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This paper describes an NSF (National Science Foundation) S-STEM-funded scholarship program, representing a collaborative five-year grant project among three prominent universities in the Southeast region of the United States. Its primary objective is to support dedicated scholars in graduating and finding a professional pathway. Each institution recruited a cohort of 15-20 scholars annually for three years. The project offers scholarships and provides curricular and co-curricular support to academically talented but financially challenged students in the computing disciplines, including Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Cybersecurity, and Information Technology majors, starting from their junior years. The program aims to impact 150 scholars, most of whom are underrepresented in computing. Scholars receive support throughout their graduation and beyond should they pursue graduate studies in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) discipline at any of the three participating institutions. 

Background: Undergraduate engineering education is a critical moment for student experiences and broadening participation, yet many minoritized students experience it as unwelcoming, unsupportive, or exclusionary. Engineering faculty have a central role and responsibility to play in the creation of inclusive classrooms, yet there is a gap in empathic communication for faculty to better understand their students. Education researchers can play a critical role in addressing this communication and empathy gap, but disseminating research findings in long form papers is not accessible for most engineering faculty. Purpose: This paper highlights the audio narratives created through the Audio for Inclusion project, an NSF-funded project intended to help faculty become more aware of students’ hidden and marginalized identities and impacts of those identities on their engineering education experiences. Method: We conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with 22 nationally recruited undergraduate engineering students and turned these into 10 distinct audio narratives. Our narrative analysis focused on constructing a cohesive, concise, and anonymized narrative that would present key content from student interviews in a format that would preserve some of the immediacy and emotionality of student interviews while improving accessibility and coherence for faculty. Findings: In this paper, we present the scripts and link to audio narratives for two student participants: 1) Sophie, a mixed race (Asian and white) white-passing woman, and 2) Enola, an Indigenous woman. In addition to presenting the written and audio narrative, we comment on the specific lessons we see as valuable for engineering faculty that emerge from each of the audio narratives. Conclusion: This project highlights lessons learned for faculty in the areas of student support, accommodations, inclusive practice, and student perceptions of classroom practice. We present this project as methodological innovation for qualitative research, and as future work, we intend to keep investigating impact on faculty via faculty focus groups, surveys, and workshops. We also highlight this research as a metaphor for the empathic understanding that each faculty member can gain by listening to students, individually and collectively, and distilling lessons for their practice. 

The inclusive transformation of engineering culture stands as a central objective for ensuring the growth and sustainability of a diverse engineering workforce. Engineering faculty members play a critical role in this transformation by supporting and shaping the academic journeys and eventual careers of their students. However, despite their central role in workforce development, faculty members often lack the resources and training needed to gain a deeper understanding of the diverse experiences and identities their students bring to the engineering classroom. This is especially challenging for students with minoritized identities that are non-apparent or hidden and cannot be easily observed by faculty. As part of the on-going Audio for Inclusion (A4I) Project, this paper and poster discuss the initial findings from focus groups with nine engineering faculty members from three universities nationwide. We delve into the intricacies and logistics of developing, designing, and facilitating these focus groups and highlight significant alterations and overall recommendations shared by participants. These perspectives can serve as a valuable resource for engineering educators seeking to incorporate similar audio dissemination methods into their work and for those interested in implementing strategies for cultivating a more inclusive engineering education culture. 

Engineering students are increasingly reporting struggles with stress and mental health challenges during their undergraduate careers, yet most will only consider seeking support once they have reached a significant state of distress. While university campuses are increasingly establishing mental well-being centers and support structures for students, these efforts are reactionary and require student engagement outside the classroom. Mindfulness, a well-recognized mental health intervention, has shown significant promise as a preventive strategy that fosters a culture that prioritizes well-being in educational settings. This intervention offers many benefits for students beyond mental health, including improved focus, emotional regulation, stress reduction, enhanced cognitive performance, and overall well-being. Despite the growing needs for such interventions, the adoption of mindfulness as a practice in engineering education remains limited. In this paper, we propose mindfulness as a proactive strategy for safeguarding mental health in engineering education. Specifically, we draw from existing literature to dive into the benefits and potential feasibility of incorporating mindfulness into daily engineering curricula. By equipping engineering students to manage stress, we can better promote their overall well-being as students and as emerging career professionals, with the overarching goal to foster healthier engineering communities and workplace environments. 

The inclusive transformation of engineering culture stands as a central objective for ensuring the growth and sustainability of a diverse engineering workforce. Engineering faculty members play a critical role in this transformation by supporting and shaping the academic journeys and eventual careers of their students. However, despite their central role in workforce development, faculty members often lack the resources and training needed to gain a deeper understanding of the diverse experiences and identities their students bring to the engineering classroom. This is especially challenging for students with minoritized identities that are non-apparent or hidden and cannot be easily observed by faculty. As part of the on-going Audio for Inclusion (A4I) Project, this paper and poster discuss the initial findings from focus groups with nine engineering faculty members from three universities nationwide. We delve into the intricacies and logistics of developing, designing, and facilitating these focus groups and highlight significant alterations and overall recommendations shared by participants. These perspectives can serve as a valuable resource for engineering educators seeking to incorporate similar audio dissemination methods into their work and for those interested in implementing strategies for cultivating a more inclusive engineering education culture. 

Background: Marginalization of minoritized students in undergraduate engineering education is an important equity issue created by the racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other systemic discrimination in the system. Qualitative research to understand and listen to student voices has been an important tool for documenting marginalization, but research solely to create conference and journal publications could be re-traumatizing and limited in its ability to help students or change the system. In prior work, we have argued that qualitative research should progress beyond simply documenting marginalization, to try new methods to actually change faculty perspectives. Purpose: This arts-based research paper presents an innovative audio-based project methodology to center the voices of students experiencing marginalization. Our work connects to multiple ECSJ 2023 Pillars: 1) our focus on innovation towards impact through our research is a form of methodological activism and a potentially decolonizing (broadly speaking) methodological practice; 2) the audio narratives of individual students can provide insight into the marginalizing systems through the lens of their experience (Pawley, 2013); and 3) the audio narratives are meant to provide resources towards equitable faculty practice. Format of Presentation: Our presentation will include a paper and/or web-based presentation of the audio narratives. The existing narratives are prepared on YouTube, approximately 10 minutes long for each of 10 student narratives, and include subtitles for accessibility. Our proposed presentation at ASEE will be an interactive poster presentation that incorporates the audio narratives. We will have QR codes for ASEE session participants to interact with the audio narratives and will present our analysis of how these student narratives inform faculty practice and understandings of systemic marginalization. Implications: Our primary implications will be for engineering education researchers of marginalization, to potentially incorporate our methodology to help create a more impactful and engaged research agenda. 

This paper describes an NSF (National Science Foundation) S-STEM-funded scholarship program, representing a collaborative five-year grant project among three prominent universities in the Southeast region of the United States. Its primary objective is to support dedicated scholars in graduating and finding a professional pathway. Each institution recruited a cohort of 15-20 scholars annually for three years. The project offers scholarships and provides curricular and cocurricular support to academically talented but financially challenged students in the computing disciplines, including Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Cybersecurity, and Information Technology majors, starting from their junior years. The program aims to impact 150 scholars, most of whom are underrepresented in computing. Scholars receive support throughout their graduation and beyond should they pursue graduate studies in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) discipline at any of the three participating institutions. Besides funds, the program provides an expansive career pathway opportunity to each of its students, accompanied by various supporting services, a dedicated advising team, experiential learning offices, career services offices, and graduate schools. Supporting services include internship fairs, panel discussions with alumni, resume workshops, graduate school application workshops, and career fairs. The project brings together the unique collaboration of three institutions for each of its supported activities to significantly enhance the support and opportunities offered to its scholars and to conduct meaningful research studies that include significant-sized intersectional populations.