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Despite their growing population, the number of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) students enrolling in engineering baccalaureate programs has remained static, and representation in the workforce has followed suit. This ongoing dilemma, cast alongside the continuing paucity of AI/AN success in academic engineering programs, prompts a review of engineering education research conducted with AI/AN populations. In this manuscript, papers dealing exclusively with AI/AN populations were systematically selected out of the body of work included in ASEE conference proceedings since 2005. These were then analyzed for the extent to which they accounted for the complexity of AI/AN lived experiences using a framework developed from Tribal Critical Race Theory. Results indicated that extant work does largely center Indigenous paradigms and do include outcomes tied to AI/AN communities, while not contextualizing the effects of colonization or accounting for the legal/political character of AI/AN identity. This manuscript therefore offers an analysis of recent work through a critical theoretical lens in an attempt to identify areas of focus where future work may have the most impact on engaging more AI/AN students to pursue engineering education and careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A first-generation student is defined as someone whose parents do not have a 4-year degree. Since their parents did not have any experience in how to navigate college academic and social lives, first generation students are faced with many challenges including maintaining identity, academic persistence, and a balanced social life. Further, research shows that these students tend to come from lower family income bracket, lack sufficient academic preparation specially for a major like engineering or other STEM majors and tend to work more to cover the expenses as well as to support their families. Furthermore, first generation students also face challenges with respect to "social capital" as they do not come with an established social network that they can lean on when they need support. Similarly, research suggests these students also lack the "cultural capital", which refers to an experiential gap in their parents compared to those whose parents have academic qualifications and experience that they share with their children. While several intervention methods can be found in higher education literature to improve the academic and social experience of first-generation students, mentoring and summer bridge programs are two key methods that are widely adopted. This paper presents a case study of a first-generation engineering (FGEn) student mentoring program at a large U.S. university. The program currently focuses on first year students in the college of engineering. The Texas A&M University has a common first year program for all engineering and engineering technology majors. The FGEn program was established in 2017 and has been providing mentoring services to about 150 to 160 freshmen every year. The mentor pool consists of both engineering faculty/staff and peer mentors. Unlike many first-generation student programs, the FGEn program is a one-on-one mentoring and does not provide any financial assistance to mentees. However, the program offers a variety of programs during the academic years that help engage the students. Academic performance of the FGEn students and their social experience over the last three years are presented in the paper. The results suggest that the FGEn mentoring program has demonstrably improved the academic performance and generally provided a positive social experience for the students. Lastly, the paper also provides a brief discussion on the findings of a survey of first-generation students at Texas A&M university with respect to the challenges they face in maneuvering their academic and social lives as a university student. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number, variety, and acceptance of computer-aided design (CAD) certifications has significantly increased over the last decade with minimal research conducted on their impact. The purpose of this research paper is to describe the perceived value and benefits of the SOLIDWORKS certification program for students and working professionals within the United States SOLIDWORKS community. The SOLIDWORKS certification program, which began in 1998, recently surpassed 500,000 certified users worldwide. It is viewed as a supplier of worldwide, industry-recognized, lifelong nonconforming professional certifications. Survey data from 193 individuals across five geographical regions of the United States indicate that a SOLIDWORKS certification is valuable and provides benefit to the certified user. This paper presents a novel method of data collection, provides details concerning the actual value and benefits of certifications, and discusses areas of future research as it relates to CAD certifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolution of a first-year engineering mechanics course, Solid Mechanics I, over the two iterations that it has been flipped. It discusses the teaching strategies that have and haven't worked when delivering the course in both an online and hybrid approach. These include recommended durations for lecture videos, types of assessments, grade distributions, etc. Flipping the classroom was a result of the forced transition online due to Covid-19. To best support the students in the unprecedented times, the instructor opted to combine components from both asynchronous and synchronous teaching styles. Asynchronous lecture videos were accompanied by synchronous class time where the instructor clarified concepts, demonstrated real-life applications, solved higher-level problems, and implemented group activities. A combination of these active learning strategies was the key to structuring the course to keep the students engaged despite being online for all, or part, of the term as delivered in Fall 2020 and Fall 2021, respectively. In the Fall 2020 iteration, the course was delivered fully online to roughly 325 students in civil, environmental, geological, and architectural engineering. Since then, the course had been improved and adjusted in response to the students' feedback collected from an end-of-term survey. Approximately 270 students were enrolled in the course in the subsequent Fall 2021 term which took a hybrid approach as Covid-19 restrictions began to lighten. With students being able to learn in-person again, the course had shifted to emphasize student-to-student and student-toinstructor interactions. Feedback became immediate, allowing for the course to be molded to the students' satisfaction as the term progressed. Changes between the two years have been documented in the paper along with recommendations for future adaptations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are currently 25 ABET accredited Architectural Engineering (AE) programs in the United States that offer degrees closely associated with the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. AE programs are sparse and unique compared to civil engineering, construction management, and architecture programs, and must be adaptable to the AEC industry to remain current with leading industry practices. To remain relevant to industry, AE programs regularly evolve their senior capstone project experience, incorporating new methods and technologies graduates will encounter upon entrance into the profession. This paper serves to expand upon an earlier survey that benchmarked AE capstone courses with a new, expanded survey of the programs. Information presented in this paper looks towards unique program experiences, trends, gaps, and possible new educational avenues from the survey results. This paper will include a literature search for similar research being incorporated into AE education, and areas to be explored in the survey will include mentoring styles, assignment formulation, student progression, and delivery styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we document the creation of differentiated learning for discipline-specific instruction within a Fluid Mechanics course at a college with a small General Engineering Program. The framework for differentiation was built on specifications grading, which has received recent attention as an alternative grading scheme that allows for a host of benefits over traditional methods. This implementation of specifications grading is detailed, as is the structure of the course before and after differentiation. Instructor retrospectives are included, as is a comparison of student performance before and after differentiation. Ideally, this paper will provide another template for specifications grading, while also highlighting the flexibility of the grading scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fluid power education is most effective when conducted with hands-on applications and real-life projects. To optimize the students' understanding of fluid power systems, they need to interact with individual components and systems made by these components, ideally during their operation. However, this effective and widely implemented approach is limited in execution because of safety concerns, budgets, the number of participants, visibility, and available space. In addition, physical testing environments must be properly instrumented to showcase system changes and operations, which can be costly and time-intensive. This work showcases a solution to these challenges by introducing a fully immersive and interactive Mixed Reality (MR)/Virtual Reality (VR) laboratory for gear pumps. The laboratory exercises allow students to interact with parts and/or systems in a safe and immersive manner and help them gain knowledge using guided tutorials. This is achieved using Microsoft HoloLens, mixed reality smart glasses, to present students with interactive CAD models of assembled fluid power components and a tablet computer used for virtual interaction. This paper presents the procedures and materials used to create both a virtual gear pump and a relief valve, including their virtual assemblies, computational fluid dynamics, and animation of the parts interacting within them. The MR and VR devices show instructions and advice so that students may learn how the components and the fluid operate within a component and offer interactions with their moving parts to identify their individual parts. This allows students to identify the parts of a pump and assemble them. Three programs are used in conjunction with the Microsoft HoloLens and a tablet to create interactive experiences: (1) Autodesk Inventor Pro is used as the CAD modeling software to build virtual parts, (2) Unity functions as the environment building an engine to house the project and (3) Ansys CFX for the fluid simulation to understand how the fluid behaves in the parts. In this paper, the authors demonstrate how these instructions are created and modified in real-time to better suit the needs for instruction and training in the fluid power classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transfer partnerships continue to be one of the most critical elements of student success. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the bridges and transfer gaps from a two-year college to a university and respect the value of the support and knowledge students are currently receiving at their community college, from the context of the practices and experiences of Iron Range Engineering - Bell. The transfer process, afterall, can be daunting to some students who plan to transition from a community college to a university to finish a Bachelor's degree. Iron Range Engineering - Bell is a unique, co-op based upper division program that strives to facilitate a positive experience for students undergoing this transition. The transfer process can be equally as challenging for community college faculty and staff who may feel the need for additional support in their roles. They play a large role in the transfer process and oftentimes go above and beyond their responsibilities to meet with students to determine their pathway forward after spending time at their respective community colleges. This paper proposes unique ways that university faculty and staff can support two-year colleges during the student transfer process, making these partnerships a more positive experience while achieving a shared goal of supporting student success. Some of the unique ideas include encouraging back transfer to fulfill Associates degree requirements, shared teaching methods, offering bridge courses without two-year colleges changing their curriculum, allowing flexibility for the timing of transfer to meet the needs of students, and active university participation in advising and supporting students. In the end, students who are prepared and have more context tend to perform better and absorb more information sooner in the experience-based learning model that is Iron Range Engineering - Bell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the impact of various class assignments and activities that build up on each other with the aim of increasing student motivation and student learning in a Quality Analysis course. Scaffolding is an instructional strategy that aims to reduce the amount of cognitive effort that students has to make to learn the materials by breaking down the material into more manageable components. In this study, critical thinking scaffolding is applied in the quality analysis course by structuring several elements to lead students to an assignment that is more complex. At the end of the semester, the impact assessment of critical thinking scaffolding was studied by analyzing student feedback and end-of course surveys, quality of student assignments and course grades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This evidence-based practice paper aims to report last five year's experiences of both authors in engaging undergraduate students in field-specific hands-on research by utilizing small internal grants designed for undergraduate research. This study also aims to focus on how engaging in hands-on research impacted the students' learning experiences, their professional development and even their academic results and achievements. In teaching focused universities, the opportunities for undergraduate students to get involved in externally funded research are limited. However, a small grant from the universities can support involvement of both undergraduate and faculty in research activities. In the last five years, the authors have supervised more than 10 undergraduate students in the areas of architecture and manufacturing. It has been observed that engaging students in the hands-on research can greatly improve students' critical thinking. Participation in research enhances student's presentation skills by allowing them opportunities for presenting their research at regional and national conferences, as well as provides them information on the recent developments in areas of their field of study. It was also observed that students who were engaged in research with faculty often were more successful than their peers in getting job offers or admission to graduate schools of their choice. This study will discuss the university strategies and specific strategies taken by both authors to involve and enhance undergraduate students' participation in hands-on research in the areas of architecture and manufacturing. The study will also provide brief descriptions of each project including student learning outcomes and research outcomes from the project. This study aims to discuss students' professional development by comparing the students' academic achievements and professional development before and after engaging in faculty-led research projects. Finally, a section discussing possible strategies that could be taken for enhancing participation in undergraduate research at teaching focused universities will be included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to show how graduate engineering students working on Engineeringfor-Community-Development (ECD) projects and theses 1) acquire socio-technical education that prepares them to critically engage with community development (formation); 2) propose to translate their academic scholarship into formats and language that lead to effective engagement and appropriation by the communities they want to serve (translation); and, from this translation, 3) extend their scholarship into curricular opportunities for undergraduate engineers interested in ECD (extension). Traditional graduate engineering training often lacks education about understanding engineering as a socio-technical endeavor while graduate engineering research is often for graduate advisors to be presented in professional conferences, published in academic journals, and eventually contributing to the output of a research lab. Even when graduate engineering education is complemented with ancillary "social" topics like research ethics or professional communication, it often lacks a concerted effort to view engineering as a sociotechnical endeavor, which, as we propose, is a necessary precondition for effective community engagement. Even when the research topic could be relevant to communities or undergraduate engineering students interested in ECD projects, graduate students rarely translate their results into formats and languages understandable by different audiences. For the process of formation, we will outline how graduate students in the Humanitarian Engineering and Science (HES) Program at Colorado School of Mines (Mines) receive education and mentoring in epistemic decolonization where they learn to question the assumptions, knowledge, and methods that engineers from the Global North have used to engage communities from the Global South and the processes through which students frame their research questions, methods, and community engagement. For the process of translation, we will review the literature on "research translation" and propose models for research translation specific to the community contexts in which they are working: recyclers of electronic and construction waste, artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) communities, and houseless communities in need of clean water. For the process of extension, we will review the literature on graduateundergraduate mentoring related to engineering design projects and propose curricular opportunities for involving other engineering students in community development generated from the graduate student research and translation activities. With an increasing number of ECD-related graduate programs appearing in the horizon, there will be an increasing need for effective models for formation, research translation, and extension like those proposed in this paper. This paper hopes to contribute to these emerging needs and the future development of these crucial areas of graduate engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First-Year Engineering Program (FEP) supports the retention and graduation goals for the College of Engineering (CoE) at University of Arkansas. Since the implementation of FEP in 2007, approximately 33% of engineering students graduate in 4 years, whereas our 5-year and 6-year graduation rates are around 50%. Although there are many factors associated with the graduation rate, students' initial mathematics course in college and their progression in their mathematics courses have been documented as a significant predictor of graduating with a degree in engineering. Therefore, one of our primary concerns is our students' progression through the mathematics course sequence. The eight-semester degree completion programs for all engineering degrees in the CoE assume students will begin their math course of study in Calculus I; however, many of our students are required to take remedial math courses before they can begin the calculus sequence. Although there are variations to math placement each year, on average, approximately 40% of CoE students begin in Calculus 1 while 20% begin ahead (in Calculus 2 or higher), and 40% of CoE students begin one or two math class behind (in Precalculus or College Algebra). The goal of this research was to look at the graduation rates of engineering students based on their initial math course taken at the university. The data analyzed spanned from 2007 to 2015. We found that starting math class is a significant factor in graduation rates and verified this by Chi-square Test of Independence. The results were consistent for the 4-year, 5-year, 6-year, and overall timelines for the 2007-2015 cohort; students started behind in their math sequence graduated with engineering degrees significantly less than expected. We also explored the relationship with the grade earned in the first math class and graduation rates. As expected, the better grade a student earns in their first math course at each level, the more likely to they are to graduate. And the higher math class a student is enrolled in, the more likely they are to graduate for each grade earned. Other interesting results are discussed in detail in paper. Lastly, we looked at the engineering degrees completed divided into math groups. While we cannot make any conclusions on probability of graduating from a specific major depending on the math groups (due to fluctuation of the popularity of different majors over time and self-bias in selection), we can reiterate that graduating with any Bachelor of Science degree in engineering is difficult for students who start behind in their math progression. The results of this study will be used by academic advisors and college administrators to determine additional support and programming needed for students identified as less likely to graduate. Currently, one main discussion in College of Engineering is whether to require all incoming freshman engineering students to take the ALEKS math placement exam. Our study will also be used to aid this discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This complete paper is a continuation of the work reported in the work-in-progress paper by the authors in the 2021 conference. Balancing the Disciplines is an interdisciplinary design project for use in Introduction to Engineering courses. At Dunwoody College of Technology, the course titled "Introduction to Engineering" is taken by electrical, mechanical, and software engineering first-year students. The team-based project involves designing, building, programming, and calibrating an electromechanical balance. This project makes use of the skills and interests of each represented discipline. In the prior work ("Balancing the Engineering Disciplines!: An Interdisciplinary First-Year Design Project"), the authors laid out the project in detail and proposed changes to further improve the flow and educational value of the work. Many of these changes were incorporated for the fall 2021 course offering. This paper addresses those changes and compares student feedback results with the prior offering in fall 2020. Instructor feedback is included, and further refinements are also proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undergraduate laboratory course design has traditionally focused on an experiment and report pairing that can seem resistant to meaningful evolution. The expansion of tasks and assessments beyond this paradigm allows students to focus on process, not just product. This process includes better preparation to safely perform the experiment, requires more advanced understanding of the experimental concepts and results, and introduces students to professional tasks and skills (such as communication skills and teamwork) crucial to post-graduate success. This paper will describe and attempt to quantify pedagogical techniques to broaden lab courses to better prepare students for post-graduation success. Safety Analysis: While pre-lab meetings and video introductions are not uncommon, a more active engagement in the form of a Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) requires students to not only describe what steps to undertake to meet their objectives, but also to hypothesize on the means and the results of their actions. By completing a JHA, students are not only familiarized with a professional task that is ubiquitous in industry, but also begin developing a mindset that safety must always be an imperative consideration. While JHA effectiveness in industry has been documented, the shortterm efficacy of this assignment can be measured with year-to-year comparisons of pre-lab grades and direct observation of student preparedness. Multi-modal Communication and Teamwork: A report is the most common work product, though this can evolve past an assessment of technical understanding and become an instructional tool to develop the professional communication skills prized in both industry and academia. To this end, the senior lab class, the Unit Operations Lab (ChBE 4200) in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech, is co-taught by a technical instructor and an instructor trained in English and rhetoric; communications instruction is embedded within the curriculum. As students receive instruction and grading explicitly on their writing and communication skills, it will be possible to quantitatively examine improvements across four consecutive assignments. Replacing some reports with research posters introduces students to a new mode of communication, presenting new constraints and options to further diversify how data may be analyzed and conveyed to different types of audiences, which aligns with ABET Student Outcome 3: an ability to communicate with a range of audiences. In addition to communication skills, students are also encouraged to develop their teamwork and leadership skills by (1) including a leadership role as part of the course both through lectures and in-class activities on leadership styles and (2) requiring students to write reflective leadership summaries. Presentations Informed by Feedback: With thoughtful sequencing, more can be gleaned by having students reflect upon their graded work and deliver either individual or group presentations. This structure not only encourages student reflection upon any errors or inadequacies in the written report that would otherwise have far less instructional value, but also allows the development of both critical thinking and professional communication techniques crucial to career success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This objective of this study is to evaluate the process of placing students in team roles and the impact of this process on student engagement and perception of success during a capstone course experience. Based on task-oriented roles and from the perspective of the students, the first phase of the study uses student surveys to explore how students choose suggested roles, how these opportunities affect their course satisfaction, engagement, and perception of team success, and if there are limitations towards assuming desired roles. This WIP paper presents preliminary results from one course. This work aims to promote strategies that increase student team engagement within a collaborative and inclusive environment and identify indicators for early intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted society and engineering education as a whole. This paper describes the strategies and improvements that were implemented post COVID-19 pandemic to a two-credit hour engineering course targeted for first-year engineering and exploratory studies students at a Southeastern Public Research One Institution. It introduces the Grand Challenges and a corresponding scholars program defined by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) that link society and engineering to improve and maintain quality of life for the twenty-first century. This course was developed to enhance student development in the essential engineering mindset and interdisciplinary system thinking to address the prescribed global engineering grand challenges. It interweaves engineering with the social and political sciences, encouraging students to explore the interactions between society and technology, including the influences of human behavior, culture, economics, ethics, and policy on the development and implementation of technologies. The course delivery is hybrid in nature, where students meet and actively engage face-to-face once a week and participate in an asynchronous meeting in the other half of the week. The curriculum includes invited speakers and experts in the various engineering disciplines, recorded videos, a midterm research essay, and a final group poster presentation and one-minute video on one of the Grand Challenges. The final presentation encompasses the four themes of the NAE's Grand Challenges and showcases the students' gained and applied knowledge for exploring opportunities to solve complex engineering challenges. The course is offered in the fall and summer semesters to over 1,500 students per academic year. All students who take this course and matriculate into their engineering major then can apply to the Grand Challenges Scholars Program (GCSP) to participate in the program as early as their sophomore year. Approximately 30 students are accepted into the university GCSP and may begin participating in the GCSP as soon as the summer prior to their sophomore year and have three years to complete the five required competencies of this program. Approximately 90 scholars actively participate in this program every year (sophomore, junior and senior engineering students). The five competencies include talent, multiculturalism, multidisciplinary studies, entrepreneurship and social cognition. Typically, the scholars start taking engineering classes and start working with research mentors to assist with the completion of the five competencies that prepare them to solve these challenges. Most incoming scholars lack experience in identifying specific research mentors. This program assists with that task. Through the first competency, also known as talent, the scholars engage in hands-on projects to help design innovative solutions through deep immersion in an academically rigorous environment. This paper describes the improvement efforts post COVID-19 to the course goals, structures, designs, and targeted recruitment efforts for the GCSP during the face-to-face and online course delivery, focusing on engineering research and introducing interested students to how to identify a research topic and choose a mentor. In addition, it includes reflections and insights gained from the course design, development, and facilitation, and offers future recommendations for improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program provides opportunities for US Academics, Administrators, and Professionals to teach and perform research with colleagues from a vast array of countries worldwide. The authors of this paper are Civil Engineering Professors who have recently completed Fulbright Fellowships in the Netherlands and Namibia, where they collaborated with local academics on research and teaching. Due largely to the diversity of the cultures they visited, the authors' experiences were highly varied yet both rewarding and fulfilling experiences that opened new doors to international collaboration, cultural exchange, and professional development. The authors describe their experiences with their host countries, the research they were able to perform, and how these experiences affected the development of their academic careers. Each author will describe the unique challenges associated with the cultures they visited and the preparation they undertook leading up to their international experience. The paper concludes with a general discussion of the opportunities and potential professional development benefits of international collaboration for STEM faculty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work-in-progress paper highlights the findings from a systematic literature review on the use of achievement goal theory in understanding undergraduate STEM student motivations. Motivation is a fundamental concept for understanding students and aiding them in navigating the challenges of academic study. For this paper, we focus on one theme uncovered during the literature review: biological sex differences in motivations. We wish to present the preliminary findings and elicit feedback from the community to ensure that we are accurately and responsibly presenting these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active learning in any field of study is a time-demanding approach to engaging students in problem-solving and other activities in face-to-face class settings and online environments. The origin of learning is rooted in the activity, which is doing something to find out about specific topics. Active learning constitutes a natural pair in any education, especially in engineering and management. Engineering and management students are trained to design and construct solutions to problems in the real world. This paper presents the perceptions and attitudes of students who participated in active learning activities of civil/environmental engineering and construction management courses in fall 2021. One course from the Civil and Environmental Engineering curriculum (Introduction to Environmental Engineering) and another course from the Construction Management curriculum (Construction Quantity Surveying) were selected. Problem-solving in the class as a part of course delivery was performed in each topic of the courses as a part of the active learning activities. At the end of the semester, a survey with three Likert-scale questions was conducted, and the data was analyzed to determine the students' perceptions and attitudes about active learning in terms of their learning experience and performance in the exam. The final grades were also analyzed and compared with previous similar semesters' data for both the courses to predict the effect of active learning activities. Although statistically, the difference was insignificant, students' perceptions and attitudes were positive. Their performance in the examination was better with active learning course settings than those without active learning course settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common misconception held by our new engineering students is that engineers do not have to write. The truth is that communication skills are widely acknowledged within the profession as an essential skill for engineers. ABET has consistently listed "an ability to communicate effectively" as a foundational student outcome [1], and surveys indicate that engineering faculty recognize the importance of students being able to communicate solutions and designs successfully [2]. However, writing education is often only addressed within courses like senior capstone and general education English courses because engineering faculty run up against roadblocks such as the time commitment required to set up a new writing assignment, the time needed to provide valuable feedback, and students' lack of foundational technical writing skills [2]. In this paper, we share examples of how we incorporated writing throughout a first-year engineering course. Four different writing activities are detailed: a description and analysis of calculation results from a weekly problem set, a technical memo that reports results of a group experiment, a student success activity about time management, and a self-reflection activity about the student's path into the engineering profession. All the writing activities address instructor observed course content knowledge gaps. These activities are selected to illustrate a range of examples showing how instructors can incorporate writing into engineering courses from a short activity added to an existing weekly assignment through a full-length technical memo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A classroom is more than just a room in which students learn class materials with their peers. It is a place as well in which class participants, both the students and instructor, interact with each other and develop their social relationships. This paper conducts a quantitative analysis of social relationship development activities and their influences on student performance in a construction management course. In this case study, social relationship development activities were defined as pedagogical methods to engage students as an alternative to the traditional lecture format. The students evaluated a total of six social relationship development activities with respect to their learning experience. The social relationship development activities were an icebreaker game, individual meetings with the instructor, boot camp, an in-class term project, a classmate tutor, and team quizzes. Using exploratory factor analysis, these social relationship development activities were grouped by two latent factors. The first factor consisted of three development activities, an icebreaker game, boot camp, and an in-class term project, while the second consists of the other three activities, individual meetings with the instructor, team quizzes, and a classmate tutor. With respect to the characteristics of social relationship development activities in each latent factor, the first represented students' team orientation, and the second their individual orientation. The two factors' influences on students' grades were defined using structural equation modeling (SEM), and two latent factors had a positive effect on students' grades, in which the individual orientation was found to have the greatest influence. It is evident that activities that develop social relationships among class participants are vital for students' learning. This outcome will help educators design social relationship development activities with the goal to improve students' learning and their relationships with peers in class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of homework has an interesting history in the academic literature. The consensus of the value of homework has risen and fallen several times through the literature of the last century. The focus of the majority of this previous research was based on students up and through the secondary level, with a lesser focus at the post-secondary level. Instructors at the post-secondary level see homework as necessary for students in order to practice new concepts and obtain new skills and these instructors have expectations of how, when, and why students do homework. The hypothesis for this work is that students that dedicate time to solving homework assignments will perform better on the learning objectives of a course. This paper reviews homework submissions of post-secondary students based on their performance and actions in a statics course of a mechanical engineering technology program. This paper will discuss the different strategies seen in the students' homework submissions, assess how students perform in a class based on homework completion, and provide suggestions for future work in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper details the development, implementation, and assessment process for the achievement of specific learning outcomes in the Summer Engineering Experience program implemented at a college in the Northeastern region of the United States. This five week summer program is designed to prepare first-year students for engineering curriculums. The development and implementation of this program is supported by the Department of Education federal fund as part of Title III, Part F, HSI-STEM and Articulation grant. This program is designed with the objective to enhance students' hands-on, computational, programming, communication, and problem solving skills. Since 2016, the SEE-STEM program has been offered during the summer to engineering and engineering technology students as a bridge program from freshman to sophomore year. It is offered Monday through Thursday (8:00 am to 4:00 pm) with lectures and hands-on classes covering topics related to engineering computation using MATLAB and C++, aerodynamics, bridge truss design & analysis, technical writing and presentation. The Friday session of the SEE program is designated for educational seminars and technical workshops. The development and implementation process of the SEE program was presented to the 2016 ASEE annual conference. In this paper a set of learning outcomes was introduced based on specific class topics and students' group reports and project presentations. A rubric score was used to assess the attainment of those learning outcomes in the preparation of freshman students for engineering programs. As part of this study, students in the SEE program are monitored through their core courses in sophomore and junior years, and their performance in those classes is to be compared with the performance of other students who did not participate in the SEE program. Students' group projects are presented on the last day of the summer session, and their performance is evaluated by faculty members, based on their attainment of specific learning outcomes. Also, as an indirect measure, a rubric survey based on the contents of the SEE program is distributed to students to assess the effectiveness of this program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of the first two years of a 5-year USDOE project designed to increase the graduation rates of students transferring from two-year (state) community colleges to major in computer science, computer engineering, or electrical engineering (CS). The initial two years of the project focused on the design and piloting of academic support components to improve student success rates in mathematics and computer science gateway courses that provide a foundation for subsequent success in upper division CS courses leading to an undergraduate degree. Working in collaboration with state colleges, this paper overviews the design and piloting of the project mentor support model including the project gateway course refinement component that provides the setting for mentor utilization. Discussed is the role of the mentor component in relation to other key project components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this evidence-based practice paper, we investigated how well freshman engineering students are able to constructively rate their peers in a team context and evaluated interventions that may help them improve their rating abilities. Teamwork is an important professional skill and can have significant benefits during a student's academic career, and peer feedback is one mechanism to help students improve their teamwork performance. A web-based tool called CATME (Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness) was used to measure the effect of two different interventions on students' ability to provide good feedback on teamwork performance to their peers: Frame-of-Reference training (FOR) and Rater Error Training (RET). This paper is meant to address how much freshman engineering students' peer evaluation ratings of themselves and their teammates vary with and without these interventions. The effect of the interventions was analyzed using statistical analysis to identify differences in rating patterns between the three peer evaluations. The third peer evaluation was used to evaluate the longevity of the intervention effect. The results showed that the interventions did improve how students rate each other by decreasing rater variance between each peer evaluations and increasing the target variance, meaning that after the interventions the students were better able to differentiate between teammates and between the different CATME teamwork performance dimensions. The effects of the interventions did seem to persist through the third peer evaluation where no additional intervention was applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the many advantages of a flipped classroom is that it provides more time for instructors to work directly with students. Assessing students with in-class quizzes and/or exams effectively mitigates this advantage by replacing time spent on direct student/instructor interaction with noninteractive assessment. While assessment using quizzes and exams do not provide a direct learning experience, many students place a high value on such assessment techniques distributed throughout the course as opposed to having them concentrated at the end of the course. This paper describes a novel implementation of an intermediate digital design course taught in a flipped-type classroom using a studio-type format. The overall goal of this approach was to determine the efficacy of dedicating a portion of class time to student assessment distributed throughout the course. At the beginning of the course, students chose whether they wanted their course grade weighted on distributed assessment or have their assessment more heavily weighted on final exams. This approach effectively gave students who chose their assessment concentrated on final exams a potential advantage in that it allowed them a greater opportunity for instructor interaction compared to the other students since they could obtain help with course material while other students were taking exams and quizzes. This paper compares the overall performance of both sets of students in order to determine which assessment approach was more effective in helping the students learn the course material. This paper also addresses the question of whether distributed assessment provided true "academic" benefits or whether it simply acted as a mechanism to encourage students to remain current with the course's subject matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper employs data from the study of a novel next-tier broadening participation access program to illustrate the challenge of maintaining awareness and understanding of our students as individuals within institutional systems of assessment and record-keeping that treat all students as the same in the interests of standardization. These standardized practices are intended to aid in the production of high numbers of engineering graduates--not unlike a factory that takes in raw materials in the form of students and outputs finished goods in the shape of engineering graduates. This factory model of engineering education, like any high-quality mass production system, optimizes for efficiency by standardizing processes. In undergraduate engineering degree programs, this is apparent from the relatively inflexible standard curricular paths within any given major and the use of midterm and final exams as "go or no-go" measurement gauges to determine which "products" (students) are of sufficient quality to move onto the next step (or class) in the assembly line of curricular requirements. An important aspect of this factory model is that colleges are systematically indifferent as to which students graduate and which go elsewhere since standardization of the process and objective assessments are presumed to ensure fair treatment for all students. This paper integrates findings across student performance, focus group, interview, and observational data to demonstrate the tension inherent in maintaining a broadening participation access program's high-touch, personalized values within its larger institution's methodical indifference towards students as individuals. This clash is exemplified through our investigation of the development and implementation of a pre-calculus course intended to support students' progression towards "calculus readiness." This paper describes the evolution of this pre-calculus course as its successful pilot becomes absorbed by the larger institution and expanded beyond the high-touch access model, with detrimental consequences for student success as the course moves from specialized to standardized. We propose alternative methods of preserving students as whole people within these reductionist, mechanistic environments of large-scale undergraduate engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through traditional education associated with engineering disciplines, students are expected to become familiar with fundamental engineering design and principles through a series of engineering materials explanations, stages of assignments and class projects. The usual knowledge flow offered to engineering students is based on a step-by-step process taught by faculty using text books. Design solutions to real world problems often require approaches that cannot be obtained from traditional text books, such as the formulation of meaningful ideas, setting realistic design requirements, learning to execute trade-offs, balancing competing priorities, and communicating with colleagues that have different technical backgrounds. This paper presents the implementation of a system-based, sponsor-partner, collaboration focused, learning approach within the curriculum of the Department of Automotive Engineering at Clemson University which meets these realworld design engineering needs. The program implementing this real-world approach is called Deep Orange (DO). The Deep Orange initiative is an integral part of the automotive graduate program at the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research. The initiative was developed to provide first-year graduate engineering students with hands-on experience of the knowledge attained in the various automotive engineering and related disciplines (such as marketing and human factors psychology). The program focuses on developing and building new, innovative vehicle concepts and is driven entirely by graduate automotive engineering and transportation design students as part of their education in close collaboration with industry partners. This paper demonstrates and discusses the flow-down of requirement characteristics of the systems engineering process applied in DO. During this process, the students start with translating a grand challenge (defined by the sponsoring industry partners) into customer needs incorporating marketing analyses. The project proceeds with general investigation of various vehicle architectures and design alternatives, including the selection of one concept that is based on carefully balanced environmental, economic, performance, and social design imperatives. During the process, faculty serves as student mentors rather than direct knowledge providers. Students are empowered to make decisions and justify their concept selection to different program groups, i.e. sponsoring industry partners and faculty. The last eight months of each project is devoted to building a physical prototype and validation of the vehicle target requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a practical guide for applicants who wish to gain admission to graduate programs (Master's or PhD) in engineering in the United States. It discusses the typical timeline and key components of the graduate school application process, and presents detailed suggestions for developing academic resumes for graduate school applications. The paper also discusses the most common types of statements requested as part of graduate school application processes (academic, personal, and combined) and offers specific suggestions for developing strong statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project uses an ecological belonging intervention approach [1] that requires one-class or onerecitation/discussion session to implement and has been shown to erase long-standing equity gaps in achievement in introductory STEM courses. However, given the wide social and cultural heterogeneity across US university contexts (e.g., differences in regional demographics, history, political climates), it is an open question if and how the intervention may scale. This project brings together an interdisciplinary team across three strategically selected universities to design, test, and iteratively improve an approach to systematically identify which first and second year courses would most benefit from the intervention, reveal student concerns that may be specific to that course, adapt the intervention to address those concerns, and evaluate the universality versus specificity of the intervention across university contexts. This systematic approach also includes persuasion and training processes for onboarding the instructors of the targeted courses. The instructor onboarding and the intervention adaptation processes are guided by a theory-of-action that is the backbone of the project's research activities and iterative process improvement. A synergistic mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods is used throughout the study. In this paper, we describe our theoretical framing of this ecological belonging intervention and the current efforts of the project in developing customized student stories for the intervention. We have conducted focus groups across each of the partner institutions (University of Pittsburgh, Purdue University, and University of California Irvine). We describe the process of developing these contextually relevant stories and the lessons learned about how this ecological belonging intervention can be translated across institutional contexts and for various STEM majors and systemically minoritized populations. The results of this work can provide actionable strategies for reducing equity gaps in students' degree attainment and achievement in engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This complete evidence-based practice paper examines the experience of two peer mentors, known as Student Engagement Liaisons (SEL), as they worked to cultivate community and sense of belonging for first year engineering students. Over the past two years, the educational pendulum has swung wildly as students have gone from in-person to online learning and back again. Many students continue to navigate a changing landscape as they straddle between the two worlds of in-person and remote learning with some classes continuing to meet online and others being fully in person. These abrupt transitions have left many students struggling to develop meaningful connections with their peers, faculty, and their educational programs, all of which have negative ramifications on their academic progress and sense of belonging. This investigation uses a critical constructivist theoretical approach to explore how two SELs, who were tasked with enhancing student engagement and building social networks for first year engineering students, modified support mechanisms in response to the changing teaching and learning modalities. Of particular interest is how the SEL program has evolved during this tumultuous time, the mentors' experiences exploring and developing new ways of connecting students, and the impact of the experience on the mentors themselves. The results indicate a shift in focus solely driven by the mentors, along with a willingness to reframe activities, events, and support measures to meet the dynamic needs of the students. Their ability to listen, pivot, and adapt to changing needs of students indicates a commitment to creating inclusive and accessible social environments through community centered solutions. We recognize that these new ways might be innovative because of the circumstances, but they can also continue to be integrated as ways to support and engage students, particularly because they were created by students. The SELs used the COVID-19 pivots as an opportunity to reinvent what it means to mentor their peers and, with that, have explored and experimented with new ways of creating community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software architecture students, often, lack self-confidence in their ability to use their knowledge to design software architectures. This paper investigates the relations between undergraduate software architecture students' self-confidence and their course expectations, cognitive levels, preferred learning methods, and critical thinking. We developed a questionnaire with open-ended questions to assess the self-confidence levels and related factors, which was taken by one-hundred ten students in two semesters. The students answers were coded and analyzed afterward. We found that self-confidence is weakly associated with the students' critical thinking and independent from their cognitive levels, preferred learning methods, and expectations from the course. The results suggest that to improve the self-confidence of the students, the instructors should work on improving the students' critical thinking capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the utilization of help-seeking resources in two computer science courses across two semesters, taken at the same university: a CS1 for Engineering majors (n = 326) and a CS2 for Computer Science majors and minors (n = 238). Asking, receiving and processing academic help is considered an important self-regulated learning skill. The help-seeking interactions faculty encounter will vary depending upon the course structure and the student demographics. Our goal in this study is to explore differences to determine whether or not patterns exist in how students are seeking help. First, we group students based on their usage of an online discussion forum and their frequency of attending office hours. Next, we describe these help-seeking groups using prior programming experience, course performance and the students' confidence in their computing skills. Our results match expectations with help-seeking; students who participate on the course discussion forum tend to perform better than students who do not and students with low confidence in computer science skills in the CS2 class attend office hours more frequently. Practitioners can utilize these findings to make decisions about how to structure the help provided in their courses and determine ways to support students that need more help. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of whether simulation-based control systems labs may serve as effective scaffolding for subsequent hardware-based labs, in a manner that better allows students to engage the myriad abstractions of control system dynamics and implementation, i.e., by engaging these abstractions one at a time. I have developed a sequence of Simulink-based "virtual lab" assignments and an Arduino-based DC motor control lab for teaching control systems to undergraduate mechanical engineers, which are being shared through the MIT License. The results of a survey about students' experience of the DC motor lab suggest that the scaffolding from the virtual labs supported their learning during this hardware lab. Students reported believing that it did, and also reported strong perceived learning in all topics covered by the lab, implying that their learning was not impeded by the various levels of abstraction posed by the lab. Regression analysis, while inconclusive, suggests that students who began the hardware lab with a greater understanding of the material (i.e., from the virtual labs), believed that they learned more through it. Most students reported that they enjoyed the Arduino implementation and understood what was causing the motor's behavior, while also reporting that they experienced frustration during the lab. This combination of enjoyment, understanding, and frustration suggests that this approach achieved an appropriate difficulty level that both challenged students and empowered their learning. Given the already intensive workload of a lecture-based control systems course with outside-ofclass laboratory and project work, I have stopped recommending that students purchase a textbook for this course. Instead of relying on a textbook to provide a secondary perspective on the material, the written instructions for the labs guide students through an experiential learning environment where they can practice applying methods from the course lectures. Survey results indicate that few students would have preferred to have a course textbook, while the vast majority were glad that there was no additional expectation to read from a textbook. This result suggests that control systems, a subject those poses unique challenges for bridging theory and practice, benefits from guided, experiential learning opportunities that place theory alongside application, and that ease students through one layer of abstraction at a time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will discuss building multi-attempt quizzes and exams that use the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) to deliver engineering assessments designed to lower overall student stress and anxiety. These assessments use practice-focused questions that force students to build programs (C++ and Matlab), draft engineering drawings (AutoCAD and Solidworks), and apply engineering design, ethics, and intellectual property concepts to solve open-response questions. Each time a student takes the assessment, the questions shift randomly within topical areas facilitated by question banks that rotate among questions of similar difficulty for each new attempt. Each assessment is composed of 1-5 question banks to ensure all topics were covered throughout the various assessments. In total, 17 assessments used this framework across two fall semesters and one spring semester in the 2020 and 2021 school years. Over the course of 10 unique assessments and 3 semesters, 54.7% of students used more than one attempt on each quiz or exam when averaged across all assessments in the study. Using LMS analytics and open-ended questions administered through an end-of-term student survey, 86.2% of students reported positive experiences regarding the assessment methods, 51.2% of students reported decreased anxiety, and 22.6% of students appreciated the greater flexibility provided by the assessments. From this data, multi-attempt assessments had a positive impact on students' wellbeing in three semesters that were particularly challenging due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development of effective communication skills in engineering students is critical, yet challenging. As engineering programs are technically rigorous, work-intensive, and challenged by their high enrollment numbers, methods to improve students' writing skills must be costeffective and scalable. This paper describes pedagogical changes and shares course materials designed to integrate core concepts from writing studies into an advanced laboratory-based civil engineering course. We incorporate language units developed by the Civil Engineering Writing Project that provide strong connections to professional engineers' writing. Specific concepts that guided the redesign are genre awareness and flexibility, process orientation to writing, and global, prioritized feedback. Several semesters into the iterative implementation of these changes, teaching assistants observe greater student engagement, without an increase in teaching workload. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student engagement is an important and reliable indicator of student success. Pedagogical design of the learning environment therefore must be grounded in the theoretical framework of engagement. This paper provides details of technology-supported strategies for effective engagement and their impact on student learning that are based on theoretical elements of engagement. These strategies were implemented before and during COVID-19 in several introductory math and aerospace engineering courses at an HBCU. A total of 642 math students and 183 aerospace engineering students were impacted during the study. A pre and post design was used for measuring attitudinal changes of the participant students. A comparison of the impact of the strategies on attitudes between pre-COVID and during COVID is shared. The data was also analyzed based on the gender. Data analysis indicated that the approach was effective and had a positive impact on student engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Results from internal assessments show that passing rates in introductory courses as well as retention rates of first-year students in the College of Engineering and Computer Science at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, a predominantly Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), significantly dropped with the advent of COVID-19. Such results and trends provide an overall perspective on the academic preparation of incoming students. There is a high concern that the necessary skill set (e.g., adaptability, persistence, and performance) of the new cohort, who are primarily underrepresented Hispanics from underserved and challenged communities from the Rio Grande Valley, is not optimal for the rigor of engineering education. To this end, an onboarding bootcamp for incoming and transfer students was created to bridge the transition from secondary education to higher education by priming students to overcome academic deficiencies, develop a critical skills portfolio, learn problem-solving techniques, build a sustainable community of mentoring support with faculty and students, and provide a template to sustain academic and professional success during their undergraduate education. This research-to-practice paper presents the bootcamps' design process steps: curricular analysis, identification of areas of opportunities, skills inventory, and blueprinting process, as well as its initial implementation in the mechanical engineering program. In this regard, the bootcamp was organized over a week span with hands-on engineering activities, faculty and student talks, and engineering lab tours; and was based on a design thinking approach. Daily activities were structured based on challenge-based instruction, innovation, design, and mentoring, and focused primarily on promoting critical thinking, being assertive in the face of adversity, making informed decisions, and prioritizing tasks. Results indicate that the bootcamp increased student confidence and established a valuable network system amongst other findings. Future work will focus on expanding the bootcamp to include students from other engineering and computer science departments and to offer the template to institutions with similar academic challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss the results from our study on the experiences of first-year Black and Brown engineering students in engineering teams. This work is part of ongoing research on identifying teams engaging in marginalizing behaviors against minoritized (race, gender, LGBTQ identity, nationality) students. Using a diary study methodology, we explore the team experiences of Black and Brown students by examining two research questions: 1) what does racial marginalization look like within engineering classrooms where teamwork is a primary feature and 2) what experiences from the dairies inform researchers and faculty about participants' experiences and personal knowledge of how race and racism operates in teams. We identified two central themes: 1) participants often avoided conversations when race could be a potential topic, and 2) participants believed that racism was a normal part of teams (in both the classroom and workplace). Participants explained that even if race was not explicitly discussed during their group work, they sensed that implicit bias and discrimination were affecting their experience. Further, when we asked participants how to increase support related to their teaming experience, they reported feeling unsure of what can be done to eliminate behaviors of racism and marginalization from engineering education. The participants expressed that change needed to happen so that other Black and Brown students are welcomed into the field, but that no one on campus (peers, faculty, and staff) has asked them about ideas for change. This diary study provides important insights into how Black and Brown engineering students contextualize their experience with marginalizing behaviors in teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work in progress paper (WIP), we examine McNair alumni pursuing doctoral degrees in engineering disciplines to examine how the program prepared them to cope with the challenges of graduate education. Recent trends in engineering education show an increased effort to mitigate the rate of attrition in graduate programs. Previous work has identified several factors that correlate with student departure, including academic environment, interest, advisor-advisee relationship, self-efficacy, and Socialization. Furthermore, underrepresented groups in graduate education often contend with elevated or additional challenges to their preparation and Socialization because of their historically marginalized social identities. Various programs and initiatives, such as the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program (or McNair, for short), have sought to increase graduate enrollment among these populations. While programmatic data indicates the program increases graduate enrollment among underrepresented students, the literature lacks a complete understanding of how participation in the program as an undergraduate impacts an individual's daily lived experience as a doctoral student. Understanding how this program facilitates a higher rate of graduate persistence among its alumni will demonstrate how attrition can be mitigated proactively at the undergraduate level. This study proposes a qualitative investigation to see how McNair influences underrepresented students' perception of and relationship with their doctoral programs. A Qualtrics survey regarding graduate preparation and Socialization will be distributed to the directors of all active McNair programs in the U.S. In addition, the directors will forward our survey to their alumni currently enrolled in doctoral education. The data from the study will consist of semi-structured interviews collected from individuals who complete the survey and exhibit salient responses to the McNair program's influence on their graduate experiences. We will then analyze the interview transcripts through thematic analysis to identify common themes and narratives that connect each participant's experiences in the McNair program with their socialization experiences as doctoral students. The findings of this study will reveal how student preparation can facilitate their persistence when the transition to graduate education. Ultimately, these findings will show which support mechanisms and services are lacking from the typical graduate socialization process. This insight will allow all engineering departments to better facilitate the preparation of students before beginning graduate education. Furthermore, it will outline preventative measures to mitigate many of the everyday adverse situations graduate students encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers tips to engineering students on writing a professional technical paper and class presentation. It examines the impact of instructional interventions on early engineering students. Technical writing is an important skill for students to develop by the time of graduation as the industry demand for skilled technical writers is increasing.

Not everyone is meant to be an engineer, but more could be. The failure rate for engineering students is unparalleled at San Jose State University. A staggering 40% of students in engineering do not make it through the first year and of those who make it, 30% would fail in many of its fundamental courses. Engineering is not, nor should it be, an easy program. Traditionally, many researchers have argued that the primary reason why students fail in these courses is a lack of preparedness for the high level of academic rigors in engineering. While the average college course requires 2 hours of outside study for every one hour in the classroom, engineering courses require an estimated 4 hours. Although the systems in place that run many engineering colleges around the country work fairly well for the traditional engineering student - the teenager who shows up on campus ready to dedicate the next four years of their lives to school, a chunk of undergraduates in commuter schools, such as SJSU, do not fit this profile. These students are juggling classes and a job or family or both. Most of our education system is not built to cater to their needs, and its results are extremely wasteful. This paper presents initial results of a research project on failure rates in the college of engineering at SJSU, where 40% of our students work more than 10 hours per week while going to school full time. We focused on 3 fundamental engineering courses: mechanics of materials, dynamics, and introduction to circuit. This pilot research is addressing the question of "What do failure rates in these courses really measure?". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper investigates the formation of strategic partnerships, as experienced by teams of change agents in academic engineering and computer science. In this qualitative study of twelve teams making cultural, structural, and curricular change at their respective institutions, we examine the process of forming strategic partnerships through three initial stages: identifying potential partners, making an intentional approach, and establishing governance. We find teams have utilized a variety of strategies within each of these stages, such as establishing alignment of goals across the project team, the partner organization, and the home institution. These results delineate practices for initiating strategic partnerships within higher education and encourage faculty to build mutually beneficial strategic partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lean approaches to continuous improvement, originally practiced and perfected by Toyota Motor Company, have been widely used in the industry sector for many decades. There is a growing trend at universities to adopt lean practices to improve higher education processes. Reduced financial support and growing competition amongst universities and academic programs motivate the implementation of lean practices both at university and department levels.1 Colleges and universities that have adopted lean practices are driven by the need to strategically leverage resources to meet stakeholder expectations, reduce waste or costs, and improve satisfaction with under-performing processes.2 This paper presents an overview of the continuous improvement journey at the Construction & Operations Management (COM) Department at South Dakota State University (SDSU) and demonstrates proof of concept via a case study which describes a Kaizen event performed in a multi-disciplinary academic department, in a college of engineering. Higher education is a labor-intensive process, and the department seeks to eliminate non-value added activities of faculty and staff, reduce time and effort required in daily processes, and to improve student learning experiences in the department. These all illustrate important concepts that engineering management education delivers to students. The approach, challenges, and outcomes are presented in the paper to inform best practices in lean higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The NSF-funded Redshirt in Engineering Consortium was formed in 2016 with the goal of enhancing the ability of academically talented but underprepared students coming from lowincome backgrounds to successfully graduate with engineering degrees. The Consortium takes its name from the practice of redshirting in college athletics, with the idea of providing an extra year and support to help promising engineering students complete a bachelor's degree. The Consortium builds on the success of three existing "academic redshirt" programs and expands the model to three new schools. The Existing Redshirt Institutions (ERIs) help mentor and train the new Student Success Partners (SSPs), and SSPs contribute their unique expertise to help ERIs improve existing Redshirt programs. The Redshirt model consists of seven main programmatic components aimed at improving the engagement, retention, and graduation of students underrepresented in engineering. These components include: "intrusive" academic advising and support services, an intensive first-year academic curriculum, community-building (including pre-matriculation summer programs), career awareness and vision, faculty mentorship, NSF S-STEM scholarships, and second-year support. Successful implementation of these activities is intended to produce two main long-term outcomes: a six-year graduation rate of 60%-75% for Redshirt students, and increased rates of enrollment and graduation of Pelleligible, URM, and women students in engineering at participating universities. In the first year of the grant (AY 16-17), SSPs developed their own Redshirt programs, hired and trained staff, and got their programs off the ground. ERIs implemented faculty mentorship programs and expanded support to Redshirt students into their sophomore year. In the second year (AY 17-18), Redshirt programs were expanded at the ERIs while SSPs welcomed their first cohorts of Redshirt students. This Work in Progress paper describes the Redshirt programs at each of the six Consortium institutions, identifying distinctions between them in addition to highlighting common elements. First-year assessment results are presented for the ERIs based on student surveys, performance, and retention outcomes. Ongoing research into faculty experiences is investigating how participation as mentors for Redshirt students changes faculty mindsets and instructional practices. Ongoing research into student experiences is investigating how the varied curricula, advising, and cohort models used across the six institutions influence student retention and sense of identity as engineering students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an introduction to the Transfer Pipeline (TiPi) Scholars' program recently funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that focuses on students who transfer at the 3rd year level from 2-year schools to our university. With scholarship support from NSF, we aim to recruit, retain and graduate a total of 75 transfer scholars in our engineering and engineering technology BS degree programs. The NSF scholarship is in addition to grants and aid awarded by our university. In support of this project, the university will contribute $50,000 to ensure that TiPi scholars have continuing financial support after the grant expires and help them graduate on time. This support indicates the university's enthusiasm, a firm commitment of service to our engineering and engineering technology students, and an endorsement of the goals and objectives of the TiPi program. In Fall 2012, we awarded 25 scholarships to transfer students in the TiPi program. In Fall 2013, we awarded another set of 25 scholarships to new transfer students in our engineering and technology programs. This paper describes the characteristics of these 50 scholars, compares their academic performance relative to their peers, and their placement in paid cooperative employment positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we describe our approach on how to achieve an adaptive learner-centric environment by using an unconventional student feedback process that utilizes Google Forms to periodically collect information about the course instruction. Students were asked to provide their input regarding lectures' clarity and content; the use of visual aids; time management; problem solving, instruction delivery; and student engagement in the classroom. Data collected from these anonymous surveys provided real-time formative feedback that helped faculty to react just in time to address issues related to student learning process. In addition to providing continuous feedback, this process has also shown to help students develop their metacognitive knowledge and therefore become more responsible towards their academic success. It also helped the instructor to understand the cognition profile of the student cohort to ultimately adapt the course content, pedagogy, and assessment to achieve an optimal learner-centric environment. The effectiveness of this approach was verified by assessing the students' performance in pre and post exams. The pre exam was conducted to assess the students' performance without the implementation of this approach while the post exam was conducted to assess the same students' performance after this approach was implemented. Assessment results revealed that the students subject to this study were able to improve their grades and score higher on a major exam than they previously did without the additional benefit of the periodical feedback. Instructional methods developed and incorporated into the course lectures for continuous improvement are also presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This evidence-based practice paper presents a four year longitudinal study following the first cohort of first-year engineering students that was exposed to the "Design Your Process to become a "World Class" Engineering Student" (DYP) program at a four year institution. Many students enter the engineering disciplines vastly unprepared to be successful in the rigors of engineering academia. Student retention numbers in engineering are low and some researchers attribute this low retention rate to a lack of academic skills needed to be academically successful. Typically, approaches to increase the nature and quality of engineering undergraduate education experience are focused on instructional and/or curricular changes. A recently developed innovative approach, called the DYP program, is different in that it focuses on what the students can do themselves to become self-regulated students and therefore are not only more likely to graduate with an engineering degree but also with a higher quality, e. g. with a higher GPA. The DYP program synthesizes what has been shown in the research literature to be effective and what should be done in first-year engineering seminars into a comprehensive, scalable and easyto- implement approach. The main components of the approach are: 1. Coverage of student development topics in a first-year engineering course/lab/seminar to facilitate new students' growth, instilling positive change, and developing strategies that will enhance student success. 2. Building upon the student development topics introduced in the course/lab/seminar, students are asked to design their own individual process to be successful in graduating with an engineering degree and write a reflective comprehensive report at the end of the course. Previously published results reported a positive impact on first-year engineering student retention and performance after the first year of implementation of the DYP program. The results of the four-year longitudinal study confirm an increase in overall GPA and persistence for the first-year, but more remarkably it shows that the DYP program has a long term sustainable effect on student success. Results show statistically significant differences in GPA and persistence rates between the DYP cohort and control cohort for all years. The DYP cohort showed higher overall GPAs: +0.53 year one, +0.33 year two, +0.31 year three and +0.26 year four (p<0.001, except for year four where p<0.005, N=156 for DYP cohort at year one, N=193 for control cohort at year one). Comparing persistence rates between the cohorts also show a positive impact for the DYP student cohort. Students exposed to the DYP program showed higher persistence rates by 11% and 10% for the first and second year and by 16% for the third year compared to the control cohort. All increases in persistence are significant (p<0.05). Comparing how many students graduated with a Bachelor's degree in any engineering major after four years at the institution reveals that the cohort exposed to the DYP program had 24 students graduated after four years compared to 10 in the comparison cohort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project chronicles the oral histories of living female leaders in science, technology, and mathematics in the early part of the 21st century by female students at the very early stages of their careers. It is important to chronicle the histories of these leaders because they are identified by our students as role models in the careers the students are considering. The value that their perspectives bring to the field of oral history is a unique set of one-on-one conversations with students who have selected them from national databases of STEM leaders. Additionally the leaders provide previously unprecedented mentorship and perspectives into their life stories in science. Currently starting its fifth year, the goal of this project is to add to the body of knowledge of oral history by collecting oral histories of women in physics and engineering whose career paths span leadership roles in industry, government, and academia. This project is a collaboration of six female undergraduates at four academic institutions of higher education, IEEE History Center, and American Institute of Physics (AIP) Center for the History of Physics. We are excited that in June 2015 and June 2016, the first three participating students graduated with a STEM degree. Interviews collected in this project are previously published on the IEEE Engineering Technology and History Wiki (ETHW). Following the oral history interviews, the students write reflections to answer the following three research questions (RQ). RQ#1 is "What are the key factors that led to the success of the distinguished leaders?." RQ#2 is "What are the crucial skills that enabled their success?." RQ#3 is "What is the impact on my career path?" One objective of this paper is for the participating female students, who are majoring in STEM fields, to present their reflections on the three research questions. A second objective is for the students to describe the impact, if any, that carrying out interviews of distinguished STEM leaders has had on their career paths. This paper presents new contributions from three participating students as well as additional contributions from two students who have published preliminary results previously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]