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1. Building a Community of Mentors in Engineering Education Research Through Peer Review Training

   Jensen, Karin; Ko, Evan; Lichtenstein, Gary; Watts, Kelsey; Bates, Rebecca A; Benson, Lisa (August 2022, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   This paper describes the Engineering Education Research (EER) Peer Review Training (PERT) project, which is designed to develop EER scholars’ peer review skills through mentored reviewing experiences. Supported by the National Science Foundation, the overall programmatic goals of the PERT project are to establish and evaluate a mentored reviewer program for 1) EER journal manuscripts and 2) EER grant proposals. Concurrently, the project seeks to explore how EER scholars develop schema for evaluating EER scholarship, whether these schema are shared in the community, and how schema influence recommendations made to journal editors during the peer review process. To accomplish these goals, the PERT project leveraged the previously established Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) Mentored Reviewer Program, where two researchers with little reviewing experience are paired with an experienced mentor to complete three manuscript reviews collaboratively. In this paper we report on focus group and exit survey findings from the JEE Mentored Reviewer Program and discuss revisions to the program in response to those findings. 

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2. Building a Community of Mentors in Engineering Education Research Through Peer Review Training

   Jensen, K.; Bates, R.; Lichtenstein, G.; Watts, K.; Ko, E.; Benson, L. (June 2022, 2022 Annual American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference and Exposition)

   This paper describes the Engineering Education Research (EER) Peer Review Training (PERT) project, which is designed to develop EER scholars’ peer review skills through mentored reviewing experiences. Supported by the National Science Foundation, the overall programmatic goals of the PERT project are to establish and evaluate a mentored reviewer program for 1) EER journal manuscripts and 2) EER grant proposals. Concurrently, the project seeks to explore how EER scholars develop schema for evaluating EER scholarship, whether these schema are shared in the community, and how schema influence recommendations made to journal editors during the peer review process. To accomplish these goals, the PERT project leveraged the previously established Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) Mentored Reviewer Program, where two researchers with little reviewing experience are paired with an experienced mentor to complete three manuscript reviews collaboratively. In this paper we report on focus group and exit survey findings from the JEE Mentored Reviewer Program and discuss revisions to the program in response to those findings. 

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3. Supporting Student Internships with the Nsf Hsi Program at a Medium-Sized Hispanic-Serving Institution

   Cruz, Alberto C.; Derickson, Dennis; Malek, Amin (June 2023, 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Our work describes the best-practices and findings for a recent NSF IUSE HSI HRD grant. Its overarching goal is to drive an institutional change where the University proactively places students in internships with local industry partners. Students at the University are non-traditional, minority and low-income. They often working twenty to forty hours a week in non-curricular jobs. The Grant Program fully or partially subsidizes compensation for interns through financial aid scholarships. It aims to replace non-curricular work with relevant, real-world engineering experiences. This in turn improves their prospects to find jobs post-graduation. Modern students work while going to school. A small amount of work—less than fifteen hours a week—is beneficial. However, beyond twenty hours a week has a negative impact. Hispanic/Latino(a) students work twenty to forty hours a week, more than any other demographic. This workload affects attendance, GPA, and utility, resulting in poor workforce placement. Academia must concede that work comes first for under-represented students. Universities must take steps to supplant irrelevant work experience with industry internships. Participants of this program received relevant internship/work experience, had better retention rates due to perceived utility of their degree. In the long term we expect timely to graduation due to participants taking internship units as credit toward their degree. Students learned of the internships from faculty members soliciting applications to the program, supported by the grant. Executing the MOU between the University and industry partners took considerable effort and is a major barrier to executing formal partnerships between internship hosts. One MOU is still in negotiation since the start of the program. Despite some student participants reporting prior internship experiences, no one involved in the program would have found an internship this academic year without help from the Grant Program. Some students claimed to have submitted from twenty to fifty applications and the Grant Program was the only internship that called for an interview. Quality of internship varied from corporation to corporation. Universities must carefully monitor the feedback of participants to ensure that the individual goals of the participants are being met. Finding corporations that are willing to invest time in mentorship of students is a critical component to ensure student satisfaction. Even so, regardless of internship quality, participants would not have found internships if not for the Grant Program. According to the participants, internships are an opportunity to network and build lasting professional connections. While students may be unable to turn every internship into a full-time position, each experience will give them something much more valuable and long-lasting: relationships with professionals and co-workers. The connections they make during their time at an organization can be stepping stones to their next opportunity. 

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4. Development and contribution to students’ intercultural skills: A case study of an international collaborative site.

   Jalali, Y.; Lohani, V.; Müller, R. (January 2019, Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference)

   This work-in-progress research paper presents our experiences with a NSF-sponsored International Research Experiences for Undergraduates (IRES) program hosted by an a large land grant university in the United States. A major component of the program is implemented at an international laboratory in China. The lab has been established in 2010 as a collaborative research platform, for a large land-grant university in the U.S. and a public comprehensive university, to study the biosonar sensing and flight of bats from an engineering perspective. The lab has pioneered work on the diversity and dynamics of the structures (noseleaves and ears) that bats use to emit and receive ultrasonic pulses In addition, the lab has hosted research experiences for international (primarily U.S.) students and collaborative BS/MS and MS/PhD educational programs. In the last two years, two cohorts of IRES scholars completed the 10-week IRES program. In addition to research and technical experiences, the IRES students participated in several field trips and seminars and were exposed to Chinese culture. To better understand the impact of the program, students were invited to complete pre- and post-program surveys and a post-program interview. The surveys included cultural intelligence assessment, Global Competency Activity, and Sojourn Readiness Assessment. In addition, students answered a few open-ended questions about their technical and cultural experiences. In this paper, we first explain the history of the lab and its research and educational contribution to date. Then, we describe the IRES program and program evaluation measures. Finally, we focus on the influence of the program on students’ intercultural skills and present the assessment results. 

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5. Creating Peer-Led Faculty Learning Teams to Promote Social Responsibility in Computing

   Hug, Sarah; Lehr, Jane; Wood, Zoë; Kulkarni, Anagha; Tang, Fang; Sood, Kanika (June 2025, ASEE)

   This work-in-progress study describes our grant-funded efforts in developing a computer science faculty learning community (FLC) across six California state institutions. With an emphasis on socially responsible computing (SRC), the faculty development effort that prepares faculty for SRC lesson implementation has integrated social scientists with computer science faculty in the rotating leadership team. It works collaboratively to facilitate dialog around experiences of implementing lessons that focus on social justice and ethical decision-making. Our data-driven FLC and course transformation effort was initiated by finding that retention rates in early computing courses at participating institutions were inequitable across demographic groups. The ultimate goal of the Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance for Socially Responsible Computing is to improve the retention rates of LatinX students by increasing their sense of belonging to the field of computer science[1] through deliberate and intentional connections of curriculum to real-world problems and social issues. For this paper, we focused on the faculty experiences of our most recent summer workshop and our reflection on the FLC implementation process. We present our faculty survey data from June 2024 and introduce reflective focus group findings [2], providing conjectures about the effectiveness of our approach. In the discussion, we build recommendations for collaborative professional development of faculty and discuss next steps. 

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