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1. Making Space in a Makerspace: Increasing Belonging through Social Engagement

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--46912  

   Davishahl, Jill; Boklage, Audrey (June 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   In recent years, there have been many efforts to increase student sense of belonging in engineering as it has been shown to positively impacting student retention, persistence, and success. One promising venue for building belonging is the academic makerspace. Makerspaces provide a setting for informal learning and student connection inspired by creativity, discovery, and collaboration. Due to the flexible and informal nature of the makerspace environment, it is an ideal place to create social connections between students. Supporting students’ social and emotional development is an essential component to creating culturally competent, well-rounded engineers who exhibit a strong sense of belonging in engineering. Funded through the NSF Research Initiation in Engineering Formation (RIEF) program, this project researched the impact of integrating social engagement activities into an academic makerspace on the development of student sense of belonging. The primary research question explored the extent to which participation in the engagement activities leads to an increased sense of belonging for engineering students. Spanning a two-year period, a series 32 of social engagement events were hosted in the engineering department makerspace. The authors collected data about students perceived social belonging in both the makerspace and the department. Students completed two surveys: a pre-survey administered at the beginning of the social engagement activity and a post-survey administered at the end of each academic year. Findings indicate the social engagement events had a positive impact on the development of student sense of belonging to both the makerspace and the engineering department. These results are encouraging as they suggest that events designed to support the social and emotional development of students can positively impact student sense of belonging to a makerspace environment and, more broadly, to engineering. By creating supportive communities of students built on shared experience and trust, we begin to develop the inclusive communities of learners that is a key component to diversifying pathways to engineering. 

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2. The SEECRS Scholar Academy at Whatcom Community College: Three Cohorts of S-STEM Scholarships Later

   Babcock, M. J.; Vannelli, T. A.; Hanley, D.; Davishahl, E. (July 2021, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   The STEM Excellence through Engagement in Collaboration, Research, and Scholarship (SEECRS) project at Whatcom Community College is in year four of a five-year NSF S-STEM funded program aiming to support academically talented students with demonstrated financial need in biology, chemistry, geology, computer science, engineering, and physics. This program offered financial, academic, and professional support to three two-year cohorts of students and is in the final year of the third and final cohort of the currently funded grant cycle. The SEECRS project aimed to utilize a STEM-specific guided pathways approach to strengthen recruitment, retention, and matriculation of STEM students at the community college level. Over the course of the program 39 individuals received scholarship support. The program supported scholarship recipients through participation in the SEECRS Scholars Academy, a multi-pronged approach to student support combining elements of community building, faculty mentorship, targeted advising activities, authentic science practice, and social activities. Key elements of the program are: a required two-credit course that emphasized STEM identity development, course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) in Biology, Chemistry and Engineering courses, funded summer research opportunities, and paring of each scholar with a faculty mentor. This paper presents data from the first four years of the program including participant outcomes and feedback on their experiences. Results from project evaluation activities such as pre and post surveys, focus groups, exit interviews, and faculty surveys are also presented and analyzed to compare how gains reported by program participants regarding such attributes as their STEM identities and sense of belonging compare to responses from a control group of students who did not participate in the program. Preliminary identification of some program best practices will also be presented. 

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3. Engaging Future Engineers through Active Participation in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging.

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--43314  

   Chandra, Kavitha; Lewis, Sumudu; Tripathy, Susan (June 2023, ASEE Conferences)

   It is important for future engineers to understand themselves in relation to the many cultural influences they may encounter during their career, and to confront their own biases when interacting with colleagues whose cultural backgrounds are different from their own. This paper describes and evaluates a series of nine diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) workshops developed and implemented during the summer of 2022 for high school and entering first-year college students enrolled in the Research, Academics, and Mentoring Pathways (RAMP) sixweek engineering summer bridge program at University of Massachusetts Lowell. The workshops incorporated activities designed to create an environment fostering respect, belonging, and acceptance to make teamwork more inclusive and effective. Each workshop was based on collaborative learning and used a broad range of strategies to engage students as active participants in learning about diversity, equity, and inclusion within the context of teamwork. To develop the workshops, the facilitators aligned the activities with key themes from chapters in the book From Athletics to Engineering: 8 Ways to Support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for All [1]. The summer bridge program was evaluated using quantitative and qualitative data collected throughout the program and upon its conclusion tracking students’ reactions and levels of engagement in each of the program components. This included a pre-survey, mid-semester survey, post-survey, and weekly journal prompts on Google Classroom. We also used the Universality-Diversity scale [2] to measure any pre-post changes in students’ attitudes towards diversity. With regard to the workshops, an analysis of student responses indicated a high level of satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. Students reported they enjoyed getting to know each other better and that the DEI activities were interactive, educational, and engaging. 

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4. Engaging Future Engineers through Active Participation in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

   Chandra, K.; Lewis, S.; Tripathy, S.T. (June 2023, Proceedings of the 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   It is important for future engineers to understand themselves in relation to the many cultural influences they may encounter during their career, and to confront their own biases when interacting with colleagues whose cultural backgrounds are different from their own. This paper describes and evaluates a series of nine diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) workshops developed and implemented during the summer of 2022 for high school and entering first-year college students enrolled in the Research, Academics, and Mentoring Pathways (RAMP) six week engineering summer bridge program at University of Massachusetts Lowell. The workshops incorporated activities designed to create an environment fostering respect, belonging, and acceptance to make teamwork more inclusive and effective. Each workshop was based on collaborative learning and used a broad range of strategies to engage students as active participants in learning about diversity, equity, and inclusion within the context of teamwork. To develop the workshops, the facilitators aligned the activities with key themes from chapters in the book From Athletics to Engineering: 8 Ways to Support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for All [1]. The summer bridge program was evaluated using quantitative and qualitative data collected throughout the program and upon its conclusion tracking students’ reactions and levels of engagement in each of the program components. This included a pre-survey, mid-semester survey, post-survey, and weekly journal prompts on Google Classroom. We also used the Universality-Diversity scale [2] to measure any pre-post changes in students’ attitudes towards diversity. With regard to the workshops, an analysis of student responses indicated a high level of satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. Students reported they enjoyed getting to know each other better and that the DEI activities were interactive, educational, and engaging. 

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5. Student Persistence Factors for Engineering and Computing Undergraduates

   Gholezadeh, Sona; Petrulis, Bob; Gatzke Edward P (June 2023, ASEE Annual Conference)

   The research and evaluation team of an S-STEM project at a large, research-intensive Southeastern public university conducted a cross-sectional survey as a first step to compare factors which may influence undergraduate student persistence in engineering and computing. All engineering and computing students were invited to participate in the survey, and 282 (10.4%) provided responses. The respondents included 15 high financial need students who were participating in the S-STEM program, of which 7 were first-year students and 8 were sophomores. The remaining 267 respondents were undergraduates ranging from first-year to seniors. Survey questions were adapted from previously developed instruments on self-efficacy, sense-of-belonging, identity, community involvement, and overall college experience. Additional questions related to stress levels, academic life, use and effectiveness of academic supports, and the impacts of COVID-19 on their college experiences. The team compared responses by level of academic progression, declared major, gender, and race/ethnicity. Student responses showed a variety of similarities and differences between subgroups. Overall, the students said that they often attended lectures (in-person or online) and came to class prepared. At the same time, students rated these activities as the least effective academic supports. On the other hand, the students rated working assigned or extra homework problems and studying for exams as their most effective activities. Consistently among the subgroups, the students said their community involvement and identity as developing engineers were relatively low while self-efficacy and team self-efficacy were seen as stronger personal skills. The students said they were highly stressed about their grades and academic success in general, and about finances and future careers. They reported feeling less stress about aspects such as living away from home and negotiating the university social scene. Students reported spending the most time preparing for class in their first year compared to students in later years. Female students (104 responses) reported higher levels of community involvement, engineering identity, and engagement in college life compared to male students (142 responses) while there was little gender-related difference in self-efficacy and sense of belonging. Levels of self-efficacy and team self-efficacy did not show large differences based on year in college. Interestingly, first-year students expressed the highest levels of engineering identity while senior students the lowest. Senior students reported the lowest community involvement, sense of belonging, and engineering identity compared to other students. Overall, students from different races self-reported the same levels of self-efficacy. Black/African American students reported the highest levels of community involvement, college life, and identity. There were no substantial differences in self-efficacy among the different engineering and computing majors. This study is a first step in analysis of the students’ input. In addition to surveying the students, the team also conducted interviews of the participating S-STEM students, and analysis of these interviews will provide greater depth to interpretation of the survey results. Overall, the research and evaluation team’s intention is to provide insight to the project’s leadership in how best to support the success of first-year engineering and computing students. https://peer.asee.org/student-persistence-factors-for-engineering-and-computing-undergraduates 

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