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Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs have been credited for attracting and retaining students in science and engineering who otherwise may not have considered disciplines in science and engineering as their career choices. In addition to core research activities, REU programs generally provide multiple enrichment and professional development activities for participants. While the nature and the number of professional development activities vary from one REU program to another, the most common activities include ethics and safety training, research and industry seminars, GRE workshops, writing workshops, graduate school application preparation, and industry visits. Furthermore, some of these professional development activities are also conducted in large group settings with students from other research programs beyond the REU cohort. The rationale behind combining REU students with other researchers is to create a community of learners and provide them with an opportunity to build/extend their professional network. Although professional development activities are an integral part of the REU sites, there is often very limited coverage of such activities in the existing literature on REU projects. This paper presents the impact of professional development activities on the experience of REU participants in a manufacturing REU site at a major research university in the southwestern United States. For this study, data was collected from participants by an external evaluator by using both qualitative and quantitative methods. This paper presents and describes the cumulative data from three REU cohorts. The analysis and results of the data are disaggregated by the student academic level (sophomore, junior, senior), gender, ethnicity, the type of their home institutions (research or teaching institution), and desired career paths in the future (graduate school or industry). The paper also provides a detailed discussion and implications of these findings. 

Two-dimensional van der Waals (vdWs) materials have gathered a lot of attention recently. However, the majority of these materials have Curie temperatures that are well below room temperature, making it challenging to incorporate them into device applications. In this work, we synthesized a room-temperature vdW magnetic crystal Fe5GeTe2 with a Curie temperature T$_c = 332$ K, and studied its magnetic properties by vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM) and broadband ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) spectroscopy. The experiments were performed with external magnetic fields applied along the c-axis (H$\parallel$c) and the ab-plane (H$\parallel$ab), with temperatures ranging from 300 to 10 K. We have found a sizable Landé g-factor difference between the H$\parallel$c and H$\parallel$ab cases. In both cases, the Landé g-factor values deviated from g = 2. This indicates contribution of orbital angular momentum to the magnetic moment. The FMR measurements reveal that Fe5GeTe2 has a damping constant comparable to Permalloy. With reducing temperature, the linewidth was broadened. Together with the VSM data, our measurements indicate that Fe5GeTe2 transitions from ferromagnetic to ferrimagnetic at lower temperatures. Our experiments highlight key information regarding the magnetic state and spin scattering processes in Fe5GeTe2, which promote the understanding of magnetism in Fe5GeTe2, leading to implementations of Fe5GeTe2 based room-temperature spintronic devices. 

Recent advancements in information, wire¬less sensing, data analysis, and 3-D printing technologies are transforming manufacturing into a highly customized process, with a short time to market, and a competitive cost structure to sustain businesses in a highly globalized market. Central to this emerging paradigm is cybermanufacturing which is a critical technology that combines the above-mentioned recent advances in technologies to transform manufacturing into essentially a commoditized "cloud-based service". Likewise, it has the poten¬tial to evoke creativity of the general population to design and create personalized products. To that end, one of the key enablers of this paradigm is the recruitment and training of a new class of manufacturing workforce that can (1) combine engineering product design capabilities with information technology tools to convert ideas into components and (2) transform a wide range of precursor materials into products to meet advanced functional requirements by using cyber-enabled machine tools. However, many students, particularly those at predominantly undergraduate institutions (UGI) and minority-serving institutions (MSI), have not been exposed to advanced or cyber-based manufacturing research and education. This paper presents a case study of NSF-funded summer research experience for undergraduates (REU) site in cybermanufacturing. The paper describes the student recruitment process, demographic information of the most recent cohort, sample student projects, and other enrichment activities that were organized during the 10-week summer REU program. As a part of program evaluation, the participants were surveyed before and after the REU experience. The survey questions covered a wide range of topics including their scientific research knowledge and skills, career knowledge and interest, and professional skills. Survey results from 2018 cohort shows that REU experience was not only very helpful for students in deciding the manufacturing as their career path but it also improved their research competency. 

Self-efficacy has been found to be one of the key factors that are responsible for academic success of engineering students. However, there exist multiple instruments for determining the self-efficacy of engineering students and studies conducted in this area in the past have varied significantly in their use of a general or engineering domain-specific constructs. This work investigates whether an engineering-domain specific self-efficacy measurement instrument is required for determining the self-efficacy beliefs of engineering students or whether a general instrument will suffice. Furthermore, this study also aims to investigate the effect of gender, class level, and transfer status of students on their engineering self-efficacy beliefs. Over two hundred engineering students from Texas A&M University and Houston Community College are surveyed on 39 questions divided across 6 distinct self-efficacy instruments. The survey data was then analyzed to determine whether there exists a significant difference in the scores obtained across the generic and the domain-specific instruments. Factor analysis is also performed to explore the interrelationships among the questions belonging to different self-efficacy instruments. The results reveal that there exists a significant difference in the scores across the two types of instruments. 

This paper presents a project framework for the development of an adaptive learning environment to provide a wide range of students with the skills necessary to work in high value manufacturing (HVM) aimed at the energy industry. More specifically, it discusses a HVM certificate program being developed at Houston Community College (HCC) in collaboration with Texas A&M University (TAMU). The aim of the project is to create a sustainable certificate program in HVM that provides multiple pathways for community college students while meeting the critical workforce needs of a vital industry in Texas. The novelty of the certificate program includes innovative pedagogical methods, such as competency-based learning and skills need assessment and provision through online learning modules is presented; this allows students an adaptive and personalized education in this needed area. Upon completion of the certificate program, the community college students will have multiple pathways including: a) an A.S. at the Community College; b) transfer to four year institution; and c) return to industry to join the workforce. By incorporating a new co-educational paradigm between the community college and the university, as opposed to traditional articulation agreements, this project provides a novel pathway for community college students to transition to a four-year degree program. It also incorporates a new method for trying to ensure that community college students who matriculate to partner 4-year institutions receive reverse transfer credit for their associate degrees at their home community college. Furthermore, HVM modules are developed for high school students that are aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards.