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This repeated measures study analyzes self- reported variables, including sense of belonging, engineering identity, intent to persist, and stress levels, among first-generation engineering students during their first year of education. Given the persistent stress culture in undergraduate engineering programs, significant efforts are being made to improve these factors to support students' well-being and academic success. Over time, we aim to provide a detailed understanding of how the sense of belonging, engineering identity, intent to persist, and stress interact and evolve to shape the experiences of first-generation students. From the first- year engineering program at a larger Midwestern university, 488 students (27% female, 46% first- generation) responded to our survey twice at the end of their Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 semesters. Independent and paired-sample t-tests were conducted to analyze the significance of any changes in belonging, engineering identity, intent to persist, and stress levels among first- year and continuing engineering students. Results showed a significant decrease (p < .05) for both first- generation and continuing-generation engineering students across two variables, i.e., intent to persist (averaged scores decreased) and stress levels (average scores increased), between their Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 end-of-semester survey responses. Sense of belonging and engineering identity remained stable. These results suggest that persistence and stress are more immediately influenced by the academic environment, whereas belonging and identity may evolve more gradually. Targeted support for stress management and persistence is crucial, particularly for first-generation students, to promote well-being and academic success. 

In this research paper, we provide an analysis of self-reported variable such as sense of belonging, engineering identity, intent to persist, and stress levels among first-generation and non-traditional students in their first year of engineering education. In the context of prevailing stress culture in undergraduate engineering education, substantial efforts are made to improve the condition of these variables to support students’ wellbeing and academic success. Utilizing existing social and psychological frameworks, this research intends to support the success of such efforts, especially in the case of minoritized college students (first-generation and non-traditional engineering undergraduates). We offer a detailed understanding of how sense of belonging, engineering identity, intent to persist, and stress interact and impact students’ experiences. Quantitative cross-sectional data was collected from first year engineering students (n = 699) in a large Midwestern University in the U.S. through an online survey. The combined sample included 25% female, 49% first generation, and 23% non-traditional students. Independent samples t-tests revealed significant differences between first-generation and continuing-generation engineering students across all variables. First-generation college students reported significantly lower intent to persist (p = .00), engineering identity (p = .01), and higher stress levels (p = .02) compared to continuing-generation study participants. A one-way ANOVA revealed no significant differences based on the above variable among traditional, and non-traditional study participants. Findings from this study emphasize the need for targeted support for first-generation students. Overall, this research highlights the importance of tailored interventions including curricular changes to promote equity and success in engineering education. These findings can help guide strategies to create a more supportive environment that promotes the success and well-being of first year engineering students. 

Purdue University established Freshman Engineering (now known as First-Year Engineering) in 1953, the first program in the U.S. to do so. Over the years, First-Year Engineering (FYE) programs have been established at several institutions, but not all, across the country. In the early 1990s, the National Science Foundation (NSF) provided funding for what were called the Engineering Education Coalitions. They funded a total of eight coalitions that involved more than 40 institutions of higher education over the period from 1990-2005. In addition, NSF created the Action Agenda program in the late 1990s aimed at individual institutions that wanted to adapt and adopt the findings from the existing Coalitions. A strong focus of the Coalitions was on introductory engineering courses, with the rationale that engineering was losing too many students through attrition, and we needed to pay more attention to their formative years. Nearly every Coalition created some version of an FYE program through this funding mechanism. The number of FYE programs across the nation has increased dramatically based on these investments, largely in response to curricular efforts aimed at retaining engineering students by providing them with meaningful career-oriented experiences early in their college educations. Many of these first-year programs were called “common first-year engineering programs,” meaning that all students enrolled in the same courses at the same time. It is a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach to education. Despite the laudable goals espoused by most FYE programs, there has been an unintended consequence: curricular rigidity and inflexibility. Thus, students have little agency to shape their own pathway toward an engineering degree. Recently, the University of Cincinnati obtained a grant from the NSF to develop the next generation of first-year programs: FYE2.0. We envision a modularized program that will provide students with essential skills, while at the same time scaffold their first year with opportunities for customization and flexibility in charting their own engineering journey. This paper outlines the logistical progress made in implementing FYE2.0 to date and discusses plans for the future. 

This Complete Evidence-Based Practice Paper focuses on the topic of Curriculum and is based on work funded by an NSF IUSE Grant (#2337003). Specifically, it discusses the efforts at the University of Cincinnati, a large, midwestern, urban university, to update their first-year engineering curriculum by providing students and programs more freedom to select content that will both better prepares students for their upper-division classes and specifically allow the students to pursue topics that are of interests to them. The desire to embark on this re-envisioning of the first-year curriculum is motivated by the demands of industry and the current generation of students, which requires a more flexible approach to allow students to better engage with the field of engineering and to allow curricula to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of engineering practice and technology. The significant curricular change involves taking the current 6 credit hours of first year engineering courses and breaking them into a set of 1 credit (or less) modules from which students can select. This paper discusses in detail the first year of the project which has involved implementing changes to the current courses to prepare for the change to the modular format along with getting buy-in from the administration and faculty within the college. The paper also discusses outcomes from the changes implemented during the first year of the project along with the plan for the second and third year of the project, with the goal of having a completely modularized first-year engineering course structure by the start of the third year. 

This research paper describes work performed at a large midwestern university in the U.S. examining the link between spatial skills and design performance. Spatial skills are vital to success in engineering education and their relation to efficient problem-solving is wellresearched. This study is part of a larger project focusing on understanding the link between spatial visualization skills and solving engineering design problems. In the current study, we made use of an eye-tracking device to determine the visual focus of participants while they solved an assigned design task. High and low spatial visualizers in undergraduate engineering were identified through Phase I testing. In Phase 1, students completed four widely accepted spatial ability tests. Subsequently, some students were invited to participate in a Phase 2 design problem-solving activity wearing the Tobii Pro Glasses 3 to collect eye tracking data to gain insight into the design problem-solving behaviors based on information collected about participants’ eye movement fixations (i.e. duration and location). In this paper, we report on the analysis conducted through Tobii Pro Lab research software involving 13 study participants of whom 7 (1 female, 6 male: 3 first-year, 4 senior-year) were high spatial visualizers while 6 (3 female, 3 male; 4 first-year, 2 senior-year) were low spatial visualizers. Findings from the study suggest that the solutions produced by the high visualizers were more graphical compared to low visualizers. Low visualizers focused more on the problem statement, spending more time reading it and coming back to it compared to high visualizers who remained in the problem solution area for most of the problem-solving session. Recognizing the importance of spatial abilities in design problem-solving, educators can incorporate activities and exercises aimed at developing spatial skills among students which could include spatial reasoning tasks, visualization exercises, and hands-on design projects. 

Currently, substantial efforts are underway to improve the engagement and retention of engineering and computer science (E/CS) students in their academic programs. Student participation in specific activities known as High Impact Educational Practices (HIP) has been shown to improve student outcomes across a variety of degree fields. Thus, we suggest that understanding how and why E/CS students, especially those from historically underrepresented groups, participate in HIP is vital for supporting efforts aimed at improving E/CS student engagement and retention. The aim of the current study is to examine the participation of E/CS undergraduates enrolled at two western land-grant institutions (both institutions are predominantly white; one is an emerging Hispanic-serving institution) across five HIEP (i.e., global learning and study aboard internships, learning communities, service and community-based learning, and undergraduate research) that are offered outside of required E/CS curricula and are widely documented in the research literature. As part of a larger study, researchers developed an online questionnaire to explore student HIP participation and then surveyed E/CS students (n = 576) across both land-grant institutions. Subsequently, researchers will use survey results to inform the development of focus groups interview protocols. Focus group interviews will be conducted with purposefully selected E/CS students who participated in the survey. Combined survey and focus group data will then be analyzed to more deeply understand why and how E/CS students participate in the HIP at their university. This research paper reports on the frequency distribution analysis of the survey data generated with E/CS undergraduates enrolled at one of the two land grant institutions. The combined sample included E/CS undergraduates from the following demographic groups: female (34 %), Asian (10 %), Black or African American (2%), Hispanic or Latinx (6%), Native American or Alaskan Native (1%), Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (1%), White (81 %), and multiracial (4 %). Results show that most (38%) E/CS students reported participating in internships, while study abroad programs garnered the smallest level of E/CS student participation (5%) across all five HIP. Internships were found most likely to engage diverse students: Female (42%), Hispanic or Latinx (24%), Multiracial (44%), Asian (31%), First-generation (29%), and nontraditional students—other than those categorized as highly nontraditional—all reported participating in internships more than any other HIP. Notable differences in participation across E/CS and demographic groups were found for other HIPs. Results further revealed that 43% of respondents did not participate in any extracurricular HIP and only 19% participated in two or more HIP. Insights derived from the survey and used to inform ongoing quantitative and qualitative analyses are discussed. Keywords: community-based learning, high impact educational practices, HIP, internships learning communities, service learning, study aboard, undergraduate research 

Despite efforts to attract and retain more students in engineering and computer science — particularly women and students from underrepresented groups — diversity within these educational programs and the technical workforce remains stubbornly low. Research shows that undergraduate retention, persistence, and success in college is affected by several factors, including sense of belonging, task value, positive student-faculty interactions, school connectedness, and student engagement [1], [2]. Kuh [1] found that improvement in persistence, performance, and graduation for students in college were correlated to students’ level of participation in particular activities known as high impact educational practices (HIEP). HIEP include, among others, culminating experiences, learning communities, service learning, study abroad, and undergraduate research; Kuh [1] concluded that these activities may be effective at promoting overall student success. Kuh [1] and others [3] further hypothesized that participation in HIEP may especially benefit students from non-majority groups. Whether and how engineering and computer science students benefit from participating in HIEP and whether students from non-majority groups have access to HIEP activities, however, remain as questions to investigate. In this project, we examine engineering and computer science student participation in HIEP at two public land grant institutions. In this study, we seek to understand how and why students participate in HIEP and how participation affects their persistence and success in engineering and computer science majors. Set within the rural, public land grant university context, this study conceptualizes diversity in a broad sense and includes women, members of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, first generation college students, adult learners, and nontraditional student as groups contributing to the diversity of academic programs and the technical workforce. 

Abstract Many measurements at the LHC require efficient identification of heavy-flavour jets, i.e. jets originating from bottom (b) or charm (c) quarks. An overview of the algorithms used to identify c jets is described and a novel method to calibrate them is presented. This new method adjusts the entire distributions of the outputs obtained when the algorithms are applied to jets of different flavours. It is based on an iterative approach exploiting three distinct control regions that are enriched with either b jets, c jets, or light-flavour and gluon jets. Results are presented in the form of correction factors evaluated using proton-proton collision data with an integrated luminosity of 41.5 fb -1 at  √s = 13 TeV, collected by the CMS experiment in 2017. The closure of the method is tested by applying the measured correction factors on simulated data sets and checking the agreement between the adjusted simulation and collision data. Furthermore, a validation is performed by testing the method on pseudodata, which emulate various mismodelling conditions. The calibrated results enable the use of the full distributions of heavy-flavour identification algorithm outputs, e.g. as inputs to machine-learning models. Thus, they are expected to increase the sensitivity of future physics analyses.