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Disasters are becoming more frequent as the global climate changes, and recovery efforts require the cooperation and collaboration of experts and community members across disciplines. The DRRM program, funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Traineeship (NRT), is an interdisciplinary graduate program that brings together faculty and graduate students from across the university to develop new, transdisciplinary ways of solving disaster-related issues. The core team includes faculty from business, engineering, education, science, and urban planning fields. The overall objective of the program is to create a community of practice amongst the graduate students and faculty to improve understanding and support proactive decision-making related to disasters and disaster management. The specific educational objectives of the program are (1) context mastery and community building, (2) transdisciplinary integration and professional development, and (3) transdisciplinary research. The program’s educational research and assessment activities include program development, trainee learning and development, programmatic educational research, and institutional transformation. The program is now in its fourth year of student enrollment. Core courses on interdisciplinary research methods in disaster resilience are in place, engaging students in domain-specific research related to natural hazards, resilience, and recovery, and in methods of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration. In addition to courses, the program offers a range of professional development opportunities through seminars and workshops. Since the program’s inception, the core team has expanded both the numbers of faculty and students and the range of academic disciplines involved in the program, including individuals from additional science and engineering fields as well as those from natural resources and the social sciences. At the same time, the breadth of disciplines and the constraints of individual academic programs have posed substantial structural challenges in engaging students in the process of building interdisciplinary research identities and in building the infrastructure needed to sustain the program past the end of the grant. Our poster and paper will identify major program accomplishments, but also draw on interviews with students to examine the structural challenges and potential solution paths associated with a program of this breadth. Critical opportunities for sustainability and engagement have emerged through integration with a larger university-level center as well as through increased flexibility in program requirements and additional mechanisms for student and faculty collaboration. 

Interest in increasing both the number and diversity of students enrolling in engineering has resulted in significant research on students’ career choice decisions. Notably, however, while general trends have emerged, many of the models that have been developed focus on majority students. But an increasing body of work on students from a variety of specific demographic groups highlight unique socio-cultural experiences that influence individuals’ career choice decisions. Most relevant to this study, literature on rural students suggests that the lack of high-level STEM courses in rural schools and a desire to stay close to home played key roles in limiting students’ consideration of engineering as a potential career. However, little work has explored how rural communities support and promote engineering as a career choice for their students. Therefore, this study explored the ways in which rural communities provide support to help students make fully informed decisions about engineering as a college major. The findings presented here come from Phase 2 of a three-phase study exploring engineering career choice among rural students. Using interview and focus group data collected from current engineering students in Phase 1, Phase 2 turned to community members, including high school personnel, local industry leaders, members of local governments, and members of key community organizations (e.g., 4-H). Using interviews with 16 participants across 3 communities, we address the following question: What beliefs, experiences, and practices characterize community members or organizations who support or encourage rural students to choose engineering? The interviews explored the participants’ perceptions of their community overall, resources that helped students explore postsecondary options, barriers students faced to enrolling in postsecondary education/engineering, understanding of engineering as a field both generally and for students from that community, and ways Virginia Tech can be a better community partner and fulfill its mission as a public institution. This project aims to broaden participation in engineering by gaining a holistic understanding of the communities that effectively support engineering major choice for rural students and provide contextual methods of increasing support for students from these rural areas. 

Broadening participation in engineering is critical given the gap between the nation’s need for engineering graduates and its production of them. Efforts to spark interest in engineering among PreK-12 students have increased substantially in recent years as a result. However, past research has demonstrated that interest is not always sufficient to help students pursue engineering majors, particularly for rural students. In many rural communities, influential adults (family, friends, teachers) are often the primary influence on career choice, while factors such as community values, lack of social and cultural capital, limited course availability, and inadequate financial resources act as potential barriers. To account for these contextual factors, this project shifts the focus from individual students to the communities to understand how key stakeholders and organizations support engineering as a major choice and addresses the following questions: RQ1. What do current undergraduate engineering students who graduated from rural high schools describe as influences on their choice to attend college and pursue engineering as a post-secondary major? RQ2. How does the college choice process differ for rural students who enrolled in a 4-year university immediately after graduating from high school and those who transferred from a 2-year institution? RQ3. How do community members describe the resources that serve as key supports as well as the barriers that hinder support in their community? RQ4. What strategies do community members perceive their community should implement to enhance their ability to support engineering as a potential career choice? RQ5. How are these supports transferable or adaptable by other schools? What community-level factors support or inhibit transfer and adaptation? To answer the research questions, we employed a three-phase qualitative study. Phase 1 focused on understanding the experiences and perceptions of current [University Name] students from higher-producing rural schools. Analysis of focus group and interview data with 52 students highlighted the importance of interest and support from influential adults in students’ decision to major in engineering. One key finding from this phase was the importance of community college for many of our participants. Transfer students who attended community college before enrolling at [University Name] discussed the financial influences on their decision and the benefits of higher education much more frequently than their peers. In Phase 2, we used the findings from Phase 1 to conduct interviews within the participants’ home communities. This phase helped triangulate students’ perceptions with the perceptions and practices of others, and, equally importantly, allowed us to understand the goals, attitudes, and experiences of school personnel and local community members as they work with students. Participants from the students’ home communities indicated that there were few opportunities for students to learn more about engineering careers and provided suggestions for how colleges and universities could be more involved with students from their community. Phase 3, scheduled for Spring 2020, will bring the findings from Phases 1 and 2 back to rural communities via two participatory design workshops. These workshops, designed to share our findings and foster collaborative dialogue among the participants, will enable us to explore factors that support or hinder transfer of findings and to identify policies and strategies that would enhance each community’s ability to support engineering as a potential career choice. 

While post-secondary enrollment rates have increased for all groups over the last 40 years, higher education enrollment, and specifically enrollment in engineering programs, continues to vary based on demographic characteristics. As a result, efforts to spark interest in engineering among PreK-12 underrepresented students have increased substantially in recent years. However, as past work has demonstrated, interest is not always sufficient to help students pursue engineering majors, particularly for rural students. In many rural communities, strong family networks, community values, and local economic drivers often play a significant role in shaping students’ career choices. To account for these contextual factors, this project shifts the focus from individual students to the communities themselves to understand how key stakeholders and organizations support engineering as a major choice. Our research aims to gain a holistic understanding of the rural communities by employing three phases: 1. Focus groups and interviews with undergraduate engineering students from selected rural high schools that are known for producing high numbers of engineering majors. 2. Interviews with key individuals (e.g. teachers, guidance counselors, community leaders) and observations of activities that emerged as salient in Phase 1. 3. Participatory design workshops to share findings from the first two phases and foster creative dialogue among the rural schools and communities. The focus groups and individual interviews conducted in Phase 1 provided a rich understanding of how and why undergraduate students from rural high schools selected engineering as a college major. They also laid the foundation for the second phase of this project, which includes interviews with key members of the students' home communities and observations of programs and/or events that emerged as salient. Data collection for Phase 2 will continue through the Spring 2019 semester and our poster will present high-level insights from the interviews and observations.The findings from this phase will allow us to triangulate students’ perceptions with the perceptions and practices of others and will provide a rich understanding of the goals, attitudes, and experiences of community members who often play a key role in students’ decisions.