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There is little literature exploring the needs of engineering faculty and the resources available at engineering colleges to support faculty development. Engineering deans are key stakeholders within institutions well-positioned to discuss trends and practices in faculty development within engineering colleges, however their perspective has not been captured in the literature. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative study was to learn about the state of faculty development within engineering colleges through the perspective of engineering deans. A particular focus was placed on identifying salient faculty needs and resources available to support faculty development within engineering colleges. Semi-structured interviews were completed with 23 engineering deans representing three types of institutions: R1 public (n = 8), R1/R2 private (n = 6), and primarily undergraduate-focused (n = 9). A rigorous thematic analysis process was completed until a final codebook emerged with strong interrater agreement. According to the deans the primary needs for incoming faculty involved teaching, research, understanding expectations, time management, and connectivity. There were variances in the approaches and resources available at each institution especially in relation to mentorship. This study indicates that further investigating effectiveness of faculty development programs especially mentorship across the various stages of a faculty’s career would be fruitful contributions to the engineering education community. 

Although broadening participation efforts aim to transform who has access to engineering by targeting those historically excluded, Black and Brown students’ participation remains stifled by the exclusionary culture and practices ingrained in engineering. Consequently, there is a need for scholarship that advances our understanding of systemic changes that center equity, challenge exclusionary cultural norms, and ultimately contribute to a disruption in the status quo of who gets to be an engineer. Using a multi-case research design that is framed by Kotter’s Leading Change theory and Acker’s Inequality Regimes as theoretical foundations, this CAREER award aims to uncover the change strategies institutionalized by five exemplary COEs to improve Black and Brown students’ access to engineering education and careers. This executive summary presents insights about the second year of the study and is organized around three topics—project overview, year 2 research activity summary, and looking ahead to year 3. 

In civil and construction engineering education research, a focus has been on using 3D models to support students’ design comprehension. Despite this trend, the predominant mode of design communication in the industry relies on 2D plans and specifications, which typically supersede other modes of communication. Rather than focusing on the presentation of less common 3D content as an input to support students’ understanding of a design, this paper explores more common 2D inputs, but compares different visualization formats of student output in two educational interventions. In the first intervention, students document a construction sequence for wood-framed elements in a 2D worksheet format. In the second, students work with the same wood-framed design, but document their sequence through an augmented reality (AR) format where their physical interactions move full-scale virtual elements as if they were physically constructing the wood frame. Student approaches and performance were analyzed using qualitative attribute coding of video, audio, and written documentation of the student experience. Overall, results showed that the 2D worksheet format was simple to implement and was not mentally demanding to complete, but often corresponded with a lack of critical checks and a lack of mistake recognition from the students. The AR approach challenged students more in terms of cognitive load and completion rates but showed the potential for facilitating mistake recognition and self-remediation through visualization. These results suggest that when students are tasked with conceptualizing construction sequences from 2D documentation, the cognitive challenges associated with documenting a sequence in AR may support their recognition of their own mistakes in ways that may not be effectively supported through 2D documentation as an output for documenting and planning a construction sequence. The results presented in this paper provide insights on student tendencies, behaviors, and perceptions related to defining construction sequences from 2D documentation in order for educators to make informed decisions regarding the use of similar learning activities to prepare their students for understanding the 2D design documents used in industry. 

This work-in-progress paper presents highlights from a multi-year study aiming to develop and assess the impact of a mixed reality experience that sufficiently replicates the learning civil engineering students experience during a physical design and construction task. Human Centered Design principles and tenets of the Carnegie Foundation's Three Apprenticeships Model (i.e., learning related to "Head", "Hand", and "Heart") inform the project design, development, and assessments. The development of heart-focused assessments is one focus during the second year in this three-year project. This paper includes a brief overview of the project progress, in general, along with preliminary findings regarding the instrument development. It summarizes the results of a pilot study, including an item analysis of the survey responses. These findings offer preliminary evidence for the content validity and substantive validity of the instrument. Next steps and implications for the engineering education community are also discussed.