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An abundance of literature demonstrates that women’s and minorities’ sense of belonging, or lack thereof, influences their academic performance and persistence in STEM education and careers. To address this problem, we developed a holistic, socio-culturally responsive peer-mentoring program that provided an academic, institutional, and social support system for first-year engineering students. The purpose of this program, Promoviendo el Éxito Estudiantil a través de un Sistema de Apollo (PromESA), is to increase students’ sense of belonging and, by extension, their persistence and graduation rates in engineering, particularly for Latinx students and their intersectionalities. The pilot mentoring program was integrated into a first-year sequence of courses where students would meet with their peer-mentors (i.e., Compañeros/as) during class time. Compañeros/as (Compas for short) provided their mentees with assistance such as tutoring, advising, directing them to available university services and, equally important, emotional support through building friendship, confirmation, and affirmation to improve the students’ sense of belonging. The research seeks to identify academic, institutional, and social support elements that positively influence students’ sense of belonging and explore how integrating Latinx cultural assets and values influence Latinx students’ perceptions of engineering. Findings from the first year of implementation reveal that participants with peer-mentors from their academic major reported a higher sense of belonging than participants with peer-mentors from other academic majors. Also, participants reported receiving social support (i.e., peer and classroom), regardless of academic major. Participant feedback was mixed, with some reporting that peer-mentoring was a key contributor to their sense of belonging while others reported that it contributed somewhat to their sense of belonging and a few reported that it did not contribute to their sense of belonging at all.
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This content will become publicly available on June 1, 2025
Making Space in a Makerspace: Increasing Belonging through Social Engagement
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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- Award ID(s):
- 2106017
- PAR ID:
- 10558242
- Publisher / Repository:
- ASEE Conferences
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Portland, Oregon
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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