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Building on work presented at ASEE 2023, this NSF Grantees Poster Session paper reports on the impacts of the [NSF Project]—a $1M NSF award via the NSF ECR-EHR Core Research program in 2019—as it nears the end of its final year. The [NSF Project] aims to build national capacity for STEM education research by engaging technical STEM from across the U.S. in cohorts that participate in a semester-long course on qualitative and mixed methods educational research techniques. Faculty from underrepresented backgrounds and Minority-Serving Institutions were given priority consideration in terms of recruitment and admission to participate in the project. This project was funded based on impact rather than knowledge generation; thus, this paper will report on the [NSF Projects]’s summative outcomes and impact revealed through external evaluation. Using the Qualifying Qualitative Research Quality (Q3) framework pioneered by Dr. Joachim Walther and colleagues as a foundation, the project team guided three cohorts of faculty (48 faculty total) in designing qualitative or mixed methods studies to address research questions they wanted to answer about their educational contexts. The project team has also hosted four follow-up research incubators (each one semester long) as spaces to allow graduates of the [program] to continue working together as a community to continue developing educational research projects to completion or apply for extramural funding opportunities (serving 27 faculty total.) Furthermore, the team has funded graduates of the [program] to lead communities of practice focused on areas of shared research interest among graduates. Finally, in the past year, the team has funded professional grant proposal coaching for interested graduates and has worked with graduates to design and execute workshops on the [program’s] approach to qualitative research design. The evaluation results presented in this paper derive from a primarily quantitative, mixed methods survey conducted by the project’s external evaluators. The survey aimed to gauge participants' engagement with [program] activities; their knowledge, perceptions of, and comfort with qualitative and mixed methods; assessment of training outcomes and curriculum; the influence of [program] training on research dissemination; and self-reported behavioral changes before and after training. Results indicate substantial self-reported improvement in knowledge of qualitative research methods, as well as application of those methods and confidence to do so. Many participants have gone on to pursue funded research projects using qualitative and mixed methods research approaches, and many have reported increased capacity to collaborate on and disseminate research projects successfully. Constructively, the results point to a need to support nascent qualitative researchers in attending educational research conferences and integrating into these conferences’ communities. Participants also indicated a desire for more practical experience with real-world qualitative research scenarios, pointing to a need for further hands-on professional development opportunities. Overall, the survey paints a picture of a successful program that nearly all respondents reported as being worthwhile and a desire from participants to continue seeking opportunities to grow as qualitative and mixed methods researchers. 

In this paper, we report on the impacts of the ProQual Institute—a $1M award via the NSF ECREHR Core Research program in 2019—as it nears the end of its funding period. The ProQual Institute’s goal is to build national capacity for STEM education research by engaging technical STEM from across the U.S. in cohorts that participate in an 8-week course on qualitative and mixed methods educational research techniques, followed by engagement in several communities of practice to continue supporting participant research projects and building participants’ confidence as educational researchers. This project was funded based on impact rather than knowledge generation; thus, this paper will report on the impacts of the ProQual Institute in terms of participants served and evaluated outcomes and project team observations. The key evaluation questions we answered were: (1) To what extent did the project design and implement a high-quality and culturally responsive training program? (2) What knowledge and skills did participants gain because of participation in the ProQual Institute? (3) How could the ProQual Institute be built upon to improve participant outcomes? 

BACKGROUND Previous work has identified the reality of structural constraints placed on engineering students from underrepresented gender, racial, or ethnic backgrounds, a process known as minoritization. Students from minoritized and marginalized backgrounds are often expected to overcome additional obstacles in order to be successful in engineering or to claim identity as an engineer. Such a cultural backdrop contributes to the experience of professional shame, which has not yet been characterized in the lived experiences of engineering students who identify with minoritized backgrounds. PURPOSE We contend that professional shame is a major factor in both creating and perpetuating cycles of marginalization that inhibit students from forming a professional identity as an engineer or succeeding in their academic program. Anchored in theoretical foundations of psychology and sociology, we define professional shame as a painful emotional experience that occurs when individuals perceive themselves to be wholly inadequate in relation to identity-relevant standards within a professional domain. In this paper, we examine the lived experiences of professional shame in undergraduate engineering students in the United States who identify with racial, gender, or ethnic backgrounds that are minoritized within the structural constraints of their engineering programs. METHODS To answer our research question: How do students from minoritized gender, racial or ethnic backgrounds experience professional shame within the context of engineering education? We conducted an interpretative methodological analysis (IPA). Specifically, we conducted semi-structured interviews with junior engineering majors (n = 7) from two predominantly white institutions (PWIs) who self-identified as being from a minoritized gender, racial, or ethnic background. We found IPA to be especially effective in answering our research question while affirming the nuances of the diversity found in our participants’ gender, racial and ethnic backgrounds. We carefully analyzed the interview transcripts, generating descriptive, linguistic, and contextual comments. These comments informed multiple emergent themes for each participant, which were subsequently integrated into robust themes that characterized the psychological experiences shared by all participants. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS Our findings are summarized in four robust, psychological themes. First, minoritized identities were salient in moments of professional shame. Second, in response to professional shame, students sought out confirmation of belonging within the engineering space. Third, their perception of engineering as an exceptionally difficult major that required exceptional smartness intensified the shame experience. And, finally, participants experienced a tension between wanting to adhere to engineering stereotypes and wanting to diverge from or alter engineering stereotypes. SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPLICATIONS Through examining participants’ experiences of shame and subsequent struggle to belong and claim identity as an engineer, we seek to address efforts in bolstering diversity, equity, and inclusion that may be hindered by the permeation of professional shame in the experience of minoritized students. We see these findings as critical in giving insight on how minoritization occurs and so that equity can become a systemic objective for everyone in the engineering community rather than the burden only on the shoulders of those who are marginalized by the community. 

Prior research on faculty-student interactions in engineering education generally conceptualizes the function of these episodes to be supportive of professional development. In this paper, we examine the experience of professional shame amid faculty-student interactions. More generally, we examine the emotional significance of interactions between faculty and students and how such moments can affect how students cope with the experience of professional shame. Our findings are based on a thematic analysis that followed a broader qualitative mixed-method investigation of how engineering students experience professional shame. Specifically, we analyzed specific episodes of moments where the experience of shame was connected to faculty members within focus group transcripts (n = 10) of engineering students (n = 38) and interview transcripts with engineering students (n = 16). We generated three themes that characterized the experience of professional shame amid faculty-student interactions. First, faculty would engender shame through conveying vague, holistic expectations of what it means to be an engineer. Second, students would cope with the experience of shame by blaming the faculty member for the experience. Finally, some students saw the faculty member as a source of hope while they experienced professional shame. These findings point to the crucial role that faculty play in not only preparing engineering students for professional practice but also for cultivating environments of well-being within engineering programs. 

This paper describes the use of a novel research platform called SenseMaker® to collect and analyze real-time data in the form of participants’ qualitative accounts of COVID-19 along with online learning experiences and participants’ own quantitative assessments of those experiences. Participants were faculty, students, and staff in the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia during Spring 2020. Results from two waves of data collection informed real-time recommendations to College faculty and administration to address COVID-19-related challenges. Results also facilitated faculty development programming to build instructor communities of learning and support in response to the University’s transition to online learning. 

Prior research established that expectations play a significant role in students educational experiences. Academic and non-academic expectations can contribute to students’ stress and anxiety, and have been shown to impact achievement and retention. This study uses ethnographic methods to investigate how expectations are socially constructed in engineering programs and how students’ come to internalize these expectations. Data was collected in ten focus groups with a total of 38 participants at two universities with different institutional characteristics. The qualitative analysis drew on constant comparative methods and proceeded from topic coding of sources of expectations to interpretive coding of mechanisms in which students internalized experiences. More specifically, sources of expectations were identified as academics, superiors, peers, extra-curricular, and from outside the major. The rich account of students' lived-experiences shows a complex interplay of expectations from multiple sources. The mechanisms of compounding, conflicting, and triangulating expectations show that the interactions of expectations can amplify their emotional impacts on students. The results indicate that students judge their own performance or belonging in engineering relative to the systemic functioning of expectations. For educators, this insight has profound implications on how we communicate performance standards without inadvertently reinforcing social performance expectations that can contribute to problematic cultural features of engineering learning environments. 

This research paper presents the findings of an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) case study of the experience of shame in a woman engineering student. Our overarching research question that framed this study was: How do woman students with multiple salient identities psychologically experience shame in the context of engineering education? We present findings derived from in-depth analysis of an interview with a single case: A White, female student-athlete who majored in mechanical engineering at a private, liberal arts university (pseudonym: Nicole). We selected Nicole as a case in order to critically examine the tensions experienced among multiple salient identities in women engineering students. The findings demonstrate how the study participant internally negotiated the expectations of others with her own self-concept. That is to say, in reaction to a shame experience, the participant evaluated and often adjusted the value she ascribed to the expectations of others and the ways in which those expectations fit into her core identity. Overall, the findings provide a sensitive description with which connections can be forged between broader discussions of engineering education and how cultural expectations manifest within the lived experience of the individual student. 

Abstract BackgroundShame is a deeply painful emotion people feel when they perceive that they have fallen short of socially constructed expectations. In this study,professional shamerefers to shame experiences that stem from people's perceptions that they have failed to meet expectations or standards that are relevant to their identities in a professional domain. While socially constructed expectations placed on engineering students have been implicitly addressed in the engineering education literature, they have rarely been the subject of specific inquiry. PurposeAs part of a broader study on professional shame in engineering, we investigated the co‐construction of social worlds that place expectations on engineering students. MethodWe conducted 10 ethnographic focus groups with undergraduate engineering students from two universities. These groups were either heterogeneous or homogeneous, regarding racial and gender identity, to examine multiple social realities. ResultsWe present significant findings related to engineering students' collective noticing, defining, and experiencing of social worlds. The findings give a sense of overlapping but distinct social realities among student groups and highlight how failing to meet expectations can contribute to deeply painful emotional responses. We also note when students' responses reproduce, resist, or redefine the broader cultural norms in which the students are embedded. ConclusionsThe study has implications for the theoretical exploration of shame, engineering education research on identity and diversity and inclusion, and the messaging and interactions in which the engineering education community engages.