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Engineering education is brimming with obstacles and opportunities that evoke emotions in students. The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the emotions that surface when students in the United States discuss how they navigate engineering. We used a psychoevolutionary approach to emotion and conducted 26 semi-structured interviews at one institution with undergraduate engineering students. We analysed student interviews using a priori codes from an emotion wheel and emergent codes related to the context of their emotions. We found these relationships between emotions and their contexts: (1) an engineering course load and being marginalised in engineering are both emotionally uncomfortable; (2) peers and instructors can cause both comfortable and uncomfortable emotions; and (3) future career plans provide emotional comfort. To most effectively support undergraduate students, practitioners should be aware of these emotional realities so they can provide more emotionally responsive support to students. 

The purpose of this NSF CAREER project is to advance understanding of the navigational strategies used by undergraduate engineering students from marginalized groups. Our poster will present an overview of our results from complete data collection at one site and a snapshot of the tool we developed to assess students’ navigation strategies. Over the past year, we concluded data collection at our first site. We interviewed upper division undergraduate students, talking to them about their experiences as engineering students and the opportunities and obstacles they encountered in engineering education. We then analyzed this data using two different approaches. First, we took an emotions-centered approach, investigating the contexts in which emotion words naturally surfaced in students as they talked about navigating engineering. Then we took a person-centered approach, uncovering how personal characteristics simplify or complicate navigating through the engineering learning environment. We looked at a subset of the interviews to understand the experiences of Women of Color (WOC) investigating how WOC thrive in engineering. Further analysis to understand the role of personhood in navigating is ongoing. We also finalized a situational judgment inventory (SJI), piloting the instrument we developed in the previous year and fine tuning based on pilot results. Our SJI is a multiple choice scenario assessment tool that contains one sentence scenarios with one sentence response options. Our final SJI contains 19 scenarios with 5 response options for each scenario. The scenarios are within the following domains: academic performance, faculty and staff interactions, extracurricular involvement, peer-group interactions, professional development, and special circumstances. We will share details about the instrument development process, final instrument, and preliminary results from instrument dissemination with undergraduate engineering students. Moving forward, we will interview undergraduate students at institutions beyond our primary data collection site to better understand how institutional context plays a role in student navigation of the engineering learning environment. 

The College of Engineering at [University] offers a comprehensive five-week summer program known as a summer bridge program (SBP) for incoming students. The primary objective of this program is to familiarize first-time-in-college students with the university environment and community, setting them up for success in their academic journey. During this period, students engage in non-credit courses that cover subjects typically deemed challenging and necessary for first-year students, including calculus, chemistry, and engineering fundamentals. In addition to these courses, over the course of the program, students actively participate in informative seminars conducted by different campus offices, providing them with a comprehensive understanding of the wide array of opportunities and resources available to support their them during their academic journey. In the previous year, we organized a workshop during the SBP with a total of 60 participating students. The purpose of this workshop was to gauge students' reactions to a series of open-ended scenarios that reflected potential opportunities and constraints commonly encountered in the field of engineering. Students were given the opportunity to respond to these scenarios both individually and in groups, with each group assigned four unique scenarios. To further enhance our understanding, we also conducted interviews with 11 students. By analyzing the individual and group responses, along with the interview data, we developed a Situational Judgment Inventory (SJI), aggregating students’ open ended responses into closed-ended responses to the scenarios. The primary objective of this SJI is to promote better alignment between students' navigational tendencies and the expectations of professionals regarding students' navigational approaches within the learning environment. The purpose of this presentation is to provide a comprehensive overview of our instrument refinement process and present preliminary findings regarding the anticipated navigational approaches of incoming engineering students. To address this purpose, we conducted a 90-minute workshop with SBP students, where we administered the piloted SJI containing the closed-ended responses we developed earlier. The primary purpose of piloting the SJI was to understand how to enhance the instrument's accuracy in capturing the full spectrum of navigational tendencies that students possess and expect to employ prior to commencing their engineering studies. The quantitative analysis of the pilot results will not only identify areas of improvement for the instrument but also contribute to our understanding of how incoming students anticipate navigating the field of engineering. 

Graduate education in engineering is an extremely challenging, complex entity that is difficult to change. The purpose of this exploratory research paper was to investigate the applicability of the Collective Impact framework, which has been used within community organizing contexts, to organize the change efforts of a center focused on advancing equitable graduate education within engineering. We sought to understand how the conditions of Collective Impact (i.e., common agenda, backbone organization, mutually reinforcing activities, shared measurement system, and continuous communication) could facilitate the organization of equity-focused change efforts across a college of engineering at a single institution. To achieve this, we took an action research approach. We found the Collective Impact framework to be a useful tool for organizing cross-sectional partnerships to facilitate equity-focused change in graduate education; we also found the five conditions of Collective Impact to be applicable to the higher education context, with some intentional considerations and modifications. Through coordinated efforts, the Collective Impact framework can support the goal of reorienting existing decentralized structures, resource flows, and decision processes to foster bottom-up and top-down change processes to advance equitable support for graduate students. 

We are developing a Situational Judgment Inventory (SJI) to reveal student strategies for navigating the undergraduate engineering learning environment. In this paper, we discuss the development of the SJI. As part of our development process, we identify nine categories that capture students' typical responses. Implementation of the SJI will a) allow students to become familiar with common scenarios they may encounter in engineering; and b) aid support practitioners, such as instructors and advisors, and administrators, such as associate deans and department heads, in better understanding common student navigation strategies for navigating their respective learning environment. 

We are interested in understanding the complexities associated with student navigation of engineering. As part of a study associated with a larger project, we interviewed five upper division, undergraduate women of color in engineering during the Fall 2022 semester. In this paper, we present preliminary results from one participant, Nadia, and discuss the codebook development process. Insights from this paper can inform practice and research. Notably, it can help develop more responsive support structures in engineering for students from marginalized groups, specifically WOC. Furthermore, insight about codebook development can help inform qualitative research practices in engineering education. 

The College of Engineering at Virginia Tech hosts a five-week program for incoming students each summer, also known as a summer bridge program (SBP). As part of the program, first-time-in-college students become acclimated with the university setting and community prior to the start of their academic career. Students take non-credit courses in subjects that are historically challenging and required for first-year students, such as calculus, chemistry, and engineering fundamentals. Throughout the program, students also participate in informational seminars presented by various offices on campus to understand the range of opportunities and resources available to them. In light of participation occurring prior to the official start of the semester, the purpose of this paper is to explore the role of this program in shaping the expectations that participating students have of the undergraduate engineering program. To address this purpose, we analyzed a) written student responses from a workshop activity, b) data from semi-structured interviews that occurred after the workshop, and 3) responses to an exit survey administered at the conclusion of the five-week program. Combined, these data sources shed light on expectations students developed by the end of the program. We found that students emerged from the SBP with varying degrees of expectations regarding the alignment between the SBP experience and a college semester in engineering. We also found that students’ experiences and observations led them to recognize that marginalization exists in engineering while they also viewed engineering as a level playing field. We uncovered that when asked how they would respond to challenging situations, students relied on what they learned about during the SBP. Finally, we conclude with questions based on a transition theory in student development for practitioners to consider when developing or implementing a SBP.