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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. 

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 purpose of this paper is to divulge the complexities embedded within our research team’s process of designing a qualitative study focused on understanding marginalized students’ experiences in engineering. In this paper, we establish a foundation for fruitful qualitative research, grounded in research quality, ethics, and equity. We discuss how the criteria from these foundational considerations can drive decision making for the various components of a research design. In particular, we focus on decision making around purpose, theory, sampling, and instrumentation. In doing so, we shed light on how each element might be intentionally constructed to a) generate insights on how to disrupt the oppressive environment of engineering education, b) protect vulnerable populations, and c) center participants’ voices. In writing this paper, our goal is to provide a transparent account of decisions that can go into designing a qualitative study and implementing a research grant proposal, keeping in mind how our power and privilege influence every decision in the research process. 

Abstract BackgroundIt is well known that earning a bachelor's degree in engineering is a demanding task, but ripe with opportunity. For students from historically excluded demographic groups, this task is exacerbated by oppressive circumstances. Although considerable research has documented how student outcomes differ across demographic groups, much less is known about the dynamic processes that marginalize some students. PurposeThe purpose of this article is to propose a conceptual model of student navigation in the context of undergraduate engineering programs. Our goal is to illustrate how localized, structural features unjustly shape the demands and opportunities encountered by students and influence how they respond. Scope/MethodWe developed our model using an iterative, four‐stage process. This process included (1)clarifyingthe purpose of the development process; (2)identifyingconcepts and insights from prior research; (3)synthesizingthe concepts and insights into propositions; and (4)visualizingthe suspected relationships between the salient constructs in the propositions. ResultsOur model focuses on the dynamic interactions between the characteristics of students, the embedded contexts in which they are situated, and the support infrastructure of their learning environment. ConclusionThe resulting model illustrates the influence of structural features on how students a) respond to demands and opportunities and b) navigate obstacles present in the learning environment. Although its focus is on marginalized students in undergraduate engineering programs, the model may be applicable to STEM higher education more broadly. 

This work-in-progress research paper stems from a larger project where we are developing and gathering validity evidence for an instrument to measure undergraduate students' perceptions of support in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The refinement of our instrument functions to extend, operationalize, and empirically test the model of co-curricular support (MCCS). The MCCS is a conceptual framework of student support that explains how a student's interactions with the professional, academic and social systems within a college could influence their success more broadly in an undergraduate STEM degree program. Our goal is to create an instrument that functions diagnostically to help colleges effectively allocate resources for the various financial, physical, and human capital support provided to undergraduate students in STEM. While testing the validity of our newly developed instrument, an analysis of the data revealed differences in perceived support among College of Engineering (COE) and College of Science (COS) students. In this work-in-progress paper, we examine these differences at one institution using descriptive statistics and Welch's t-tests to identify trends and patterns of support among different student groups.