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Diversifying the engineering workforce has been a national imperative for several decades. The increased participation of Black students in engineering is commonly identified as a crucial area for improvement. Yet, the rates of engineering degree completion are slowing for Black women in particular. In 2015, less than one percent of all U.S. engineering bachelor's degrees were awarded to Black women. To support broadening participation efforts, I use an anti-deficit approach to examine the career orientations and mobility patterns of Black women working in computing and engineering roles in the tech industry. By characterizing the different career motivations, strategies, and points of transition in the careers of a diverse sample of Black women, I sought to disaggregate the Black women's engineering and computing career experiences—particularly as it relates to how and why they move into, around and out of roles in the tech industry. Using a qualitative multi-case study, I conducted a multi-level career mobility analysis on secondary data and user-generated social media artifacts to extend theory on career orientations and talent management to help normalize "non-traditional" career trajectories. The study findings are useful to inform the next generation of Black women interested in tech on the different ways to approach and achieve subjective career success and satisfaction in engineering and computing fields. In this dissertation work, I discuss how the varied insights of Black women's career experiences in tech can be leveraged for practitioners and industry leaders to broaden the participation (e.g., to attract, retain and better support) of students and employees by identifying their career orientations and then using that to inform career preparation and development that aligns with different engineering and computing career outlooks. Doctor of Philosophy The lack of role models is a hindrance for aspiring Black women engineers and their decisions to continue choosing engineering. The lack of representation of Black women in industry similarly presents obstacles for their career advancement. Because neither role models or representation can be increased in retrospect, it is imperative to study and highlight the visibility of the Black women engineers currently practicing engineering and bring awareness to their career experiences in industry to better inform recruitment and retention efforts. The purpose of this qualitative multi-case study is to describe the varied career orientations of Black women working as engineers in Tech and to link their career orientations to their career outcomes. To support broadening participation efforts, this research uses an anti-deficit approach to examine the career mobility patterns of Black women working in computing and engineering roles in the Tech industry. Using a curated secondary data set based on social media artifacts and user generated data, this study characterizes the different career motivations, strategies, and points of transition in the careers of a diverse sample of Black women. In efforts to disaggregate Black women's engineering and computing career experiences, ten perspectives on how and why Black women move into, around and out of roles in the tech industry were examined. The analysis revealed that participants' career orientations were differentially motivated by needs, talents and or values which influenced how participants made career related decisions. Additionally, both physical and psychological mobility of participants was examined and then compared in the cross-case analysis to derive six unique career archetypes that were useful in characterizing the career challenges and aspirations in participants' lived career experience. This study aims to normalize "non-traditional" career trajectories and inform the next generation of Black women interested in Tech on the different way(s) to approach and achieve career success and satisfaction in engineering and computing fields. In addition, study findings can be leveraged by human resource personnel and career managers to anticipate common career challenges based on individual employee career orientations, and align better reward structures and policies to support a wider range of employee career outlooks. The study emphasizes the strategies and outlooks critical for Black women's success and satisfaction to support their continued participation in the engineering and computing workforce.

Although originally conceived as an educational intervention for at-risk students, modern career academies have expanded their scope to programs designed to promote critical thinking, problem solving, and analytical skills to be successful in an advanced career path. Through the integration of career and technical education courses and a rigorous, college preparatory academic curriculum, career academies serve as a key piece of a larger strategy for developing a well- prepared STEM workforce. This study focuses on the Virginia Governor's STEM Academies, a state-wide initiative containing programs designed to expand options for the general student population to acquire STEM literacy and other critical skills, knowledge and credentials that will prepare them for high-demand, high-wage, and high-skill careers. Currently, 22 Academies exist serving students across 36 Virginia School Divisions. Using educational administrative data housed within the Virginia Longitudinal Data System, I examined the Virginia Governor's STEM Academies regarding characteristics of student participation and the relationship between Academy participation and high school and postsecondary outcomes. Using multi-level regression modeling, I found that male students, Asian and Hispanic students, and non-economically disadvantage students have a higher rate of Academy participation. After matching students with propensity score matching on demographic and early academic characteristics, I find that Academy participants are more likely to take Algebra II at an earlier grade, enroll in more Career and Technical Education and dual enrollment courses, and declare a STEM major after enrolling at a postsecondary institution. This research provides a valuable new contribution to the study of career academies after such educational programs have undergone a paradigm shift to preparing students for high-demand, high-wage, and high-skill careers. By incorporating propensity score matching and multi-level regression model, I employ a statistically rigorous approach that can serve as important benchmarking of the enrollment and academic outcomes of the Virginia Governor's STEM Academies. Doctor of Philosophy Although originally conceived as an educational intervention for at-risk students, modern career academies have expanded their scope to programs designed to promote critical thinking, problem solving, and analytical skills to be successful in an advanced career path. Through the integration of career and technical education courses and a rigorous, college preparatory academic curriculum, career academies serve as a key piece of a larger strategy for developing a well- prepared STEM workforce. This study focuses on the Virginia Governor's STEM Academies, a state-wide initiative containing programs designed to expand options for the general student population to acquire STEM literacy and other critical skills, knowledge and credentials that will prepare them for high-demand, high-wage, and high-skill careers. Currently, 22 Academies exist serving students across 36 Virginia School Divisions. Using educational administrative data housed within the Virginia Longitudinal Data System, I examined the Virginia Governor's STEM Academies regarding characteristics of student participation and the relationship between Academy participation and high school and postsecondary outcomes. Using multi-level regression modeling, I found that male students, Asian and Hispanic students, and non-economically disadvantage students have a higher rate of Academy participation. After matching students with propensity score matching on demographic and early academic characteristics, I find that Academy participants are more likely to take Algebra II at an earlier grade, enroll in more Career and Technical Education and dual enrollment courses, and declare a STEM major after enrolling at a postsecondary institution. This research provides a valuable new contribution to the study of career academies after such educational programs have undergone a paradigm shift to preparing students for high-demand, high-wage, and high-skill careers. By incorporating propensity score matching and multi-level regression model, I employ a statistically rigorous approach that can serve as important benchmarking of the enrollment and academic outcomes of the Virginia Governor's STEM Academies.

While first-year engineering (FYE) programs have grown dramatically over the last 30 years, they take a variety of different structures. However, few if any, researchers and FYE program developers has considered how program structure, and specifically matriculation, impacts retention – an issue that continues to be of concern as we seek to grown the national engineering workforce. Low retention rates combined with lack of diversity becomes even more acute when considering the field of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) which ranks as one of the least diverse engineering disciplines. One factor that has been shown to support retention is self-efficacy or individuals' beliefs in their ability to succeed. Therefore, to help address the retention issues in ECE, this dissertation explores the programmatic influence of first-year engineering matriculation structures on self-efficacy development in electrical and computer engineering students. In particular, it compares declared engineering (DE) programs, which admit students to a specific engineering field, to general engineering (GE) programs, in which students are admitted to engineering but do not select a specific engineering field until after their first year. Using qualitative and quantitative methodologies, this dissertation presents three manuscripts: 1) a quantitative secondary analysis comparing competency beliefs in a GE program and a quasi- DE first-year engineering program for ECE students; 2) a qualitative secondary analysis of self-efficacy development in a DE first-year program; and 3) a qualitative analysis exploring similarities and differences in self-efficacy development in EE students at two universities, one with a DE program and one with a GE program. The exploratory studies resulted in findings that demonstrate strong similarities in self-efficacy development in students from the DE and GE programs. Those differences that did emerge are largely attributed to how self-efficacy is discussed by students: 1) self-efficacy is developed differently between the two programs because the tasks associated with each program are different; 2) GE students discuss self-efficacy more broadly regarding engineering in general, focusing on domains like professional skills; 3) DE students discuss self-efficacy development more narrowly, specifically related to being an electrical or computer engineer. Additionally, the findings from study 2 suggest that pedagogical structures may be more important regarding self-efficacy development than matriculation structures. These results broaden our understanding of how FYE programs impact self-efficacy development within the context of a specific major, but still lend themselves to further exploration regarding factors most related to persistence and the experiences of underrepresented minorities in engineering. Doctor of Philosophy While first-year engineering (FYE) programs have grown dramatically over the last 30 years, they take a variety of different structures. However, few if any, researchers and FYE program developers have considered how program structure impacts persistence – an issue that continues to be of concern as we seek to grown the national engineering workforce. Low retention rates combined with lack of diversity in the field becomes even more intense when considering the field of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) which ranks as one of the least diverse engineering disciplines. One factor that has been shown to support retention is self-efficacy or individuals' beliefs in their ability to succeed. Therefore, to help address the retention issues in ECE, this dissertation explores the programmatic influence of first-year engineering matriculation structures on self-efficacy development in electrical and computer engineering students. In particular, it compares declared engineering (DE) programs, which admit students to a specific engineering field, to general engineering (GE) programs, in which students are admitted to engineering but do not select a specific engineering field until after their first year. The dissertation includes three studies: 1) a quantitative comparison of expectancy (similar to self-efficacy) beliefs in a GE program and a quasi- DE first-year engineering program for ECE students; 2) a qualitative study of self-efficacy development in a DE first-year program using interviews with students; and 3) a qualitative study of similarities and differences in self-efficacy development in EE students at two universities, one with a DE program and one with a GE program. The studies demonstrated similarities in self-efficacy development in students from the DE and GE programs, with differences largely attributed to how students described self-efficacy, as follows: 1) self-efficacy is developed differently between the two programs because the tasks associated with each program are different; 2) GE students discuss self-efficacy more broadly regarding engineering in general, focusing on issues like professional development skills; 3) DE students discuss self-efficacy development more narrowly, specifically related to being an electrical or computer engineer. Additionally, the findings from study 2 suggest that approaches to teaching may be more important for self-efficacy development than matriculation structures. These results broaden our understanding of how FYE programs impact self-efficacy development within the context of a specific major, but also point to the need for more research on factors most related to persistence and the experiences of underrepresented minorities in engineering.

Research on doctoral student attrition has shown that one of the main reasons for which students do not persist in the Ph.D. is because of a poor relationship with their doctoral advisor. The importance of the advising relationship is especially true in science, math, and engineering degrees because of the science model of advising as the student is the advisor's employee, close collaborator, and apprentice. While much attention has been given to understanding the dynamics of the advising relationship, little attention has been given to on how these relationships commence or the context in which they begin. This study ultimately contributes to understanding the context of the inception of advisor- advisee relationships and how it ultimately relates to both faculty and doctoral student satisfaction. The following overarching research questions guide this dissertation: What are the processes for doctoral students to find advisors in engineering, science, and math? How is this process experienced by faculty and students? To address these questions, I conducted three studies. Through these studies, this dissertation: 1) Identified and described the types of advisor-advisee selection processes that exist in engineering, science, and math and examined trends and patterns across disciplines; 2) compared how two Chemical Engineering programs practice the advisor selection process and examined how faculty and graduate program directors negotiate agency in the process and 3) explored how students experience satisfaction of their basic needs in the advisor selection process of one Chemical Engineering program and examined which student attributes influence this satisfaction of needs. The results showed that there are multiple ways through which a student can find an advisor in science, math, and engineering doctoral program, but these vary widely by both discipline and field of study. The results also showed both students and faculty value the ability to select whom they will work with. However, both groups may also need support in making this decision regarding with whom they will work. Overall, the results of this dissertation highlight the importance of developing practices that balance an individual's need for support and autonomy to improve their satisfaction. Doctor of Philosophy Studies have shown that roughly half of the doctoral students do not complete the doctorate degree. One of the main reasons for this departure is students having a poor relationship with the doctoral advisor. This relationship is particularly important for science, math, and engineering doctorates as in these fields of study the advisor and student work closely together. Much research has looked at how the relationship can be improved; however, little work has addressed how these relationships begin and the environment in which they start. This dissertation encompasses three studies that address the following research questions: What are the processes for doctoral students to find advisors in engineering, science, and math? How do faculty and students experience this process? Through these studies, this dissertation: 1) Described the ways through which doctoral programs help students find advisors in engineering, science, and math and how these ways varied by disciplines and fields of study; 2) compared how two Chemical Engineering programs help students find advisors; 3) explored how students experienced finding an advisor of one Chemical Engineering program. The results showed that there are multiple ways through which a student can find an advisor, but these vary widely by both discipline and field of study. The results also showed both students and faculty value the ability to choose whom they will work with. However, they may also need support in making this decision. Overall, the results of this dissertation highlight the importance of developing practices that balance an individual’s need for support and free will to improve their satisfaction.

The overall goal of this study was to better understand how the academic system affects change in instructional practices, referred to as instructional change, in engineering education. To accomplish this goal, and acknowledging the complex nature of academia, I used a technique designed to understand complex systems called System Dynamics Modeling. With such technique, I created a conceptual System Dynamics Model (SDM) that illustrates how the factors in the academic system interact dynamically to drive or hinder faculty motivation to adopt Research-based Instructional Strategies (RBIS) in their courses. The creation of this model followed a process that combined research literature with data gathered from 17 professors at an Engineering Department in another country. The model was constructed through an iterative process of systematically reviewing the literature, gather empirical data and creating Causal Loop Diagrams (CLD). The CLD are representations of the different causal relationships between elements in a system which ultimately create what we called virtuous or vicious (reinforcing) cycles and balancing cycles. The whole idea was not to find the causes for professors' motivation to change but how the factors in the academic system reinforce or limit such motivation. With this model I offered a different answer to the calls for change in engineering education toward increasing the pedagogical quality of our learning environments. My biggest argument is that previous instructional change initiatives have yielded low to moderate success, because effective instructional change would require a perspective that accounts for the complex nature of academia. With this study I am providing a different understanding of instructional change by using a system perspective that shows the interactions of elements within a complex system that ultimately influences faculty to adopt RBIS in their courses. Doctor of Philosophy The overall goal of this study was to better understand how the academic system affects change in instructional practices, referred to as instructional change, in engineering education. To accomplish this goal, and acknowledging the complex nature of academia, I used a technique designed to understand complex systems called System Dynamics Modeling. With such technique, I created a conceptual System Dynamics Model (SDM) that illustrates how the factors in the academic system interact dynamically to drive or hinder faculty motivation to adopt Research-based Instructional Strategies (RBIS) in their courses. The creation of this model followed a process that combined research literature with data gathered from 17 professors at an Engineering Department in another country. The model was constructed through an iterative process of systematically reviewing the literature, gather empirical data and creating Causal Loop Diagrams (CLD). The CLD are representations of the different causal relationships between elements in a system which ultimately create what we called virtuous or vicious (reinforcing) cycles and balancing cycles. The whole idea was not to find the causes for professors’ motivation to change but how the factors in the academic system reinforce or limit such motivation. With this model I offered a different answer to the calls for change in engineering education toward increasing the pedagogical quality of our learning environments. My biggest argument is that previous instructional change initiatives have yielded low to moderate success, because effective instructional change would require a perspective that accounts for the complex nature of academia. With this study I am providing a different understanding of instructional change by using a system perspective that shows the interactions of elements within a complex system that ultimately influences faculty to adopt RBIS in their courses.

Fundamental engineering courses are important to the undergraduate engineering student experience but have been associated with challenging educational environments. Several factors influence the educational environment, although learning experiences are primarily the outcome of interactions between instructors and students. To initiate change, it is important to understand teaching and learning experiences in fundamental engineering courses from the perspectives of the key players in these environments: instructors and students. To accomplish the goal of understanding teaching and learning experiences, I conducted studies that examined instructors' and students' perspectives on their experiences and the educational environments, using qualitative research methodology. Through these studies, this dissertation: 1) examined instructors' beliefs and self-described behaviors, guided by motivation theory and focusing on the role of instructors as socializers in the learning process; 2) considered interacting fundamental engineering courses as a foundational curriculum within engineering curricula to describe the educational environment in these courses from instructors' perspectives; and 3) examined student perceptions of their learning experiences and the educational environments in fundamental engineering courses using responses to open-ended items in end-of-semester student evaluations of teaching surveys. Data indicate that participants strive to integrate strategies that promote effective learning despite challenges posed by course environments, although expected gains from these behaviors may not always be maximized. Students and instructors may benefit from a student-focused, collaborative and holistic course planning process that considers interacting fundamental courses as a foundational curriculum within engineering curricula, and that engages instructors as equal partners in the planning process. Student feedback may be infused into the course planning process by productively and meaningfully utilizing students' responses to end-of-semester student evaluations of teaching surveys. Overall, the results of this dissertation highlight the importance of institutional support, collaboration, and integrating student feedback in the quest for facilitating effective educational environments and positive learning experiences in engineering. Doctor of Philosophy Introductory engineering courses are important to engineering students’ college experience but have been associated challenging learning environments. Several factors influence the learning environment, although learning experiences are primarily the outcome of interactions between instructors and students. To initiate change, it is important to understand teaching and learning experiences in introductory engineering courses from the points of view of the key players in these environments: instructors and students. To accomplish the goal of understanding teaching and learning experiences, I conducted qualitative studies that examined instructors’ and students’ points of view on their experiences and the learning environments. Through these studies, this dissertation: 1) examined instructors’ beliefs and self-described behaviors, guided by motivation theory and focusing on the role of instructors as socializers in the learning process; 2) considered interacting introductory engineering courses as a foundational curriculum within engineering curricula to describe the learning environment in these courses from instructors’ points of view; and 3) examined student perceptions of their learning experiences and environments in introductory engineering courses using responses to open-ended items in end-of-semester student evaluations of teaching surveys. Results show that participants strive to integrate strategies that promote effective learning despite challenges posed by learning environments, although the expected benefits from these strategies may not always be realized. Students and instructors may benefit from a student-focused, collaborative and holistic course planning process that considers interacting introductory engineering courses as a foundational curriculum within engineering curricula, and that involves v instructors as equal partners in the planning process. Student feedback may be included in the course planning process by productively and meaningfully using students’ responses to end-of-semester student evaluations of teaching surveys. Overall, the results of this dissertation highlight the importance of institutional support, collaboration, and integrating student feedback in the quest for facilitating effective learning environments and positive learning experiences in engineering.

National calls for improving the prospects of STEM workforce development and broadening participation in STEM place the focus of change within the education system. Despite many efforts towards integrating STEM, and specifically engineering, into pre-college settings, mechanisms for change in schools towards these goals remain underdeveloped. While collaborative solutions involving multiple organizations across sectors towards addressing this complex problem appear promising, more work is needed to develop a critical understanding of the processes involved when such different organizations come together to collaborate towards a social goal. Based in an effort to bring more theoretical literature into the discourse around school-university-industry partnership, the purpose of this research is to contribute to a better understanding of how K-12 STEM interorganizational relationships develop in their initial stages by focusing on the collaborative processes and structures and to develop implications for future success of such collaborations. To accomplish this, I used a multiple case study design to investigate the collaborative processes that emerged in the first year of the partnership within VT PEERS (Virginia Tech Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural Schools). I centered my analysis on select adult stakeholders in the collaborative problem who were also programmatic participants including teachers, administrators, industry partners, and university affiliates. Using pre-year and post-year semi-structured interviews with these stakeholders, I characterized the collaborative processes in the first year of the program. Interpretation of results comparing across cases indicated considerations for education and organizational theory literature as well as implications for collaborative practice. Findings confirmed the emergent and negotiated nature of interorganizational collaboration and highlighted the importance of managing communication and reflection in partnership. Organizational culture may impact capacity building when organizations come together towards a complex social goal, particularly when industry is involved, and autonomy and operational issues within the school system and teaching can make collaborating with schools particularly challenging. When organizations come together towards a social goal centered around one of the collaborative partners, equality in exchange may not be a good measure of success. With the caveat that communication needs to be well managed to build credibility among partners, an unequal but equitable exchange of resources may be appropriate in collaborations towards a social goal. While it is tempting to continue to measure quality in interorganizational collaborations narrowly by the outcomes produced, a macro-level look at the collaborative processes involved enables collaborative stakeholders to be intentional about designing for future success. Doctor of Philosophy National calls for a higher number and greater diversity of STEM professionals place the burden of change on school systems. Despite some successful efforts, there still remains significant challenges to making change in schools. Partnerships between private companies, universities, and school systems appear promising, but current work is limited in its conclusions. There is a need to reflect more critically on the process of how organizations build relationships in addressing social goals if we are to gain a better understanding of how to make these partnerships successful. To address this, I conducted pre-year and post-year interviews with teachers, administrators, industry partners, and university affiliates during the first year of VT PEERS (Virginia Tech Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural Schools). Because the project took place in three different rural school counties, I looked for similarities and differences across the collaborations in each county to build a broader understanding and develop implications for other partnerships. Findings from this study led to several important takeaways about collaborating across organizations towards goals in K-12 STEM. First, collaboration is a process and initial plans will change and develop over time. Reflecting on this and keeping open communication through changes potentially equips collaborators to better weather the ups and downs of partnership. Second, the nature and flexibility of an organization’s work environment impacts how much tension they feel between getting their everyday work done and contributing to the collaboration. Third, unequal costs and benefits may be acceptable in a collaboration as long as collaborators are in agreement on the balance. Again, communication is important to build trust and understanding among partners for a healthy balance to be achieved. Overall, taking a birds-eye view of collaborative processes allows collaborators to be more intentional about designing for future success.

Game-based learning--using games to achieve learning objectives--represents a promising and increasingly popular means of progressing engineering education's decades-long goal of bringing more evidence-based, active learning pedagogy into the classroom. However, if game-based learning is to proliferate as a pedagogy, research on game-based teaching is critical to provide practical recommendations for implementation, making the pedagogy more accessible to instructors. However, reviews of game-based literature reveal that little work exists in the game-based teaching space, and what work exists models high-level teaching practices and archetypal roles, which often fail to pinpoint specific practices game-based instructors can use to be successful. Moreover, reviews of game-based learning literature more generally suggest that research on how to improve student motivation in game-based learning settings--an important variable for learning and a longstanding argument for the value of games in education--are lacking in both quantity and theoretical soundness. To redress these gaps, I conducted a primarily qualitative, multiple-case study of seven non-digital game-based learning activities in engineering with the goal of furthering game-based teaching research and providing practical recommendations to instructors when using games in their classrooms. Using the MUSIC Model of Motivation as a motivation framework and the Observation Protocol for Adaptive Learning as a framework for categorizing teaching practices, I interviewed instructors about how they expected their teaching practices to affect student motivation, and I interviewed these instructors' students about how they actually perceived their instructors' actions as affecting their motivation. By comparing instructor and student responses, I derived recommendations for game-based learning practice that are likely to have a high impact on student motivation, and condensed these recommendations into a four-phase framework of game-based teaching to bolster student motivation. I supplemented my interview data with observation data to construct detailed summaries of each case I studied. The recommendations I offer in my framework can serve as useful resources for instructors seeking to foray into game-based teaching practices or improve their existing game activities, especially in engineering. Moreover, my study provides a model for investigating game-based teaching practices and motivation in game-based learning using established theoretical frameworks in natural classroom settings. Ph. D. Game-based learning—the use of games to achieve learning objectives—is a promising and increasingly popular way to introduce active learning into engineering classrooms, which is something engineering education as a field has been trying to achieve for decades. However, if game-based learning is to reach a wider audience of engineering instructors, research on the teaching practices instructors use in game-based learning classrooms is important, so that researchers can provide practical recommendations to instructors and make game-based learning less intimidating. However, little work has been done to study these teaching practices, and the work that exists tends to look at high-level trends across teaching practices, rather than offering specific pieces of advice. Moreover, research on how to improve student motivation in game-based learning settings is lacking, which is a problem because student motivation is important for learning and is one of the biggest theoretical benefits of using games in education. To fill in some of these gaps, I conducted instructor and student interviews around seven non-digital game-based learning activities in engineering, with the goal of furthering game-based teaching research and providing practical recommendations to instructors considering or currently using games in their classrooms. Using an established framework of student motivation and an existing means of grouping teaching practices, I interviewed instructors about how they expected their teaching practices to affect student motivation, and I interviewed these instructors’ students about how they actually perceived their instructors’ actions as affecting their motivation. By comparing instructor and student responses, I came up with several recommendations for gamebased learning practice that are likely to have a high impact on student motivation, and I produced a framework to serve as a visual aid to help instructors implement teaching practices that can bolster student motivation at any phase of a game-based learning activity. I also supplemented my interview data with observation data to provide readers with detailed summaries of each case I studied. The recommendations I offer in my framework can serve as useful resources for instructors looking to implement game-based learning activities or improve their existing game-based learning activities, especially in engineering. Moreover, my study serves as a model for future researchers who want to qualitatively study game-based teaching practices or motivation in game-based learning using established frameworks.

Engineering educators and industry professionals recognize the need for graduates to be effective communicators, yet the effective teaching of communication remains a persistent contemporary issue, with studies continuing to indicate that engineering graduates are insufficiently prepared for workplace communication. Despite compelling arguments that that writing should be treated as a situated activity, writing instruction is often separated from content instruction within engineering curricula. Even when they are integrated, it is often in a way does not optimally support improvement of students' writing skills. Writing studies scholarship identifies best practices that include treating writing as a process, with pedagogy that includes writing and revising drafts based on feedback and revision. However, writing assignments in engineering courses often not process-oriented. Challenges in addressing this problem include epistemology (i.e. instructors believe that learning to write and learning to engineer are separate skills), self-efficacy (i.e. instructors not feeling qualified to effectively provide feedback or writing instruction), and resources (i.e. inclusion of feedback and revision is unfeasible within key constraints of many engineering courses – limited instructor time and large student-faculty ratios). A potential solution is to use peer feedback, where students provide each other feedback on drafts, which can support a process approach while addressing these challenges. Research outside engineering has demonstrated that peer feedback can be as or more effective than instructor feedback; to bring that work into engineering, this study examines peer feedback in the context of a first-year engineering course through a quasi-experimental intervention in which feedback and revision were incorporated into an existing assignment using several variations of peer feedback. Interventions included two types of feedback training as well as feedback from single peers and multiple peers. Results support peer feedback in this context: it was statistically indistinguishable from instructor feedback when students were given sufficient instruction. Feedback from multiple peers, in fact was more effective than instructor feedback in improving writing quality, and in-class instruction was more effective than a handout only in helping students provide effective feedback. However, some general feedback recommendations – notably that readerly feedback should be encouraged directive feedback discouraged – were not supported. While writing studies literature encourages feedback that takes the position of the reader, readerly peer feedback reduced revision quality in this study. Directive feedback, on the other hand, caused improvements in writing quality, supporting previous hypotheses that the tightly-constrained genres in which engineers write justify more use of directive feedback. Ph. D.

As a national initiative to support retention of engineering students, engineering programs have undergone a surge of revisions to their coursework in recent years, most notably in relation to first-year programs. These program modifications are generally intended to enhance student success in engineering, including both students' achievement and students' motivation to persist in an engineering degree. This study examines motivational constructs as it compares two versions (standard and revised) of an introductory engineering course taught in a general first year engineering program. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine students' course perceptions, students' Expectancy-Value beliefs, and the relationship between perceptions and beliefs in the two versions of an introductory engineering course. Students' perceptions of the class were measured at the course level using the MUSIC model of Academic Motivation, and students' Expectancy-Value beliefs were measured within the engineering domain level using Expectancy-value theory. The dissertation is divided into three stages: In the first stage I provide a quantitative comparison of students' perceptions of the course, from students enrolled in each of the two versions of the course. In the second stage, I describe comparisons of Expectancy-Value engineering-related beliefs between students in each of the two versions of the introductory course, as well as within students in one of the courses. In the third stage, I develop structural models to test the relationship between students' perceptions of the introductory engineering courses and their Expectancy-Value engineering-related beliefs. This study suggests three main outcomes: First, students' perceptions of success and caring are statistically and significantly different between the two versions of the course. Second, students' Expectancy-Value beliefs are discovered to have declined significantly in the standard version of the course, whereas in the revised version of the course, there are no statistically significant differences. Third, the fit indices of the models suggest a good model data-fit providing strong support for the hypothesis that students' perceptions of introductory engineering courses have effect on students' broader motivational beliefs. These outcomes have practical implications for students, instructors, and researchers in first year engineering education. PHD

Engineering Education is a developing field, with new research and ideas constantly emerging and contributing to the ever-evolving nature of this discipline. Textual data (such as publications, open-ended questions on student assignments, and interview transcripts) form an important means of dialogue between the various stakeholders of the engineering community. Analysis of textual data demands consumption of a lot of time and resources. As a result, researchers end up spending a lot of time and effort in analyzing such text repositories. While there is a lot to be gained through in-depth research analysis of text data, some educators or administrators could benefit from an automated system which could reveal trends and present broader overviews for given datasets in more time and resource efficient ways. Analyzing datasets using Natural Language Processing is one solution to this problem. The purpose of my doctoral research was two-pronged: first, to describe the current state of use of Natural Language Processing as it applies to the broader field of Education, and second, to demonstrate the use of Natural Language Processing techniques for two Engineering Education specific contexts of instruction and research respectively. Specifically, my research includes three manuscripts: (1) systematic review of existing publications on the use of Natural Language Processing in education research, (2) automated classification system for open-ended student responses to gauge metacognition levels in engineering classrooms, and (3) using insights from Natural Language Processing techniques to facilitate exploratory analysis of a large interview dataset led by a novice researcher. A common theme across the three tasks was to explore the use of Natural Language Processing techniques to enable the computer to extract meaningful information from textual data for Engineering Education related contexts. Results from my first manuscript suggested that researchers in the broader fields of Education used Natural Language Processing for a wide range of tasks, primarily serving to automate instruction in terms of creating content for examinations, automated grading or intelligent tutoring purposes. In manuscripts two and three I implemented some of the Natural Language Processing techniques such as Part-of-Speech tagging and tf-idf (text frequency-inverse document frequency) that were found (through my systematic review) to be used by researchers, to (a) develop an automated classification system for student responses to gauge their metacognitive levels and (b) conduct an exploratory novice led analysis of excerpts from interviews of students on career preparedness, respectively. Overall results of my research studies indicate that although the use of Natural Language Processing techniques in Engineering Education is not widespread, although such research endeavors could facilitate research and practice in our field. Particularly, this type of approach to textual data could be of use to practitioners in large engineering classrooms who are unable to devote large amounts of time to data analysis but would benefit from algorithmic systems that could quickly present a summary based on information processed from available text data. Ph. D.

Entering a new environment is challenging for everyone, including engineers. Despite national efforts to improve graduates' competencies, managers and other critical industry stakeholders consistently describe new hires as underprepared for practice. Nonetheless, as engineers move into their new organizations, they learn to participate in and contribute to their communities of practice. This period is the school-to-work transition, and the goal of this research is to gain a deeper understanding of the salient learning events that characterize individuals' trajectories from engineering student to engineering practitioner. Using a multi-case approach, this study leverages weekly journals and semi-structured interviews to explore the experiences of recent engineering graduates as they enter the workplace and learn to engage in professional practice. Journal entries probed newcomers' perceptions of challenges, accomplishments, and significant learning events during the first 12 weeks of their jobs. Interviews expanded on journal findings and elaborated on participants' experiences. Analysis entailed the development and application of two complementary workplace learning frameworks from Jacobs and Park (2009) and Chao et al. (1994) that describe both the setting and content of salient learning experiences. Cross-case analysis enabled exploration across participants to examine trends and patterns within participants' experiential trajectories. Findings point to several contributions and implications. First, the codebooks developed in this study were contextualized and operationalized for engineering workplaces, and have been refined to enhance descriptive precision and clarity. Second, journals provided thick, rich descriptions of events in ways that hold promise for future exploratory studies as well as formative assessment. Finally, results indicated that newcomer engineers engage in a wide range of learning environments throughout the school-to-work transition and describe learning along myriad socialization dimensions. In particular, workplace learning takes place in unstructured environments through routine tasks and along both technical and sociocultural dimensions. Given this learning, both industry and academic professionals should consider these dimensions as they design experiences and assess learning across organizations. Newcomer learning is challenging, but if we can gain a better understanding of how and what happens during it, we can more effectively develop efforts to enhance the transition—and therefore, practice—for future generations of engineers. Ph. D.

In recent decades, recruitment and retention efforts to meet workforce demands and broaden participation in colleges of engineering across the country have focused primarily on catering to the needs of first-year, traditional age college students who matriculate from high school into 4-year institutions. While these efforts have moved the needle on enrollment and retention for undergraduate students in engineering, growth and improvement measures have started to taper in recent years. To meet current and future workforce demands for more STEM professionals in the United States, we must be creative about how to move beyond this ceiling effect; and, great potential exists among the growing population of students who begin their pursuit of a higher education at institutions other than 4-year public/private colleges. The purpose of this study is to increase understanding of engineering transfer students and their experiences at both sending and receiving institutions. Part of a larger mixed methods research investigation, this study draws on survey data from a sample of 1,070 engineering transfer students who transferred to one of four 4-year Texas institutions as new engineering students between 2007 and 2014. Research sites include four of the top ten producers of U.S. Hispanic/Latino engineers; and the framework for transfer student capital was used to organize this study's data collection and analytical plan. Structured as a manuscript style dissertation, this investigation offers a synthesis of recent literature on engineering transfer students and yields important findings on engineering transfer student movement through the higher education system at two distinct phases: 1) at the beginning of their higher education pathways in an investigation of students' reasons for starting at another institution and factors that influence their decisions to transfer; and 2) at the phase immediately following transfer in an investigation of the transition experience for students who transfer to a 4-year institution. For each phase, I identify emergent constructs and explore differences across subgroups of engineering transfer students (i.e., type of institution - selective versus open enrollment; type of transfer pathway - lateral versus vertical; student status as Hispanic/Latino; student status as first generation). This research joins and expands the small body of literature on engineering transfer students and brings data to higher education administrators so they can make more informed adjustments to existing institutional policies and practices that impact students as they transfer to engineering programs at 4-year institutions. Last, findings from this study also advance the current state of community college research on transfer students more generally. PHD

Collaborations to produce innovative models that link postsecondary education to workforce development initiatives have increased as multiple stakeholders respond to the call to develop a diverse, well-prepared STEM workforce. University and industry stakeholders in engineering agree that collaborating to share expertise and implement programs that aim to support the school-to-workforce transition for engineering graduates is critical. However, in light of existing efforts, a more nuanced view of university-industry partnerships from the student participant perspective is needed to provide data to engineering educators and professionals to support effective partnership design and use of resources. The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to understand how experiences in the Co-op Development Program (CDP) influence student participants’ subsequent career decision-making with respect to pursuing engineering industry positions. Guided by Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), this study examined the role that cooperative education experiences have on how students view and act on the potential employment opportunities that university and industry partners anticipate. Semi-structured interviews with eight former CDP participants, employed in industry at the time of the study, served as the primary data source. Additionally, program related documents, a profile questionnaire, and a conference proceeding were utilized to provide in-depth context of the CDP. Results indicate that all participants voiced a desire to work in the aerospace industry to explore short-term interests or to accomplish longer-term career entry goals. Furthermore, participants most frequently discussed experiences that required them to employ a sense of selfagency to complete work tasks (e.g., guiding themselves through uncertainty, observations of the environments, and interactions with engineering professionals) as learning experiences. Finally, participants primarily connected their learning experiences to their beliefs about what work looks like as a full-time engineer, their abilities to perform in an engineering role, and perceptions of fit across different engineering roles and workplaces. Major contributions of this study include extending the analytic generalizability of Social Cognitive Career Theory, creating operationalized definitions of learning experiences, and linking those experiences to students’ beliefs of the engineering industry pathway Ph. D. Persistent calls to the field of engineering education to help develop diverse, well-prepared engineers for the STEM workforce have fostered collaborations across university and industry stakeholders. As stakeholders focus efforts on supporting student persistence at several critical junctures, there has been a renewed interest in supporting the school-to-workforce transition for engineering graduates. With calls to develop a more tech-savvy workforce, innovative approaches to supporting and preparing students to enter the workforce have become even more necessary; thus it is important to understand how university-industry partnerships generate experiences that contribute to students' eventual workforce entry. The structure of the Co-op Development Program and the perspective of eight former CDP participants addressed how learning experiences shaped the career decisions of engineering participants immediately following graduation. A qualitative single case study approach was used and Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) guided the study. Major contributions of this study include extending the analytic generalizability of Social Cognitive Career Theory, creating operationalized definitions of learning experiences embedded within that framework, and linking those experiences to how students' beliefs were shaped on their pathway to an early career within engineering industry. The themes identified in this study can help CDP managers and university stakeholders better support co-op participants and potentially allocate resources that will serve as the basis for future co-op design recommendations. Stakeholders may also use findings to promote the role of university and industry partnerships in supporting the student workforce transition. Future researchers may extend the study design across multiple cases and leverage recommendations for qualitative and quantitative investigations to address some of the limitations embedded within this research design and further contribute to the discussion of preparing students for professional work environments through university-industry partnerships. Ultimately, findings of this study give voice to the student partner in university-industry partnerships as themes identified in this study help CDP managers and university stakeholders to establish interventions and serve as the basis for future co-op design recommendations.

The careers that students pursue after graduating from engineering programs are a central component to engineering education. However, we lack perspective on how students, the main stakeholder of the engineering education system, describe the goals they have for their post-graduation careers and make choices related to those goals. As a first step in closing this gap, I explored the different types of career goals that students have, investigated how students connect different types of goals to choices they make in engineering programs, and developed a survey instrument for future research on career goals. My sequential mixed methods study consisted of three phases. In the first phase, I analyzed interview data via the constant comparative method to explore the different types of career goals that students described. In second phase, I used the types of goals identified in phase one to analyze how students described connecting their career goals to choices they made as undergraduates in longitudinal interview data. In the final phase, I adapted the ideas from phase one and phase two into a quantitative survey instrument, which I piloted for validity and reliability. My study produced four main outcomes. The first outcome was identifying two distinct types of career goals held by students including goals about the jobs students want post-graduation and goals relative to job attributes rather than specific jobs. The second outcome was that students connected both types of career goals to choices they make in the present academic context. The third outcome was that career goals and their connection to choices students make could be measured in a valid, reliable survey instrument. Finally, my results suggest that there may be differences in the ways that male and female students describe their career goals and the ways that career goals are connected to choices. These outcomes have broad implications for students, educators and researchers in the engineering education system. Ph. D.

Leadership is an area of increasing interest for the engineering profession. Strategic documents assert the need for engineers to take more prominent leadership roles to better inform complex policy decisions. Engineering leadership scholars assert, however that adequate models of how engineers lead do not exist and that traditional leadership models are contrary to the collaborative norms of engineering practice. To address this gap in engineering leadership literature, this dissertation develops a model of how engineering students lead in team-based design project environments, an example of the collaborative environment that is commonplace in engineering practice. This quantitative study used a combination of round-robin (360-degree) survey data and course grades to examine the Full Range of Leadership within mechanical engineering-centric capstone design teams. Using a combination of cluster analyses, social network analyses, and regression analyses in a three manuscript approach, this dissertation 1) validated a Mechanical Engineering capstone version of the Full Range of Leadership, 2) determined the degree of shared leadership within the teams and how to classify teams based on their degree of shared leadership, and 3) related shared leadership to both team effectiveness and team attributes. The study resulted in a shared leadership model for engineering design teams. The model represents leadership as a three-form, shared phenomenon within teams. The amount of leadership within the team relates positively to both the group process and satisfaction measures of team effectiveness, but not to task performance. This relationship is moderated by the distribution of leadership, indicating that a limited amount of shared leadership may be more effective. Selected team attributes are related to the degree of shared leadership within the teams. The results broaden our conceptualization of leadership beyond an individual phenomenon, making it a shared phenomenon that is an integral component of design teamwork as it relates to design team effectiveness. Ph. D.

Increasing pressure to transform teaching and learning of engineering is supported by mounting research evidence for the value of learner-centered pedagogies. Despite this evidence, engineering faculty are often unsuccessful in applying such teaching approaches often because they lack the necessary knowledge to customize these pedagogies for their unique contexts. My dissertation study investigated the challenges with facilitation practices in introductory PBL engineering courses and developed a pragmatic research-based model that provides insights aimed at improving PBL facilitation practices using the Innovation Cycle of Educational Practice and Research (ICEPR) as a lens. The ICEPR is useful for investigating connections between educational practice and research for scholarly and systematic educational innovations. I conducted a three-phase sequential study to address critical gaps in the ICEPR regarding both research on and practice of PBL facilitation in engineering. I focused on identifying challenges in practice, developing a model, and disseminating the model through a typology using multiple qualitative data collection and analysis methods. In Phase 1, I studied a new PBL implementation and identified a challenge with facilitator training specifically with regard to a lack of a pragmatic model of facilitation strategies in engineering. In Phase 2, I investigated the facilitation practices of five facilitators in an established PBL engineering course. This resulted in the Model of PBL Facilitation Strategies for Introductory Engineering Courses (PBL-FIEC), where I specifically operationalized the instructional methods constructs from Collins' Cognitive Apprenticeship Framework to describe the variety of ways instructors facilitate student learning in PBL introductory engineering courses. The PBL-FIEC includes six methods and 27 strategies ways for instructors to facilitate students' learning through providing and prompting demonstrations of cognitive and metacognitive processes that emphasize content and process knowledge and different ways of knowing (knowledge, understanding, and reasoning). In Phase 3, I developed a Typology of Facilitation Strategies using PBL-FIEC and observations of instructors to demonstrate how they use and combine facilitation methods. Ultimately, my dissertation research shows how the ICEPR can be used to understand that innovation in educational practice relies on the interaction between researchers and practitioners, while generating a model directly useful for both stakeholders. Ph. D.

The value of diversity in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields has long been a leading topic of discussion among campus administrators and government officials. However, the number of African American women in STEM, and the engineering field in particular, has seen little growth over the past twenty years. To change this trend, there must be enhanced efforts to provide an environment and resources to support the retention of these women, and mentoring can play a key role. To gain a better understanding of the mentoring needs of these women, this research investigates the mentoring experiences of 16 current senior African American female engineering students. What is clear is that African American women have a unique set of experiences based on the multiple sets of identity groups that they claim membership in. Intersectionality emphasizes the implications of the multiplication of these identities and how that multiplication impacts experiences. This research, addresses the intersection by exploring faculty mentoring relationships, with particular focus on the implications of having a matched (same race and gender) or an unmatched mentor. Current research is inconsistent on the benefits of each type. Using phenomenography, this investigation of the various aspects of mentoring relationships that are salient to 16 African American women in engineering uncovered seven categories of mentoring: Guide, Proactive Supporter, Reactive Listener, Nurturer, Just in Time, Caring, and Role Model. Variation across these mentoring categories were reflected in the mentoring aspects that participants perceived. This set of interpersonal (listen, invested, and shared experience) and professional (development, opportunity, advice, and example) aspects depicted a set of mentoring types that varied in comprehensiveness. Additionally, variation in the race and gender of each mentor across each category suggested some trends surrounding the mentor characteristics that most frequently provided certain aspects. However, all of the categories that emerged were perceived to be effective. It is desired that the results of this research will impact the ways in which faculty understand the needs of African American women in engineering. Ph. D.

Team projects in engineering are critical sites for professional and personal development as students interact with peers and faculty on projects designed to simulate engineering work. These projects allow students to try on professional roles and establish a sense of identity within their field, which in turn influences their retention through college and into engineering careers. However, team projects can present challenges specific to students from underrepresented populations. While research on women's team experiences is strong, few researchers have studied African-Americans. To fill this gap, the current study explores the experiences of African-American males on multiracial student teams and the impact of those teams on these students' identities. This qualitative study employed a phenomenological approach, using a three-interview sequence with eight African-American male engineering students as they worked on team projects at a predominantly white institution (PWI). The interviews gathered background information about each participant, explored the team functionality during the project, and enabled participants to reflect on the team experience. Two theoretical frameworks were considered during the study design: 1) intergroup contact theory provided a lens to explore interracial interactions, and 2) multiple identities provided a lens to analyze the impact of team dynamics on students' intersecting identities. The findings provide a rich understanding of the team experiences of African-American male students that can enhance project-based teaching within engineering to more explicitly attend to team dynamics, including interracial interactions for students of color. Both positive and negative impacts on African-American males in engineering emerged from the intergroup contact within the team environment. Specifically, the results indicate that these participants enjoyed their multiracial student teaming experiences, supported by informal social interactions among team members and generally positive professional interactions. However, the study participants also entered their team experiences fully aware of the negative stereotypes about African-Americans in engineering and proactively worked to dispel those stereotypes. Ph. D.

In response to the student retention and diversity issues that have been persistent in undergraduate engineering education, many colleges have developed Engineering Student Support Centers (ESSCs) such as Minority Engineering Programs (MEPs) and Women in Engineering Programs (WEPs). ESSCs provide underrepresented students with co-curricular support using student interventions in the form of programs, activities, and services. However, ESSCs have a relatively short history and there are gaps in our knowledge about these support systems. While the practice of providing students with co-curricular support has been evaluated, theories of co-curricular support have not been as thoroughly investigated; we know very little about how co-curricular support functions alongside engineering curricula. In an effort to help close the gaps in current literature, the purpose of my study was to explore how the student interventions offered alongside engineering curricula influence the undergraduate experience. To address this purpose, I used a multi-case study design to explore the particulars of six ESSCs housed at four institutions. I focused on the ESSC administrators (those who provide support) and undergraduate students (those who receive support) using multiple qualitative data collection methods. The primary result of this study was the Model of Co-curricular Support (MCCS), which is a version of Tinto's Model of Institutional Departure that I repurposed to demonstrate the breadth of co-curricular assistance required to comprehensively support undergraduate engineering students. The MCCS illustrates how a student's interaction with the academic, social, and professional systems within a college–as well as the university system surrounding the college–could influence the success he or she has in an undergraduate engineering program. More specifically, the MCCS is a conceptual model for constructing and evaluating support systems and individual student interventions that prioritize undergraduate engineering students. Within my study, I also identified several classifications of ESSCs and highlighted some pros and cons associated with various classifications and configurations. Ultimately, this research combines student-retention theory with student-support practice in a way that could facilitate future collaborations among educational researchers and student-support practitioners. Ph. D.

With student attrition in engineering most frequently occurring during the 2nd year due to perceptions of poor teaching and advising, curricular overload, and a lack of a sense of belonging, this study sought to address these concerns in a novel way through videos. This study was inspired by the success of existing on-campus mentoring services that enlist more advanced students to act as academic and cultural mentors, and sought to connect with students who may feel unwelcome or socially inhibited from attending similar services. On-campus support services have historically experienced service-level concerns with regards to overhead costs that have resulted in targeting specific audiences over restricted durations of time. Through these measures, both lack of awareness and social inhibition to attendance has resulted in some students not receiving the support that they need in order to succeed in engineering. To address this concern, this study developed and tested a video-based intervention on 2nd year students identified as 'at-risk-for-attrition' through GPA and self-reported measures of belonging in engineering. The intervention involved 18 junior- and senior-level engineering students participating in videotaped interviews that were segmented by topic into 305 videos and posted to a private Vimeo channel. These videos acted as static virtual mentors for the study participants. To evaluate the impact of these videos, an exploratory case study was conducted with 13 'at-risk-for-attrition' participants that included 7 women and 6 men. The participants completed a pre-intervention interview concerning their current status in engineering, a reflection of their first year, and perceptions of on-campus support services. Participants were then asked to watch one hour of videos, keep a notebook of their experience, and record the date and time that each video was watched. Once completed, participants participated in a post-intervention interview concerning their video choices, reactions, and outcomes of the experience, and any affordances that they saw in the intervention tool. Drawing on expectancy-value theory, the results of this study yielded a model for how participants made their video selections, how they reacted to virtual mentors and interpreted their video content, and how these reactions led to collective identity beliefs and intentions to act on the advice provided. Additionally, participants highlighted some of the affordances of offering mentoring through static videos. Of particular importance was the perception of shared identity between participants and mentors as a precursor to impacting future intentions to act on their advice. The findings led to recommendations regarding the redefinition of desired mentor traits for at-risk-for-attrition students was discovered, and also, the potential for offering virtual mentoring as a proxy or precursor to attending on-campus services without the program- and student-level concerns hindering current offerings. Ph. D.

Metacognition has been identified as a critical skill set for learning in problem solving, conceptual understanding, and studying, all of which are key in any undergraduate engineering curriculum. Though significant research has identified metacognition as critical in learning, most of this research has been conducted in experimental settings and has focused on individual engagement. While experimental settings provide evidence that metacognition is important to learning, these controlled studies do not tell us if students actually engage in metacognition in their own contexts. The purpose of this research study was to describe the metacognitive habits of engineering students in the naturalistic setting of study groups as well as contextual factors that supported this engagement. In order to accomplish this, I developed a methodological approach useful for identifying metacognitive engagement in naturalistic settings. In this ethnographically-inspired qualitative study, I used participant observations as my primary source of data and ethnographic interviews as supplemental data. Three study groups participated in this study and represented a diverse range of strategies for learning and studying. In order to identify the metacognitive behaviors of the study participants, I developed the Naturalistic Observations of Metacognitive Engagement (NOME) coding strategy, a coding scheme that can be used to identify metacognitive engagement in naturalistic settings involving undergraduate engineering students. Through the use of the NOME for coding the observational transcripts, I found that undergraduate engineering students engage in metacognitive engagement in different ways and certain metacognitive behaviors are engaged in at a higher rate than others. From an analysis of the observational fieldnotes, I found that contextual factors such as learning environment, study group schedule, study group purpose, learning resources, and workload potentially impact the way in which engineering students engage in metacognitive practices. The findings of this study provide important implications for researchers in metacognition and engineering education, educational practitioners, students, and the research site and participants from which the data was collected. Ph. D.

This study explores how students in rural areas of Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau area perceive engineering as a future career. This area is a portion of the greater Appalachian region, which has historically, faced disproportionate economic struggles when compared to other areas of the United States. However, little research on career choice exists outside of the coal producing areas of Central Appalachia. This research, in contrast, focuses on rural counties without interstate access, situated along the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, an area with an economy historically based in manufacturing. This research focuses on understanding students' perceptions of engineering as a future career and on factors that support and inhibit the development of these perceptions. To understand these perceptions, the study used qualitative, semi-structured interviews, situated in a Social Constructivist worldview, informed by the Future Possible Selves framework. Participants include 27 high school students, 7 college engineering students, and 5 college students who had exposure to engineering through a formal program but are currently enrolled in another major. Results of the study show that without access to formal programs or professionals to expose them to engineering, participants did not have a clear perception of engineering, and were not likely to pursue this career. Exposure through a formal program seemed to spark the start of engineering future possible self development by aligning engineering with activities participants enjoy. However, these participants often also believed that they lacked some key "ability" needed to become an engineer. Participants who had access to both formal programs and professionals were able to provide a clear description of potential engineering careers, aligning such careers with activities they enjoyed and, importantly, with desired attributes of their future. In addition, participants typically described relationships with professionals as mitigating the fear that an engineering career was beyond their "ability." These results provide evidence, that in this study area, printed materials and programs are not enough; people clearly make the difference in helping students develop a clear perception of engineering as a viable future career choice. This result has multiple implications for engineering educators and industries interested in K-12 outreach. Ph. D.

Many engineering programs have a common content based first-year curriculum that all engineering students are required to take. These courses tend to be large in size, having multiple sections requiring the use of Teaching Assistants (TAs) who may be graduate students (GTAs) or undergraduate students (UTAs). The roles of TAs in first-year engineering courses vary from instructional staff to lab supervisors to graders, but despite their widespread use, little is known about the TAs' experiences. This study fills a gap in the literature by taking a participant centered approach to GTA motivation to teach and identity development as a teacher specifically in the context of first-year engineering programs (FYEPs). To guide this research, a combined motivation and identity framework was developed based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and Possible Selves Theory (PST). In the framework, PST serves as the foundation for the SDT constructs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy. The framework supports that the various constructs lead to increased motivation and identity development but that each experience through the process is based on one's own identity and views of themself in the future. This was studied through an exploratory sequential mixed methods design where 12 semi-structured interviews representing five different FYEPs served as the foundation for the development of a national survey completed by 33 GTAs representing seven different FYEPs. Priority was ultimately given to the qualitative strand, but mixing occurred throughout the study. The results indicate that there are seven factors that affect GTA motivation and identity and there are profiles, lenses, and filters can be used to understand GTAs' experiences in FYEPs. While each individual is unique, general trends among experiences were observed. Additionally based on the results, the framework was found to be an appropriate tool but that a slight modification was needed to better align the framework with GTA developmental trends. This research allows future research-based GTA training programs and appointments to be developed that specifically aim towards meeting the motivational and identity developmental needs of GTAs, ultimately improving the quality of higher education. Ph. D.

Though some research exists related to career choices among Appalachian youth, and literature exists which broadly examines choices to pursue engineering degrees, information specifically related to Appalachian students' career choice toward engineering is limited. Engineering typically represents high paying, stable jobs so it is particularly important to understand what attracts students to, or deters them from, engineering careers in the Appalachian region, which is beset by poverty and low representation in higher education. The purpose of this research was to explore what influences students from the Central Appalachian region of Virginia in choosing their career goals, in particular, relative to engineering careers. Therefore, the overarching research question was: How are Central Appalachian high school students influenced as they choose their career goals, especially with respect to engineering? In this qualitative study, I used semi-structured interviews and case study methods, guided by Lent and Brown's Social Cognitive Career Theory, to explore career choice goals of high school participants in Southwest Virginia. The twenty-four high school participants and twelve college engineering student participants represented a diverse sample with respect to school and county demographics. Through thematic coding, the data revealed patterns relative to 1) reasons students chose their career goals, and 2) variation in factors contributing to career goals. Specifically, I identified six high school categories of reasons and only three reasons for college engineering students. High school students' career choice reasons, while related to interests, were largely influenced by critical life events. Additionally, patterns emerged based on whether or not the student was a continuing generation Appalachian (CGA), parent/guardian educational attainment and place of employment, and the location of the high school relative to college resources. This is consistent with previous literature, which points to the importance of parental education and student interests as factors for determining a student's career choice, and STEM literature, which often links interests in math, science, or engineering activities as key influencers. However, this research also revealed that critical life events, a student's family background (First Generation College and CGA), and parental job location are patterned with career goals. Ph. D.

Much of engineering education research focuses on improving undergraduate engineering education. However, in order to help new engineers prepare for and successfully transition to the workplace, and therefore improve retention within the engineering practice, it is vitally important to understand the experiences of these early career engineers. The purpose of this study is to identify and explain the career goals and actions of early career engineering graduates. To accomplish this goal, this research addressed the question "What factors influence early career engineering graduates" career goals near the end of their undergraduate engineering studies, career-related actions taken in the subsequent four years, and their future career plans? Data were predominantly qualitative. Thirty participants were interviewed and surveyed near the end of their undergraduate studies, then completed pre-questionnaires and an interview as early career engineering graduates. Participants were graduates from three different universities and were diverse with respect to sex, race, and undergraduate major. Data analysis was framed by Social Cognitive Career Theory, as developed by Lent, Brown, and Hackett, and followed case study methods. Results show that early career engineering graduates had diverse goals and interests, but similar influencing factors. They generally wanted to find appealing work and acted towards that goal. Relationships with faculty and expectations of positive outcomes heavily influenced participants' decisions to pursue graduate degrees, and family commitments geographically constrained career choices while also increasing the desire for stability. The economic downturn impacted job availability for most participants, but many participants were able to broaden their career searches to find interesting and fulfilling work. Participants that exhibited an ability to adapt to changing conditions reported the greater levels of satisfaction with their careers. The findings of this research provide important information to engineering educators and employers as they mentor the next generation of engineers, and early career engineering graduates themselves as they seek to achieve their goals. Ph. D.