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1. Board 162: Engineering for Accessibility: Impacts of a High School Engineering Internship Model Across Different Settings (Work in Progress, DEI)

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--46724  

   Forsyth, Stacey; Ogino, Tim; Ong, Angelina; Sickler, Jessica (June 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   This paper describes a collaborative effort to develop, implement and research an empathy-driven, accessibility-focused engineering internship program for teens underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The program builds on a foundation developed by the Build a Better Book (BBB) project over several years and addresses a significant need to motivate, prepare and support a more diverse engineering workforce. Centered around principles of universal design, designing for accessibility, and engineering with empathy, this NSF-funded project examines how high school interns’ perceptions of engineering and self-identities as engineers are formed, nurtured, and cultivated as they design and create more accessible products for authentic community clients who are blind or visually impaired. Across sites, the project emphasizes building an inclusive and diverse community of interns, including many who may not initially view themselves as engineers. Underpinning this work is the People Part of Engineering framework, which emphasizes that engineering with people, as people and for people influences teens’ motivation and persistence of interest in engineering. To assess the effectiveness of the BBB teen internship model, the project team implemented and researched different formats of the program in two educational settings: an intensive 4-week summer program at a public university and an out-of-school-time, semester-long program at a public library makerspace. Combined, these programs engaged 59 youth in an iterative engineering design process focused on the design and fabrication of accessible products (e.g., games, toys and STEM learning models) for children and youth who are blind or have low vision. (An additional year-long, in-school program is currently in process.) Each program incorporates several key internship design principles, including authentic, client-based projects; a student-directed, collaborative work environment; and individual and team mentorship. The current project aims to impact teens’ perceptions of engineering, their engineering identity, and their confidence and competence in engineering and 21st century workplace skills. These outcomes were measured through a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, including pre-/post- surveys and audio reflections by students, interviews with site leaders, and culminating focus group discussions. Early findings suggest positive changes in the intended outcomes, across sites, including broader perceptions about engineering and a growing overlap in identity between participants and engineers, increased confidence and competency in engineering and technical skills, and gains related to interpersonal skills and other 21st century skills such as communication, critical-thinking and collaboration. The project’s ongoing and future work will test the internship model at additional sites, including a school and science center, and continue to assess the effects of variation in program format, projects, work environment, and support and training on interns’ engineering identities, their persistence of interest in engineering and how they engage as young engineers with, as, and for people. 

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2. Engaging STEM Transformational Experiences for Early Momentum (ESTEEM)

   Yahdi, Mohammed; Bracey, Zoe Buck (November 2019, National Science Foundation -  Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) Program Principal Investigator (PI) Meeting, November 2019.)

   Need/Motivation (e.g., goals, gaps in knowledge) The ESTEEM implemented a STEM building capacity project through students’ early access to a sustainable and innovative STEM Stepping Stones, called Micro-Internships (MI). The goal is to reap key benefits of a full-length internship and undergraduate research experiences in an abbreviated format, including access, success, degree completion, transfer, and recruiting and retaining more Latinx and underrepresented students into the STEM workforce. The MIs are designed with the goals to provide opportunities for students at a community college and HSI, with authentic STEM research and applied learning experiences (ALE), support for appropriate STEM pathway/career, preparation and confidence to succeed in STEM and engage in summer long REUs, and with improved outcomes. The MI projects are accessible early to more students and build momentum to better overcome critical obstacles to success. The MIs are shorter, flexibly scheduled throughout the year, easily accessible, and participation in multiple MI is encouraged. ESTEEM also establishes a sustainable and collaborative model, working with partners from BSCS Science Education, for MI’s mentor, training, compliance, and building capacity, with shared values and practices to maximize the improvement of student outcomes. New Knowledge (e.g., hypothesis, research questions) Research indicates that REU/internship experiences can be particularly powerful for students from Latinx and underrepresented groups in STEM. However, those experiences are difficult to access for many HSI-community college students (85% of our students hold off-campus jobs), and lack of confidence is a barrier for a majority of our students. The gap between those who can and those who cannot is the “internship access gap.” This project is at a central California Community College (CCC) and HSI, the only affordable post-secondary option in a region serving a historically underrepresented population in STEM, including 75% Hispanic, and 87% have not completed college. MI is designed to reduce inequalities inherent in the internship paradigm by providing access to professional and research skills for those underserved students. The MI has been designed to reduce barriers by offering: shorter duration (25 contact hours); flexible timing (one week to once a week over many weeks); open access/large group; and proximal location (on-campus). MI mentors participate in week-long summer workshops and ongoing monthly community of practice with the goal of co-constructing a shared vision, engaging in conversations about pedagogy and learning, and sustaining the MI program going forward. Approach (e.g., objectives/specific aims, research methodologies, and analysis) Research Question and Methodology: We want to know: How does participation in a micro-internship affect students’ interest and confidence to pursue STEM? We used a mixed-methods design triangulating quantitative Likert-style survey data with interpretive coding of open-responses to reveal themes in students’ motivations, attitudes toward STEM, and confidence. Participants: The study sampled students enrolled either part-time or full-time at the community college. Although each MI was classified within STEM, they were open to any interested student in any major. Demographically, participants self-identified as 70% Hispanic/Latinx, 13% Mixed-Race, and 42 female. Instrument: Student surveys were developed from two previously validated instruments that examine the impact of the MI intervention on student interest in STEM careers and pursuing internships/REUs. Also, the pre- and post (every e months to assess longitudinal outcomes) -surveys included relevant open response prompts. The surveys collected students’ demographics; interest, confidence, and motivation in pursuing a career in STEM; perceived obstacles; and past experiences with internships and MIs. 171 students responded to the pre-survey at the time of submission. Outcomes (e.g., preliminary findings, accomplishments to date) Because we just finished year 1, we lack at this time longitudinal data to reveal if student confidence is maintained over time and whether or not students are more likely to (i) enroll in more internships, (ii) transfer to a four-year university, or (iii) shorten the time it takes for degree attainment. For short term outcomes, students significantly Increased their confidence to continue pursuing opportunities to develop within the STEM pipeline, including full-length internships, completing STEM degrees, and applying for jobs in STEM. For example, using a 2-tailed t-test we compared means before and after the MI experience. 15 out of 16 questions that showed improvement in scores were related to student confidence to pursue STEM or perceived enjoyment of a STEM career. Finding from the free-response questions, showed that the majority of students reported enrolling in the MI to gain knowledge and experience. After the MI, 66% of students reported having gained valuable knowledge and experience, and 35% of students spoke about gaining confidence and/or momentum to pursue STEM as a career. Broader Impacts (e.g., the participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM; development of a diverse STEM workforce, enhanced infrastructure for research and education) The ESTEEM project has the potential for a transformational impact on STEM undergraduate education’s access and success for underrepresented and Latinx community college students, as well as for STEM capacity building at Hartnell College, a CCC and HSI, for students, faculty, professionals, and processes that foster research in STEM and education. Through sharing and transfer abilities of the ESTEEM model to similar institutions, the project has the potential to change the way students are served at an early and critical stage of their higher education experience at CCC, where one in every five community college student in the nation attends a CCC, over 67% of CCC students identify themselves with ethnic backgrounds that are not White, and 40 to 50% of University of California and California State University graduates in STEM started at a CCC, thus making it a key leverage point for recruiting and retaining a more diverse STEM workforce. 

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3. A Framework for Socially-Relevant Service-Learning Internship Experiences for High School Students

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3478431.3499355  

   Catete, Veronica; Isvik, Amy; Hill, Marnie (February 2022, 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education)

   By age 15 girls start to lose interest in STEM, and less than 50% consider a STEM-related career. Providing hands-on internship opportunities has been one of the leading ways to help connect students with exploring computing careers; however, these opportunities are limited in high school. We propose a framework for a university-led high school internship initiative that focuses on service learning, co-design, and the propagation of engaging computing curricula for younger audiences. We piloted this model virtually in summer 2021, with high school students and teachers as interns mentored by university role models. Teams led the development and implementation of computing-infused curricula for a virtual summer coding camp. In this article, we share our framework and review the importance of service-learning for recruiting diverse participants and the use of co-design as a way to broker relationships between developers and community stakeholders. Additionally, we provide preliminary outcomes of our internship model on student and teacher participants gathered from qualitative data including end-of-summer presentations and post-program interviews. 

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4. NSF ITEST: Broadening Teens’ Perceptions of Engineering through a Human-Centered, Accessibility-Focused Engineering Design Internship

   Forsyth, Stacey; Ogino, Timothy; Sickler, Jessica; Ong, Angie (June 2025, 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   This paper describes an NSF ITEST project that addresses the need to attract, motivate, prepare and support a more diverse engineering workforce. The Build a Better Book (BBB) project (award no. 2049109) engages teens in an engineering design experience grounded in principles of universal design and focused on engineering for accessibility. From 2022-2024, the project team facilitated eight teen internship programs at four sites around the country, including a university, public library, high school, and science center. Regardless of location or format, all programs incorporated several key elements, based on the project’s underlying theoretical framework, including: authentic engineering projects developed in collaboration with community clients that center empathy and accessible design; settings and processes that simulated real-world work environments, including an emphasis on intern agency, collaboration, and accountability; and mentorship, training and support provided throughout the experience. Internship sites strived to engage a diverse cohort of interns who came to the program with varied levels of interest in engineering. Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, including pre-post surveys, audio reflections, and focus group discussions, the team assessed teens’ motivations to participate in the program and measured the impact of the internship program on teens’ perceptions of engineering, their confidence and competence in an array of technical and general workplace skills, and their awareness of disabilities and the importance of universal design. Over the three-year period, 184 teens across the four sites participated in the internship program and of these, 152 participated in the research study. Results suggest that the human-centered focus of the internship motivated youth to participate, and the experience expanded their perceptions of engineering, increased their confidence and competency with technical and general workplace skills, and significantly increased their awareness of accessibility issues. Ongoing and future analyses will examine the relative impacts of different educational environments and program formats on intended outcomes and assess the longer-term impacts of the BBB teen internship experience by surveying program alumni one to three years after their participation. 

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5. Board 369: Research Experiences for Teachers (RET): Engineering for People and the Planet as Inspiration to Teach Integrated STEM

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--46952  

   Chen, Katherine; Taylor, Donna; Solovey, Erin (June 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) are the focus for a Research Experience for Teachers (RET) Site in Engineering at X University. The relevant and meaningful contexts of the SDGs allow middle and high school teachers and their students to easily make connections between research in a university lab setting to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) concepts in their classroom. Lesson plans inspired by the UN SDGs research experience were developed as an “integrated STEM” problem solving activity by each of the RET teachers. Ten (10) teachers comprising of both pre-service and in-service middle or high school teachers have participated in each cohort over the two years of the NSF RET grant thus far. Six weeks of authentic summer research takes place in 5 different faculty labs at X University under the mentorship of faculty and their graduate students or postdoc. Examples of the research projects include “Photocatalysis for Clean Energy and Environment,” “Genetically Engineering Plasmid DNA molecules to address Tuberculosis Antibiotic Resistance,” and “New Water-Based Technology for Plastic Recycling.” RET participants also attend a weekly coffee session to help guide the teachers through the research process and a weekly ½-day professional development (PD) session to translate the research experience into a classroom lesson plan that aligns to state standards, as well as evidence-backed curriculum design and teaching strategies. Teacher cohort building and community is fostered through group lunches and additional activities (e.g., coordinated lab visits, behind the scenes tour of a local science museum, and industry panel). For evaluation of the RET program, pre/post-surveys measured the teacher’s self-reported ability, confidence, understanding, and frequency of use of the Engineering Design Process (EDP), Integrated STEM, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Formative assessment was conducted throughout the summer on various aspects of the RET through surveys and regular check-ins with the teachers. At the end of the summer, focus groups were conducted by an external evaluator for both the teacher participants and the research mentors. Both teachers and mentors declared the program was well planned and executed. The teachers developed close bonds and connections, learned a lot from each other, had meaningful research experiences, and developed a sense of community. The research mentors reported that the teachers provided useful research contributions, were enthusiastic about the research, had genuine lab experiences, developed professional skills, and built good community connections. Areas for improvement included clear expectations for everyone, reducing steep learning curves, and consistency of mentoring across the labs. The RET program continues into the academic year with occasional meetings to report on the implementation of their research-inspired lesson plan in their classroom. The RET participants share that they are bringing in the “real world” relevance to their students with an integrated STEM lens (e.g., climate change and UN SDGs) and that they refer back to their own lab experiences (e.g., importance of measuring chemicals accurately). The research experience has made several positive impacts on the teacher participants that also benefit their students. 

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