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1. Internship Prevalence and Factors Related to Participation

   Atwood, S. A.; Gilmartin, S. K.; Mostoller, A. M.; Chen, H. L.; Sheppard, S. (January 2021, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   The value of internship experiences for engineering students is widely discussed in the literature. With this analysis, we seek to contribute knowledge addressing 1) the prevalence of internship experiences amongst engineering students drawn from a large, multi-institutional, nationally-representative sample, 2) if the likelihood of having an engineering internship experiences is equitable amongst various student identities, and 3) what additional factors influence the likelihood of a student having an internship experience, such as field of study and institution type. Data were drawn from a 2015 multi-institutional nationally representative survey of engineering juniors and seniors, excluding one institution with a mandatory co-op program (n = 5530 from 26 institutions). A z-test was used to analyze differences in internship participation rates related to academic cohort (e.g., junior, senior), gender, underrepresented minority (URM) status, first-generation, and low-income status, as well as a subset of identities at the intersection of these groups (gender + URM; first-generation + low-income). A logistic regression model further examined factors such as GPA, engineering task self-efficacy, field of engineering, and institution type. We found that amongst the students in our dataset, 64.7% of the seniors had “worked in a professional engineering environment as an intern/co-op” (41.1% of juniors, 64.7% of 5th years). Significantly less likely (p<0.05) to have internship experiences were men compared to women (52.9% vs 58.3%), URM students compared to their majority counterparts (41.5% vs 56.8%), first-generation students compared to continuing (47.6% vs 57.2%), and low-income students compared to higher-income peers (46.2% vs 57.4%). Examined intersectional identities significantly less likely to have an internship were URM men (37.5%) and first-generation low-income students (42.0%), while non-URM women (60.5%) and continuing high-income students (58.2%) were most likely to report having an internship. Results from the logistic regression model indicate that significant factors are cohort (junior vs senior), GPA, engineering task self-efficacy, and engineering field. When controlling for the other variables in the model, gender, URM, first-generation, and low-income status remain significant; however, the interaction effect between these identities is not significant in the full model. Institution type did not have much impact. Having a research experience was not a significant factor in predicting the likelihood of having an internship experience, although studying abroad significantly increased the odds. Amongst engineering fields, industrial and civil engineering students were the most likely to have an internship, while aerospace and materials engineering students were the least likely. Full results and discussion will be presented in the paper. This analysis provides valuable information for a variety of stakeholders. For engineering programs, it is useful to benchmark historic students’ rates of internship participation against a multi-institutional, nationally representative dataset. For academic advisors and career services professionals, it is useful to understand in which fields an internship is common to be competitive on the job market, and which fields have fewer opportunities or prioritize research experiences. Ultimately, for those in higher education and workforce development it is vital to understand which identities, and intersectional identities, are accessing internship experiences as a pathway into the engineering workforce. 

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2. Reflections on a paradigm shift: An autoethnographic exploration of program implementation

   Hennessey, N. K. (April 2023, ASEE Pacific Southwest)

   Research and evidence-based practices that center sense of belonging and engineering identity development drive strong outcomes for undergraduate students in engineering—especially those who are first-generation college students, from low-income families, and identify as other underrepresented groups in engineering (Deil-Amen, 2011; Hurtado, Cabrera, Lin, & Arellano, 2009; Patrick & Prybutok, 2018). The process from ideation to organizational implementation is not well-documented in the literature on student success, leaving a gap in practitioners’ understanding of how to bring strong, research-informed practices to fruition in their institutions. Implementation is arguably as important as the design of a student intervention and knowing how to implement a good idea is an art and a science. This paper explores the various people and processes that take theory to practice for a National Science Foundation Improving Undergraduate STEM Education funded program. In this paper, I invoke an autoethnographic approach to reflect on the experience of designing a student-facing program while managing the organizational systems that empower or restrain transformative organizational change for students. Autoethnography as a methodology can be a helpful mode to understanding practice, as the researcher can move more fluidly between their lived experience and the organizational, sociological, or psychosocial theory that it mirrors (Berry & Hodges, 2015). The proposed paper discusses my team’s approaches to working with stakeholders and gatekeepers in our organization and in our community to execute a program designed to build sense of belonging and engineering identity while supporting academic attainment of underserved student populations using Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005) and Street-Level Bureaucracy (Lipsky, 1980) as theoretical lenses. A small, summer-intensive program required the cooperation and capital of gatekeepers across the campus of our large, research university in the southwestern United States. This program, which serves students from marginalized ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds in engineering disciplines, became the basis for an NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education award. Students spent part of their summer (six weeks during the pilot program, which evolved to ten weeks for the second cohort) taking summer classes that helped them advance into their sophomore year of an engineering degree. They also took a career development class, which featured regular field trips to various regional engineering employers. Outcomes from the pilot program and subsequent year are promising, and include high rates of persistence, strong academic performance, and increased sense of engineering identity, but this paper focuses on the structure of the program, the need for collaborators, and the way that the team implemented an initiative which challenges the assumptions of stakeholders from within and outside of the institution. Major themes discussed are personal reflections of the process of coalition-building, gaining buy-in from critical partners on-campus and in the community, and co-investing in programmatic improvement with early cohorts of participating students. 

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3. Supplementing STEM Career Mentoring Through Biweekly Opportunity Emails

   https://doi.org/10.55632/pwvas.v97i2.1134  

   Landis, Ty; Richards-Babb, Michelle; Paden, Michelle (April 2025, Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Science)

   West Virginia University (WVU) is a large R1 land grant institution with a multitude of STEM majors that include students from underrepresented demographics (e.g., rural, low-income/Pell grant eligible, first-generation, Hispanic, African American). Though first- and second-year instructors of STEM classes are expert teachers within their respective disciplines, the large enrollment nature of these classes limits ongoing career mentoring between instructors and their students. Likewise, STEM students are supported by dedicated disciplinary advisors, but these advisors meet with large numbers of advisees (40+) and may need to limit their discussions to academic scheduling and financial aid. To broaden connections between STEM students and faculty/staff and to provide ongoing career mentoring which in turn promotes STEM belonging (fit), career readiness, and persistence, a series of emails detailing STEM-focused opportunities of potential interest were sent to select underrepresented STEM students during each academic semester from fall 2022 to spring 2025. Opportunities include listings of paid summer undergraduate research at national labs and institutions and abstract submissions for institutional, statewide and national symposia. At several time points, a survey was sent to collect information from email recipients on their self-reported impressions and usefulness of the biweekly emails. The nature of this change work was captured by a Plan-Do-Study-Act. Its progression from basic to professional formatting will be discussed along with aggregate responses from the survey. 

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4. Where do we start? Lessons learned from the PI, graduate research assistant, undergraduate researcher, and a community member starting their inter-institutional STEM-focused community-engaged project using participatory action learning and action research

   Leeker, Jessica Rush; Ruane, Lyndsay; Sanders, Hannah; Richardson, Robertha (June 2023, Review directory American Society for Engineering Education)

   Academic institutions have always been seen as centers of education and knowledge production, but the information generated by each institution is usually siloed. To increase global competitiveness, especially in STEM, sharing knowledge across institutions is necessary. At inception, our central hypothesis was that an inter-institutional approach to educational transformation, one that was centered on democratizing the practice of innovation across institutional boundaries, would effectively prepare the next generation of innovators and engineers to address systemic and institutional racism and whiteness within STEM. One of the ways we wanted to tackle this was by community engagement. Community engagement in some phases of engineering projects is known worldwide. However, community engagement in all phases, including the grant writing process, is minimal. 

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5. Social Networks Analysis of African American Engineering Students at a PWI and an HBCU – A Comparative Study

   Berhan, Lesley M; Adams, Aaron L; McKether, Willie L; Kumar, Revathy (January 2019, ASEE annual conference exposition proceedings)

   The central objective of this interdisciplinary, inter-institutional PFE: Research Initiation in Engineering Formation (PFE: RIEF) project is to conduct a comparative study of the factors affecting the success and pathways to engineering careers of African American students at a Predominantly White Institution (PWI) and a Historically Black University (HBCU). The study focuses on investigating the criticality of the following three factors: 1. The attitudes and beliefs of faculty and staff toward underrepresented students and how these attitudes influence their classroom and advising interactions and expectations, and the impact this has on the students’ sense of belonging and academic success; 2. The existing institutional support mechanisms at both institutions and students’ perceptions of their efficacy and the role they perceive these mechanisms play in their academic success; and 3. The influence of student organizations- specifically underrepresented minority engineering affinity groups and the embedded networks therein on the social and academic integration of African American students at the two types of institutions. 

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