations focused on the project goals, design process and highlighted the process flow diagrams. After the presentations, freshman and senior students attended small group dinners as part of a homework assignment wherein the senior students were directed to communicate information about their design projects as well as share their experiences in the chemical engineering program. Dinners occurred overall several days, with up to ten freshman and five seniors attending each event. Freshman students were encouraged to use this time to discover more about the major, inquire about future course work, and learn about ways to enrich their educational experience through extracurricular and co-curricular activities. Several weeks after the dinner experience, senior students returned to give additional presentations to the freshman students to focus on the environmental and societal impacts of their design projects. We report baseline engineering identity in this paper. 

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4. The Early Research Scholars Program

   Alvarado, C. ( July 2021 , 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   In this paper we present an overview of the Early Research Scholars Program (ERSP), an NSF-sponsored research program (Division of Undergraduate Education) with the following objectives: 1. To excite participants through early exposure to computing research and the challenges facing computing researchers today. 2. To teach participants the fundamental skills involved in conducting research. 3. To create a diverse and supportive community within their department, with a particular focus on engaging students from groups currently underrepresented in computer science including women, African Americans, Latinxs, Native Americans and indigenous peoples. ERSP was first piloted at the U. of California San Diego, and has since broadened to include UCSB, UIC, and Stanford. Focusing on CS and ECE students early in their undergraduate career, we pair teams of undergraduate students with graduate student and faculty mentors for a year-long research experience. The data suggests this year-long experience improves student outcomes, including retention and a sense of belonging (in both the academic and research communities). We believe the ERSP model can be easily replicated at other institutions, with minimal investment from the host department. 

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5. Resources for Faculty Development: Implicit Bias, Deficit Thinking, and Active Learning

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--32246  

   Martin, R. C. ; Lang, C. K. ; Liu, S.-N. C. ; Sandoval, C. L. ; Bergman, M. E. ; & Froyd, J. E. ( January 2019 , 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Expositio)

   The Improving Student Experiences to Increase Student Engagement (ISE-2) grant was awarded to Texas A&M University by the National Science Foundation, through EEC-Engineering Diversity Activities (Grant No. 1648016) with the goal of increasing student engagement and retention in the College of Engineering. The major component of the intervention was a faculty development program aimed to increase active learning, improve classroom climates, and decrease implicit bias and deficit thinking. Faculty teaching first- and second-year Engineering courses participated in the ISE-2 faculty development program, with the first cohort (n = 10) in Summer 2017 and the second cohort (n = 5) in Summer 2018. This paper describes the content of each of these components of the faculty development program and provides access to a Google drive (still in development at the time of the abstract) with resources for others to use. The faculty development program consisted of three workshops, a series of coffee hour conversations, and two deliverables from the participants (a teaching plan at the conclusion of the summer training and a final reflection a year following the training). Anchoring the program was a framework for teaching in a diverse classroom (Adams & Love, 2009). Workshop 1 (early May) consisted of an overview of the ISE-2 program. During the first workshop, faculty were introduced to social cognitive biases and the behaviors that result from these biases. During this workshop, the ISE-2 team shared findings from a climate study related to the classroom experiences of students at the College of Engineering. Workshop 2 (mid-May) focused on how undergraduate students learn, provided evidence for the effectiveness of active learning strategies, and exposed faculty participants to active learning strategies. Workshop 3 (early August) integrated the material from the first two workshops as faculty participants prepared to apply the material to their own teaching. Prior to each workshop, the faculty participants were provided with pre-workshop readings to familiarize them with some of the content matter. Coffee hour conversations—informal discussions between the participating faculty and the ISE-2 team centered around a teaching topic selected by participants—were conducted on a near-weekly basis between the second and third workshops. Handouts and worksheets were provided at each coffee hour and served to guide the coffee hour discussions. After the last workshop but before the Fall semester, faculty participants created a teaching plan to incorporate what they learned in the ISE-2 program into their own teaching. At the end of the academic year, the faculty participants are tasked with completing a final reflection on how ISE-2 has affected their teaching in the previous academic year. In this paper, we will report the content of each of the three workshops and explain how these workshops are related to the overarching goals of the ISE-2 program. Then, we will discuss how each of the coffee hour conversation topics complement the material covered in the workshops. Lastly, we will explore the role of the teaching plans and final reflections in changing instructional practices for faculty. 

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