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In this paper, we explore the mental health of science, engineering, and math (SEM) graduate students using quantitative analysis on the survey data provided by the Healthy Minds Network (HMN): Research on Adolescent and Young Adult Mental Health group, coined the Healthy Minds Study (HMS). The aim of the study is to answer the following research questions: (1) How has the mental health of SEM graduate students, measured by depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, and flourishing, changed over the past three academic years? (2) What role, if any, does the climate of SEM programs, measured by the proxies of campus environment, encouraging dialogue, prioritizing mental health, and receptive administration, have on SEM graduate students' self-reported mental health measures of depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, and flourishing, when accounting for students' gender, race, international student status, degree, and discipline? Attention to the mental health of students in higher education has grown in recent years. Prior work has shown that several factors can influence an individuals' mental health, including, but not limited to, a students' demographics, social factors, available resources, values, motivation, and more. The purpose of this study, however, is to focus specifically on how the culture of SEM programs influences SEM graduate students' mental health. In this context, mental health refers to one's mental and emotional well-being. Therefore, this paper will leverage previous work that has indicated the role of academic disciplines' cultures on mental health. SEM graduate students are of interest because they are understudied in the literature despite being more likely to report mental health problems. In addition, graduate students have a variety of academic and personal experiences that are different from undergraduate students due to their roles as students, instructors, and researchers, resulting in a different acculturation process. In addition, this process can impact students of diverse backgrounds inequitably, with minoritized students facing more negative mental health consequences and feeling like they are less supported than their non-marginalized peers. This study explored measures of program climate to assess how students' perceptions of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts impact SEM students' self-reported mental health. In this work, we performed a quantitative analysis on the Health Minds Network (HMN) data on SEM graduate students. We calculated bivariate statistics and developed regression models for each of the four outcome measures while accounting for relevant demographic measures. We first show that there have been changes in students' self-reported mental health, with the general trend of increasing mental health problems. In terms of program climate, our regressions found that students' beliefs about the climate had a statistically significant influence over their reported mental health measures, and that these experiences varied for different demographic groups. The results from our work highlight areas of focus for future research. Furthermore, this work can help enable SEM graduate students, faculty, and staff to reflect on the changes in the past years and to use these results to promote change at individual, program, and systematic levels to improve SEM graduate students' mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imported from the US, STEM education has been introduced to and widely implemented in China for over a decade. Its priority is particularly promoted as China has come to a turning point called "the new development paradigm", as the supply of high-end talents in hi-tech fields gradually lags behind and thus hinders economic development. In such a context, STEM education has drawn significant attention from scholars and practitioners in China. Extant research leaves two significant lacunae. First, the exact connotation and constituent elements of STEM education in the context of China remain blurred, as it is often confused with other terminologies including college-industry integration and maker education. Second, the implementation performance of STEM education at Chinese higher education institutions remains under-investigated. To bridge above lacunae, this paper adopts a two-stage study design; Study 1 uses content analysis based on word frequency counts to refine the exact connotation and constituent element of STEM education in China. By coding the archives, including academic papers, policy documents, and news reports, which add up to more than fifty thousand words, it also identifies four major constituent elements - STEM education research, college-industry partnership, interdisciplinary integration, and maker education, which together constitute the very existing form of STEM education in the context of China. Study 2 employ an empirical analysis based on a sample of 36 first-tier universities in China over a five-year period, and investigates the effects of different constituents of STEM education on the cultivation performance of innovative talents separately. This paper is expected to theoretically and empirically contribute to STEM education in China. First, it delineates the boundary of STEM education and its relationships with other equally-popular concepts in the context of China. Second, as it examines the effects of implementing different STEM education activities on the cultivation performance of innovative talents, it can also provide a reference for policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs have been credited for attracting and retaining students in science and engineering who otherwise may not have considered disciplines in science and engineering as their career choices. In addition to core research activities, REU programs generally provide multiple enrichment and professional development activities for participants. While the nature and the number of professional development activities vary from one REU program to another, the most common activities include ethics and safety training, research and industry seminars, GRE workshops, writing workshops, graduate school application preparation, and industry visits. Furthermore, some of these professional development activities are also conducted in large group settings with students from other research programs beyond the REU cohort. The rationale behind combining REU students with other researchers is to create a community of learners and provide them with an opportunity to build/extend their professional network. Although professional development activities are an integral part of the REU sites, there is often very limited coverage of such activities in the existing literature on REU projects. This paper presents the impact of professional development activities on the experience of REU participants in a manufacturing REU site at a major research university in the southwestern United States. For this study, data was collected from participants by an external evaluator by using both qualitative and quantitative methods. This paper presents and describes the cumulative data from three REU cohorts. The analysis and results of the data are disaggregated by the student academic level (sophomore, junior, senior), gender, ethnicity, the type of their home institutions (research or teaching institution), and desired career paths in the future (graduate school or industry). The paper also provides a detailed discussion and implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the Sustainable Bridges from Campus to Campus project (NSF IUSE #1525367, known locally as Engineering Ahead) is to establish summer bridge programs that serve Engineering students at regional campuses of The Pennsylvania State University. The overarching goal of this project is to increase retention and graduation among underrepresented Engineering students, with a focus on students who start their Penn State education at a regional campus. In 2016, summer bridge programs for incoming Engineering students were started at three regional campuses in the Penn State system, including the Abington, Altoona, and Berks campuses. Recruitment focused on enrolling racially underrepresented domestic students (i.e., African American, Hispanic American, Native American, Pacific Islander), women, and firstgeneration students in Engineering. The new bridge programs were tailored to the needs and resources of each campus. The project also supported an established summer bridge program for racially underrepresented incoming Engineering students at the flagship University Park campus. The goal of the Engineering Ahead summer bridge programs is to increase retention and graduation through four strategies: intensive math review (pre-calculus, calculus), community building, college success skills, and professional development. In their review of the STEM summer bridge literature, Ashley and colleagues [1] recommended to "report more information about the details of implementing bridge programs" (p 14). They noted that implementation details often are not described when published articles report on the outcomes of summer bridge programs. However, "A team developing a bridge program would benefit from more information about program logistics" (p. 14)." The 6-year Engineering Ahead project concluded at the end of 2021. Our experience initiating new bridge programs and enrolling 6 cohorts of incoming engineering students in summer bridge programs at regional and flagship campuses with different delivery methods (residential, non-residential day program, synchronous online, hybrid) can inform the higher education STEM community. The purpose of this paper is to address the Ashley et al recommendation about sharing implementation details and provide information on the logistical "how to" of starting, conducting, and hopefully sustaining engineering summer bridge programs at small and large campuses. This paper will discuss the leadership team communication and learning community, engagement of administrative leaders, program costs and resources, participant recruitment and selection focusing on underrepresented students, program size, staffing, curriculum development, sustainability, follow-up interventions, delivery method (residential, non-residential, online, hybrid), expectations for participant conduct, and addressing problems with participant conduct. Please note that outcome data from this project will be reported elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the experiences of two STEM outreach specialists as they prepared two rural middle school teachers with limited STEM backgrounds to implement a 3-part grade level specific engineering design elective course at their schools. This work is part of an Innovative Experiences for Teachers and Students (ITEST) project designed to provide community-based engineering design experiences for underrepresented middle school students (grades 6-8) from rural N.C. The course engages students in authentic STEM design experiences situated in the advanced manufacturing industry in an effort to improve their STEM content knowledge and career awareness and their self-efficacy, identity and interest in STEM careers, particularly engineering. The outreach specialists experienced a number of challenges as they worked with the teachers, many of which were exacerbated by the on-going pandemic. In response to social distancing requirements imposed by COVID-19, the specialists adopted a just-in-time (JIT) approach to teacher professional development (PD) where the content, pace, and scheduling of PD sessions were based on each individual teacher's prior content knowledge, comfort level and work schedule. This paper focuses on the process of skill preparation of the middle school teachers in the execution of the 6th grade course in the 2020-21 school year. Additional aspects to be discussed include a sampling of best practices, an overview of lessons learned and implementation strategies during the second iteration of the 6th grade course and the first implementation of the 7th grade course during the 2021-22 school year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides the status report of an NSF S-STEM program that is currently in its fourth year in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), a minority-serving institution. The paper also offers a list of the lessons learned during the implementation of the project. A summary of the paper materials will be presented at the National Science Foundation (NSF) Grantees Poster Session during the 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. The objectives of this S-STEM program are to 1) enhance students' learning by providing access to extra and co-curricular experiences, 2) create a positive student experience through mentorship, and 3) ensure successful student placement in the STEM workforce, or graduate/professional degree programs. Financial assistance is provided to the students who have been admitted to this program. The program supports three cohorts of students. Cohort I and Cohort II consist of 18 and 13 students, respectively. These students started their engineering programs as first-year. Cohort III has 19 students who transferred to the College of Engineering from various community colleges. More than 60% of the students identify as part of underrepresented groups in STEM. Several support and intervention programs have been created through this project. They include 1) a Summer Bridge Program that was taken by all the cohorts before or during their first semester at the UIC, 2) an Engineering Success Initiative course that was taken by all cohorts in their first semester, 3) a Service Learning Project course that is taken by each student in at least two consecutive semesters, and 4) an integrated mentoring program that matches each student with a faculty mentor and an industry mentor. The paper reports a summary of the support components of the program and the lessons learned from them. Out of the 50 students recruited by this S-STEM project, one student has graduated and is working in industry. At the time of this report, of the 50 students enrolled across all cohorts, one graduated to an industry position, 46 remain in school, and 3 did not continue with the program. All the continuing students have passed at least three semesters of their studies. Therefore, the project has a 94% first-year retention rate which is above the university's first-year retention rate. The paper provides more information about the retention and performance (Grade Point Average) of the students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the initial work of a recently funded NSF project on ethical and responsible research and practices in science and engineering. The objective of this research is to improve instructor training, interventions, and student outcomes in high schools and universities to improve awareness and commitment to ethical practices in STEM coursework. The project will generate a robust snapshot of the ethical knowledge, reasoning skills, attitudes, and practices of several thousand undergraduate engineering students. This snapshot will inform the development of a three-week enrichment opportunity for high school STEM teachers. Working with university faculty and graduate students, these teachers will develop learning modules on ethical issues related to their courses. The snapshot will also identify gaps and guide the creation of targeted interventions that will be used in second-, third-, and fourth-year engineering courses. This data-driven project uses a mixed-methods approach to generate a better understanding of the impact of ethics interventions at various points in a student's academic development by developing and using a set of instruments to measure cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of ethical competency and self-efficacy. To that end, a second snapshot will be taken by testing and surveying engineering students in their capstone courses to provide a broad overview of the competence and self-confidence that engineering students have in dealing with ethical STEM issues, to determine the efficacy of various interventions, and to improve future interventions. Utilizing repeated measures and possessing a longitudinal dimension, the project will generate extensive data about the development of ethical competency, ethical self-efficacy, and their relationship. The interventions designed for secondary and tertiary classrooms will build on best practices for micro-insertion of ethics content that are practical and help students understand how technical competencies fit within broader social, economic, and environmental contexts. The capstone snapshot will also provide some measure of the impact of other experiences (e.g., undergraduate research, internships, service learning) and courses (e.g., humanities, social science, and business courses) on development of ethical practices. This report marks the start of a fiveyear project; therefore, the results presented in this paper represent findings from the engineering ethics literature and baseline results from survey of engineering freshmen at Texas A&M University. The findings from the survey are being utilized in developing intervention modules that will be integrated in upper-level engineering courses and training materials for high school teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data Science plays a vital role in sciences and engineering disciplines to discover meaningful information and predict the outcome of real-world problems. Despite the significance of this field and high demand, knowledge of how to effectively provide data science research experience to STEM students is scarce. This paper focuses on the role of data science and analytics education to improve the students' computing and analytical skills across a range of domain-specific problems. The paper studies four examples of data-intensive STEM projects for supervised undergraduate research experiences (SURE) in Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical science, Quantum Physics, and Cybersecurity. The developed projects include the applications of data science for improving additive manufacturing, automating microscopy images analysis, identifying the quantum optical modes, and detecting network intrusion. The paper aims to provide some guidelines to effectively educate the next generation of STEM undergraduate and graduate students and prepare STEM professionals with interdisciplinary knowledge, skills, and competencies in data science. The paper includes a summary of activities and outcomes from our research and education in the field of data science and machine learning. We will evaluate the student learning outcomes in solving big data interdisciplinary projects to confront the new challenges in a computationally-driven world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents information about outreach projects completed by 13 students in a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program offered in an aerospace engineering department at a U.S. midwestern university during summer 2021. The outreach project was a component of the REU program. This paper provides a detailed description of the outreach project goals and procedures and explores the project's impact on the students. Anonymous responses to openended questions show the positive impact the projects had on the students, including the satisfaction they received from designing and completing the projects from start to finish and potentially helping to broaden the participation of underrepresented students in STEM. Using an open-coding data analysis method, four themes based on student responses were identified. These themes include students' positive response towards the outreach project, their increased understanding of others' diverse walks of life, feeling uncomfortable in unfamiliar situations, and gaining more confidence in pursuing their chosen degree. The paper concludes by presenting recommendations for other engineering REU sites considering similar outreach projects for their students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the development of personalized job preparation and job search training and services for underrepresented STEM scholars as part of an institutional partnership model created to assist dissertators, postdoctoral researchers, and early career faculty along their path to joining and persisting in the professoriate. This work is part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) grant awarded to four university partners. The alliance's goal is to develop, implement and study a model of STEM doctoral degree completion and the transition to successful postdoctoral fellowships and faculty careers for historically underrepresented minorities. Underrepresented Ph.D. candidates in STEM fields have long lacked role-models from similar demographic representations due to the small number of underrepresented faculty in STEM fields who can serve as role models and mentors. This has created systemic challenges in recruiting underrepresented students for PhD programs and retaining them into the professoriate. Institutions have been providing job preparation and job search support for their students through general career and related services, such as resume/CV writing, oral presentation skills, mock interviews, and access to employer databases. This type or support may not be the most valuable for Ph.D. dissertators and postdocs whose needs are unique and whose schedules are packed with multiple commitments. In this paper, we discuss the approach to identifying and implementing multi-year job search and preparation activities to match the needs of underserved STEM scholars who started as Ph.D. candidates and moved towards academic positions at different rates. Sources of data informing the personalized training and services include perspectives of the project leadership, and feedback from the participating scholars collected as part of program evaluation. This feedback helped fine-tune the partnership model to provide participating scholars with the most meaningful support possible. Findings suggest three design features of successful support: 1. While general training and support such as those offered by career service centers are useful, specific support by STEM faculty with real-time efforts in applying for academic positions was more timely and valuable for URM scholars. 2. Transition support is critical as scholars' needs shift from dissertator to postdoctoral researcher to early career faculty. For example, requests to review job applications early on were joined by interest in grant writing once scholars moved into their first postdissertation academic positions. 3. Real time writing groups focused on proposal development and application portfolio development represent one of the most promising practices. Participants reported multiple academic, social, and motivational benefits resulting from the weekly meetings. Particular attention to job search and preparation will provide value to underrepresented scholars and assist them to successfully secure and persist in academic positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently and historically, women are underrepresented in engineering. Engineering education research (EER) has explored possible explanations as to why this phenomenon persists, including but not limited to hinderances to identity development, lack of belongingness, and the epistemological underpinnings that are fundamental to engineering education. In this paper, we will focus specifically on these epistemological foundations in relation to women's epistemologies and how different ideas about knowledge and learning relate to why women are underrepresented in engineering. In the space of engineering education, we strive to create an environment that fosters inclusive epistemologies for students to succeed. However, educational research suggests that women's epistemologies fundamentally differ from men's because of factors like socialization, cultural influences, and experiences of marginalization that are common for women. Because engineering began as an exclusively middle-class white male field and remains male-dominated, male epistemologies shape the default pathways to understanding in engineering education. Women's epistemologies may differ from fundamental ways of knowing that engineering education is built on. Based on this difference, we believe there is an epistemological mismatch between women and the engineering field. To begin to investigate this claim, we conducted a literature review as part of a larger study to understand what has been studied in EER regarding women's epistemologies. The purpose of this paper is to explore the landscape of women's epistemologies in recent EER. Our guiding research question is: "How have women's epistemologies been studied in published engineering education research?". To begin this literature review, we searched through the ASEE conference proceedings database (also known as PEER) for student women's epistemologies from 2016 to 2021. We chose this time frame to focus on current research of epistemologies in EER. The keywords used in the search were "Epistemology + Women + Engineering." We focused on engineering students to highlight the epistemologies that relate to learning rather than teaching. Once a preliminary set of articles was identified, we performed secondary and tertiary rounds of exclusion to scope the range of articles included in the study that addressed the research question. We performed a categorical analysis to compare each article across multiple groupings of attributes. The result of this literature review was a table, in which we extracted information from the papers based on seven categories: framework, methodology, population, instrument, main result, related concepts, and unit of analysis. This table allows for easy access to each paper to understand the main points of the study and whether or not the authors related epistemologies to other concepts in EER, including student outcomes. A highlight of our results concerns the "unit of analysis" category, which shows how student epistemologies have been studied from a multitude of perspectives, including program-level effects on student epistemologies to individual-level epistemological differences between students. As a result, the single word of epistemology has come to possess a multitude of meanings in EER. Future work involves analyzing these units of analysis to create a unified language around student epistemologies in engineering to better the field's understanding of the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to provide an understanding of STEM education challenges in Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) located in rural areas. In the Fall of 2020, approximately seventy representatives from thirty 2-year HSIs and emerging HSIs documented their needs, barriers, successes, and priorities during a virtual Rural HSI Conference sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Recommendations related to funding, cultural responsiveness, the role of mentorship and technology to strengthen STEM programming emerged from the conference data collected and will be provided in this paper. A collaborative thematic analysis of conference data conducted by researchers from three different institutions identified nine themes that emerged from the three-day conference encompassing internal and external factors that impacted students, institutions, and communities. Three themes emerged that were specific to the student category and included systemic barriers within STEM courses and programs, difficulty in providing experiential learning for students, and the need for mentors and role models. Themes unique to the institutional level category included collaboration across K-12, two-year, and four-year institutions and institutional identity as HSIs. Other salient themes emerged for the student and institutional category including economic barriers, lack of access to technology, and barriers to data and research. Lastly, a theme on the external funding inequities was grouped into the community category and provided insight into the inequities related to securing grant funding. These themes shine light on some of the factors that impact rural HSI/eHSIs' ability to develop and sustain STEM programs while also providing ideas for addressing these challenges. Educators and administrative leaders at rural HSIs can interpret and implement the themes within the context of their own institutions. Themes also inform funders who seek targeted areas and equitable opportunities where they can invest in building STEM education capacity at rural HSIs. In this paper, the different themes derived from the conference data and three specific focus areas from those themes will be shared along with the recommendations for developing and sustaining STEM programs, collaborating on data analysis, and increasing the intentionality with which we serve Latinx students in pursuing STEM pathways. Implications for future practice related to culturally responsive practices and equitable efforts will be included in response to the recommendations provided from the conference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite over two decades of work looking at ways to increase diversity among science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) faculty, little has been done to increase the representation of faculty with disabilities. Moreover, despite recent attention to increasing the participation of students with disabilities in STEM education, this work has rarely been extended to include faculty with disabilities. This paper describes efforts taken by AccessADVANCE, a partnership between two institutions, to influence institutional change to increase the participation of women with disabilities among STEM faculty. Faculty and student successes are interrelated; the goal of AccessADVANCE is to identify effective interventions for systematically addressing issues impacting the career advancement and success of academic women with disabilities. In this paper we share lessons learned regarding policies, practices, and professional development efforts designed to reduce structural and workplace barriers and to make academic STEM careers more welcoming and accessible to women with disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the development and implementation of a Cross-Institutional Mentoring Communities (CIMC) program. CIMCs were designed to create networks of mentoring as a robust support and feedback mechanism for faculty facing compounded challenges related to their personal characteristics and/or specific identities, especially intersectional identities traditionally underrepresented in STEM (e.g., women of color, LGBTQIA+ faculty, faculty with disabilities), or simultaneous demands of an academic career and family caregiving responsibilities. Communities were formed with two to three junior and/or mid-career faculty, women, and men, from four midwestern institutions; each CIMC was facilitated by one or two more senior mentors. Virtual meetings were held at roughly bimonthly intervals. Mentors were regularly provided guidance on mentoring and topics to discuss with their mentoring groups. The CIMC networks facilitated career obstacle problem-solving, as well as enhanced a sense of community and belonging. The program worked to reduce the isolation, exclusion, and silencing of non-majority individuals within the typical academic career progression in addition to adapting to support during pandemic-altered faculty challenges. Key advantages of CIMCs included enabling inter-institutional exchanges and reflective learning among committee members about similarities and differences in climate and opportunities on different campuses. This paper will review the premise and literature on peer and peer-plus mentoring as well as describe the process of forming and supporting the CIMCs. Formative assessments for this ongoing program will also be discussed. This paper can serve as a guide for other institutions to form communities of support for diverse faculty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This lesson learned paper describes the faculty development program conducted to implement active learning methodologies in basic science courses from engineering degrees in a Chilean regional university. Contextualized in an Institutional Improvement Project (IIP) centered on students' STEM skills, the program aimed to impact student learning by enhancing instructors' teaching practices. The faculty development program had a continuous collaborative approach, where methodological experts accompanied a faculty team before and during the execution of the courses. The coaching methodology had three pillars: a collaborative process of design and creation of coursework materials guided by methodological experts, classroom and virtual support, and weekly reflection. In parallel, a follow-up process was applied to evaluate the program's impact. In the article, we present three main lessons learned from our program: the importance of the regular attendance and engagement of the faculty members in the coaching activities, the commitment of the departments to support innovative practices, and organizational conviction to invest in the installation of active learning practices. The authors will present this paper in a Lightning talk to discuss the lessons learned from the experience with the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation & Background Studies of Black students' experiences and journeys to success at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) show that the experiences of Black students are uniquely complex and need to be examined through a lens that can capture the distinct intersectionality of Black students in engineering programs. In a previous pilot study, we explored the experiences of two Black students at a PWI. That study captured their stories in which they described elements of engineering thriving and engineering identity that need to be further explored. There are currently no existing theories that explain Black student thriving in engineering. In this theory paper, we present a new framework, Black Student Thriving in Engineering (BSTiE, pronounced "bestie"), that combines the tenets of Engineering Thriving by Juliana Ge, Engineering Identity by Allison Godwin, and Black Student science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) Identity by Kristina Collins. We aim to show that at the intersection of these three frameworks there exists a unique space that can be used to capture the experiences of Black student thriving in engineering. Theoretical Frameworks & Sources Engineering Thriving Engineering thriving (ET) is seen as an output of achieving high measures of competency in the engineering culture and leans on the studies of thriving from a psychological context to support the need to achieve holistic growth. Engineering thriving is defined as the optimization of academic and personal competencies strengthened in the engineering culture that is then used for engineering success. Engineering Identity Engineering identity (EI) encompasses the way that students identify with the role of engineer. This theory pulls from broader role identity theory and situates itself within the culture of engineering. A student's EI comprises three components: interest in the subject, perceived recognition by others, and performance/competence beliefs, and in some cases a fourth component, self-awareness. Black Student STEM Identity Black student STEM identity (BSSI) is situated within the context of the external and internal environments where Black STEM students perceive their reflective identity (how they view themselves), their competence and ability, their values and interests, and their assimilation into STEM culture. These four perception components are influenced by Black students' genderbased racial identity. Significance Drawing from existing literature, we seek to identify overlapping elements in ET, EI, and BSSI. We are developing a culturally relevant theory of Black Student Thriving in Engineering (BSTiE, pronounced "bestie") situated at the cross-section of the aforementioned theories. In this paper, we aim to provide an overview of the origins of the theories to lay the foundation for their application in our context of interest. It is our belief that researchers can use BSTiE to understand how Black students thrive in engineering, with results that can give students a working model for how they can integrate their own individual culture to feel good, achieve holistic growth, and function well in engineering cultures at PWIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper investigates the effects of a values affirmation intervention on first-year students' of marginalized genders (which includes ciswomen, trans, and non-binary/third gender students) sense of belonging and identity in engineering. In this work, we examine marginalized genders because, while each of these groups has different experiences in engineering, they are also commonly impacted by the history of engineering as hyper masculine and heteronormative. Values affirmation interventions are short classroom activities designed to affirm important aspects of students' identities and thus help them cope with aversive experiences and resist negative messages (either internalized or environmental; McQueen & Klein, 2006). Values affirmations have been previously used in STEM settings to help address stereotype threat among women students (Cetinkaya, Hermann, & Kisbu-Sakarya, 2020), threats to science identity among Latinx students (Hernandez et al., 2017), and mathematics and socialization outcomes among STEM students (Peters et al., 2017; Turetsky et al., 2020). Most relevant to this study, values affirmations have been used to decrease performance gap between men and women studying engineering (Walton et al., 2015). However, values affirmation interventions are still new to engineering, and their specific effects on engineering identity and belonging are still unknown. In this paper, we document preliminary results from an experiment testing the effects of a values affirmation during the first few weeks of a first-year, first-semester engineering course. A total of 199 participants were randomly assigned to three conditions (control, challenges, and values). Before and after completing the intervention activity, participants completed measures of their belonging, engineering identity, future time perspective, and test anxiety. They also completed a comprehensive demographics section that asked about their gender identity. Two repeated-measures ANOVAs were used to test for pre/post differences in engineering identity recognition and engineering belonging across intervention groups (control, challenges, or values) and gender identity (cismen or any marginalized gender). There was a significant gender differences in recognition (p = .015), with women and non-binary students reporting lower recognition than cismen. Recognition scores increased over time for all participants (p < .001) but this improvement was not impacted by the intervention (p = .866). There was also a significant main effect of gender on belonging (p < .001), with cismen reporting higher belonging, and a significant interaction of gender and time (p = .068), in which students with marginalized genders reported improved belonging at post-test that was still significantly lower than their cismen peers. Participation in the intervention did not significantly impact belonging for students (p = .278). Although preliminary, these findings suggest that the intervention may not benefit this population as strongly as anticipated, although future work with a larger sample and additional longitudinal data points may yet find an effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning Assistants (LAs) are students trained to facilitate discussion among student groups for socially mediated learning. They are distinct from teaching assistants and tutors in that they receive additional pedagogical training based on constructivist models of teaching and learning (e.g., sociocultural theory [1]). Their role in the classroom is to facilitate and guide, often through questioning, in ways that will help students reach understanding on their own. Studies on the Learning Assistant model have demonstrated numerous benefits, such as increased conceptual understanding; an increase in positive affective dimensions such as belonging; and an increase in well-trained and enthusiastic future STEM teachers. While existing education research has illustrated positive impacts on students in STEM classrooms, less work has focused on the personal and epistemological development of the LAs themselves. In this paper we provide an analytical lens through which to assess epistemological development of LAs. This is critical to understanding and promoting LA development, but has been relatively overlooked to date. We define epistemology as the beliefs, ideas, and conceptions one has about the justification, nature, and source of knowledge. Within the Learning Assistant program, there are many avenues for participating LAs to reflect on and potentially rearrange their epistemology. To analyze LA epistemological development, we turn to Baxter Magolda's Epistemological Reflection Model, which describes student epistemological stances for the role of learners, peers, and instructors. In this paper, we adapt the model to account for the unique role of LAs in educational settings. Through analysis of semi-structured interviews and written assignments with LAs before and after participation in the LA program, we find that the role of the LA as narrated by the participants is orthogonal to that of peers, learners, and instructors in the classroom. Further, the role of the LA evolves over time, often as a result of incidents in the classroom that prompt LAs to confront and reorganize their beliefs about teaching, learning, and knowledge. Here, we operationalize the Role of the LA within the context of the Epistemological Reflection Model to articulate the ways LAs are distinct from both instructors and peers and discuss how instructors employing LAs or other near-peers may productively engage with their LAs' epistemological development. This study constitutes an extension on previous work and serves as a jumping-off point for further study on the affordances of pedagogical training for near-peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work-in-progress paper, we discuss our approach to contextualizing engineering learning in a cross-national girls' education program. In the program, the girl learners are equal stakeholders in the design of their learning model and in implementation of the engineering design process. Our learning ecosystem is designed using an asset-based mindset; this focuses on the strengths of the learners and allows for sustainable partnerships. Thus, it is necessary for international actors to understand what learners know and how they think prior to launching a collaborative education program. To achieve this, we designed and implemented a Recognition of Prior Knowledge (RPK) assessment for girl learners in rural Zimbabwe and Senegal. Our assessment recognizes students' prior knowledge relevant to the engineering curriculum and explores their self -beliefs. The assessment is used to better understand and challenge assumptions around the context, the language, and how students engage with technical projects in each setting. In many sub-Saharan countries, girls are not encouraged to pursue technical education. This negatively impacts their engineering beliefs, including motivation, self -efficacy, and self-concepts. In this research, we develop, contextualize, and validate an assessment tool to evaluate the engineering self-beliefs of girls before launching an engineering learning program. The assessment uses a combination of Draw an Engineer Test (DAET), and questions on STEM knowledge, design process, and teamwork. The assessments were first developed for Zimbabwean context, and then contextualized for Senegalese context, given the unique experiences of learners in each setting. In this paper, we first discuss the contextualization process for the assessments, and their implementation. We then present the findings from the analysis of the assessments. Finally, we discuss that prior knowledge recognition assessments are critical components of rigorous curriculum contextualization, especially when the program aims at building a multinational, reciprocal partnership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the MDaS S-STEM scholarship program. With the growing need for professionals with technology and critical thinking skills related to data analysis, the MDaS program employs established recruitment and retention activities for undergraduates in STEM fields, to encourage consideration of careers in data science related fields. The purpose of the program is to provide financial and professional support to low-income and underrepresented STEM students to improve their chances of completing degrees related to data science. This paper presents the motivation for the program, its goals, structure, research questions, and the design and implementation of its bootcamp cohort building component for engaging students. The results and experiences related to its first year of operation are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We implemented a project to create transformative changes in the STEM Education at a Hispanic-serving institution by revamping mathematics curriculum and building a system of support in mathematics learning. The project accomplished three main areas of curriculum development: (1) Restructuring the first-year mathematics courses at the college algebra level using a corequisite model; (2) designing and implementing active learning and problem-solving oriented curriculum in Calculus; (3) building a student support system of peer-tutoring and mentoring through peer-led team learning. High impact strategies were used for increasing and sustaining the participation of women and underrepresented minority students in computing. Strategies included hands-on active and collaborative learning pedagogy, experiential learning with real world relevance and applications, and curriculum that incorporates data analysis, data visualization and computational thinking. The support targeted introductory courses to provide early exposure and engagement. This paper describes the curriculum restructuring and development, which led to the institutional implementation and transformation of mathematics curriculum. The paper also reports on the success of the redesigned courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use an autoethnographic approach to describe first-hand the experiences and learnings from ideating, developing, and launching a book series enabling young learners, especially girls, to familiarize themselves with STEM. The primary authors are high school students and recent graduates, who are also founders of STEM initiatives for young learners. With the help of three engineering educators, they use their individual self-narratives to address the tripartite goals of this Innovation in Engineering Teaching Practices paper: 1) to share their story of why books for children developed by children are needed to promote STEM, 2) to delve deeper into learnings and accomplishments as they co-author the book series and reflect on how this work shaped their identities as storytellers and affected their interests in Engineering Education, and 3) to develop a deeper understanding of the broad question of how engineering-related interactions with peers helped develop their own commitment to the professions of engineering and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microcontroller programming is an essential part of K-12 Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. Experience with microcontroller programming is a gateway to many topics in this discipline, such as electrical engineering and programming. Hands-on experiences using microcontrollers are critical for student engagement and deeper understanding. However, as classes and field trips transitioned online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, educators encountered many difficulties adapting the microcontroller experiments to remote online education. One challenge is that traditional computer software for microcontroller experiments is not easy to set up. In remote education, students cannot be expected to install the software and do the configurations on their own computers at home. The second problem is that it is hard to monitor the students' progress and give feedback in real-time. Even though there are many online collaborative coding platforms, none of them support microcontrollers. In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive solution for remote education featuring microcontrollers. An online education platform was developed that allows the students to program the microcontroller using CircuitPython with no software installation or configuration. It also allows instructors to monitor students' work remotely in real-time. In addition, a microcontroller development board for experiments in which students apply programming knowledge to the function of traffic lights was designed. A Circuit-Python module for the development board was also developed, which allowed the students to focus more on the logic of the traffic lights and less on potential hardware issues. This online education solution can also be adapted to meet different needs by designing different development boards for different scenarios, including breadboard experiments to focus on circuits, adopting more powerful microcontrollers for advanced programming, and a variety of other applications for use in differentiated instruction. The proposed traffic lights engineering academy was provided to a local school district and got positive feedback. The experiences and best practices are also discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This "tricks of the trade" paper seeks to support new researchers interested in conducting discipline-based educational research outside of the classroom setting. Based on national calls, we need to increase science literacy and expanding our efforts to informal science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning will support these calls to action. Traditionally, discipline-based educational research in STEM has been conducted in typical classroom environments. This can include classrooms from preschool through higher education. However, there is an ever-widening set of opportunities afforded to people to learn about STEM careers and STEM topics outside of the classroom. To better understand the impacts of informal education experiences, it is important to research outside of the classroom. While research into these experiences is expanding, conducting research outside of the classroom setting presents its own unique set of challenges. The authors on this paper have all conducted STEM research and assessment in a variety of informal learning settings including youth organizations, science resource centers, community outreach programs, and museums across different age groups. In this paper, we discuss some of the challenges present in informal learning settings along with tips for how to plan for and overcome issues that will inevitably arise. We also highlight the unique benefits of working outside of a traditional classroom. By sharing our "tricks of the trade," we hope to empower developing researchers to explore the impacts of informal learning in STEM. [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]

This evidence-based paper investigated the impact of a virtual job shadowing program on firstyear university students' retention in STEM majors, knowledge of STEM careers, and motivation to continue in STEM majors. Research shows that most students enter STEM majors with little knowledge of what a career in their specified major does. In order to address this problem, this study provided first-year students the opportunity to job shadow a near peer mentor who was participating in a cooperative education program. As a result of the impact of Covid-19 on intervention activities, the development of a virtual job shadowing experience for first-year students was designed and implemented. This paper outlines the details of implementation of such a virtual experience, the challenges encountered, and students' overall experience with the virtual program. The virtual shadowing experiences consisted of virtual meetings between the first-year student and a near peer mentor. During the meeting, the mentor and first-year student conversed about the company where the co-op student was working, major-specific coursework, career-related information, skills required by the profession, goal-setting strategies, and how to overcome challenges. The main questions investigated include: (1) what learning experiences were provided to first-year students?; (2) to what extent were students satisfied with their virtual shadowing experience?; (3) what strengths were identified to ensure implementation fidelity? and (4) what areas for improvement were identified to ensure the quality of the virtual learning experiences? During the 2020-2021 year, 34 students participated in at least one virtual shadowing experience at one of 25 companies who participated in the program. Data collection included a survey completed by students before and after they had experienced the program, post program surveys by student mentors, and focus group interviews with first-year students. Results show overall positive experiences from the virtual program. Of those who responded to the survey regarding the virtual shadowing experience (n=28), 93% somewhat or strongly agreed that the experience met their expectations, 96% somewhat or strongly agreed that the experience allowed them to learn about industry, and 92% somewhat or strongly agreed that they would recommend the experience to others. In addition, 83% responded that they enjoyed their experience "a lot". Results from the student survey also show 85% of students stated that the job shadowing experience makes them want to continue in their major. This paper addresses how the implementation can be improved and what services may need to be added for future virtual job shadowing experiences to improve students' learning experiences in a virtual job shadowing program. [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]

Designing strategies to implement diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) best practices have become a mainstream topic of conversation in the workplace. Surface-level changes are questioned, and more consequential actions and practices are sought out by employees (administrators and faculty in higher education) and their clientele (students) in industry and in academia. Both the academy and the corporate world have launched initiatives showcasing their efforts to recruit and retain diverse workforces within the STEM pipeline [1 - 2]. Still, various studies have demonstrated that women were more likely removed from the workforce or faced significant career setbacks as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic [3]. With a focus on women in Physics, this paper will provide a synthesis of the major research findings on the potential impact of the pandemic on both new and existing inequities faced by women on STEM career trajectories. These findings include those enlightened by informal discussions with women physicists at varying stages of their careers. We seek to uncover and identify how the pandemic may have further exacerbated those inequities already present in the workplace. By comparing and contrasting the underlying inequities and the role that the pandemic may have played in the corporate and academic workforces, we will explore and identify potential DEI solutions and best practices that organizations and institutions might implement to better support and retain their current workforces. For example, the pandemic has forced organizations and individuals to rethink work-life integration as they have attempted to achieve a new balance in what is often referred to as the new normal. Though neither academic nor industry STEM fields have yet found gender parity in their respective workforces, through a cross-sector comparison, this paper will address a fundamental shift that needs to occur in the way effort and performance is measured to retain and return female talent into the STEM pipeline. It is both timely and critical to take more immediate action to address gender-related DEI issues and their impact both pre- and post-pandemic on women in Physics and STEM career paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of STEM jobs is growing so rapidly that there are projected shortages of up to 3.5 million STEM workers in the United States in the next five years. Additionally, STEM fields, particularly engineering, lack diversity with female students and students of color underrepresented in STEM majors and STEM careers. For example, while 25% of the U.S. population are people of color, this group only constitutes 11% of STEM professionals. Similarly, people of color represent 27 percent of the adult population but only 11 percent of STEM professionals Thus, the engineering and workforce development and outreach activities of our Engineering Research Center (ERC) are designed to promote STEM pathways that both increase and diversify the pool of K-12 students seeking STEM careers. 2021 was a year filled with new challenges and opportunities for learning and outreach. This paper reports on a high school outreach program designed to promote interest in STEM, with a focus on biomedical engineering, that is part of a large Engineering Research Center. Initially intended to be an on-campus program with authentic research experiences, the outreach program was forced to move online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This shift was accompanied by both expected and unexpected obstacles, as well as opportunities. This paper reports on the evaluation of the online engineering outreach program and discusses the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of online STEM outreach for high school students. The outreach program was a partnership of an Engineering Research Center with a local high school in a diverse, urban school district. 26 students were selected as participants, and 24 students attended at least a single meeting on Google Meet. Of these students, 71% were female and 29% were male, from various racial and ethnic backgrounds. Students were invited to participate in the six-week outreach program. We provided STEM kits for students to explore biomedical engineering from their homes. STEM kits included a wheat germ DNA extraction activity, BioRad's pGLO plasmid investigation kit, brine shrimp cryopreservation simulation lab, and a MudWatt bio-energy kit. The program was facilitated virtually by undergraduate and graduate students, with different graduate engineering and science researchers joining as guest speakers and experts each week. Expected obstacles included restructuring the length of daily time allotted for the program, as well as a summer schedule; student recruitment incentives; homelife interference; and a shift in planned lessons and investigations. Unforeseen obstacles included managing and encouraging student participation; supply delivery mishaps; and perhaps most significantly - rates of success for at-home experiments. While these obstacles required program facilitators to adjust the way they originally envisioned and planned the program, the shift to online instruction also resulted in opportunities. For example, a larger number of affiliated STEM graduate and postdoctoral students were willing to lead video chats with high school participants about their post-secondary education journey, more flexible hours for participants in high school with unique homelife situations, and lessons focused on professionalism and networking within the STEM fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss the spatial visualization curriculum: Developing Spatial Thinking, endorsed by ENGAGE, and the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test: Rotation test results from participants in an NSF S-STEM-funded sophomore bridge program for engineering majors, known as the Engineering Fast-Forward Program. This paper also discusses the impact the spatial visualization curriculum has had on the students in the Fast-Forward program. The Fast-Forward program, which has been offered every summer from 2017 to 2021, is designed for students who have unmet financial needs which are determined by the financial aid office on campus. This program seeks to retain students in engineering programs as well as increase the number of people in the engineering workforce. Participants in the Engineering Fast-Forward Program take Statics and Mechanics of Materials, Calculus III, and Professional Planning with Spatial Visualization in the summer before their sophomore year. These classes normally taken in the Fall of their Sophomore years give the students an opportunity to get a head start in their Sophomore curriculum. Professional Planning with Spatial Visualization is a course where students are taught from the Developing Spatial Thinking curriculum as well as participating in other professional development activities such as resume building, mock interviews, and industry visits. The participants take the Purdue Spatial Visualization: Rotations (hereafter referred to as the PSVT:R) as a pre and post-assessment in the course. Statistical analysis is completed using the results from these tests including data from all five summers. The statistical analyses included: paired sample t-tests, independent sample t-tests, and repeated measure ANOVA tests. The goal of the analysis was to see if students from traditionally underrepresented groups (URG) had a higher level of improvement on the PSVT:R than students from non-underrepresented groups (non-URG). For the purpose of the statistical analysis of this work requiring similar sample sizes for the two groups, non-URG students are White and Asian males with URG students being the students from the cohorts identifying with any other demographic descriptions. The results of the statistical analysis show a statistical significance from pre to post results for all of the students. URG and non-URG students' scores are increasing from pre- to post-test at the same rate. However, URG students start and end with lower scores than the non-URG students. We conclude that the Developing Spatial Thinking curriculum is improving the spatial visualization skills of all students, yet is unfortunately not closing the gap between the two groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the work-in-progress to develop a STEM outreach program providing 9th-12th grade high-school aged learners with an introduction to biologically inspired underwater robotics using lighter-than-air (LTA) vehicles. This work includes prototype kit development targeting a comparable cost per kit as SeaPerch ($179) and SeaGlide ($249) and instructional materials comprised of demonstration videos and standards-aligned written curricular content to facilitate classroom implementation. LTA vehicles are utilized specifically for their unique ability to demonstrate fundamental concepts applicable to both aircraft and underwater vehicles including structural analysis, aerodynamics and hydrodynamics, biologically inspired propulsion, systems engineering, and swarm dynamics, without requiring student access to pools or other bodies of water. Of modern naval relevance, LTA vehicles provide an opportunity to demonstrate key concepts applicable to submarine design without dependence on access to water. The Naval Research and Development Framework and corresponding Addendum speaks to the need for "[u]ndersea dominance...as the Navy designs and build the next generation of strategic and tactical submarines" including "[e]xpanded use of autonomous undersea vehicles..." [1]. Furthermore, the Addendum's Integrated Research Portfolio on Warfighter Supremacy speaks to training and education as well as development of biologically inspired autonomous systems. Current interest in biologically inspired vehicles is documented in the Navy's proposed FY22 budget [2]. Handson robotics activities using LTA platforms provide a novel opportunity to develop the future naval workforce by promoting interest and learning in underwater and unmanned systems without the need for access to a pool or lake to test in. This paper documents work-in-progress to develop a SeaPerch-inspired educational kit. The kit will include three hulls - balloons to be filled with helium in shapes that idealize the shapes of sea creatures: a hemisphere to emulate a jellyfish, an ellipsoid to emulate a tuna, and a flying wing to emulate a ray. Both propeller and flapping propulsion options will be provided to expose learners to traditionally and biologically-inspired propulsors. By using idealized geometries, fundamentals of aero/hydrodynamics like added mass effects that are often ignored because they are relatively small for aircraft but of relevance for submarines and LTA vehicles can be demonstrated. Navy supported STEM programming such as SeaPerch, and more recently SeaGlide, have been enormously successful for fostering an interest in engineering and robotics with participants in all 50 states and 35 countries with growth from 22 regional SeaPerch competitions in 2014 to 89 regional competitions in 2018 [4]. The SeaPerch kit-based structure has proven pivotal for widespread adoption, though access to water is a barrier. The described activities take a logical step in kit-based naval STEM outreach activities, without the constraint of water, and targeting high-school aged learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education institutions experience a paramount problem of enrollment, retention, and attrition, which is particularly acute within the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Based on the National Center for Education Statistics, 48 percent of bachelor's degree students who began STEM programs between 2003 and 2009 had left them by spring 2009, 28 percent switched to a non-STEM major, and 20 percent left the program and exited the educational institution without earning a degree. That said, nearly half of STEM students change majors to a non-STEM program, perform deficiently compared to their peers in other programs, or leave the educational institution before completing their degree and/or not earning academic credentials. Students' attrition occurs most frequently in the first and second year of their academic programs; in fact, more than 60 percent of dropouts occur in these years. These rates are especially troubling for undergraduate STEM students from historically marginalized communities. Several factors play a significant role in STEM undergraduate students' attrition, such as poor-quality teaching and advising, curriculum difficulty, lack of belonging, lack of interaction between students and faculty, financial difficulties, and lack of hands-on project activities. The goals of this paper are to (1) identify the main factors that hinder undergraduate STEM students' interest, success, and perseverance, particularly those from marginalized communities, which contribute to the change in their career path or them dropping out before earning their degree; and (2) identify the actions that can be taken by educational institutions to increase undergraduate STEM student's enrollment and retention while decreasing attrition. To achieve these objectives, this study: (1) identified the main factors contributing to these problems of utmost importance to academia from previous literature; (2) collected and analyzed enrollment and retention data from Florida International University (FIU), one of the largest minority serving institutions in the United States; and (3) identified strategies and best practices aimed at addressing these paramount difficulties within undergraduate education through literature review. The data collected regarding retention rates of STEM and Engineering and Computing students showed that approximately (a) 17 percent of students that started their programs between 2008 and 2014 were not retained after their first year, while 8 percent of students that started their programs on the following years were not retained after their first year; (b) 28 and 15 percent, respectively, after their second year; (c) 35 and 21 percent after their third year; (d) 40 and 22 percent after their fourth year; and (e) 41 and 22 percent after their fifth year. This research proposes several strategies and best practices including orientation programs, early academic advising, peer-to-peer mentoring and tutoring, math review sessions/courses, early warning systems to identify potential switch-outs or dropouts, equitable financial aid mechanisms, and creation of more hands-on project activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January 2020 East Carolina University (ECU) in partnership with Lenoir Community College (LCC), Pitt Community College (PCC), and Wayne Community College (WCC) was awarded an S-STEM Track 3 Grant (Grant number: 1930497). The purpose of this grant was to support lowincome students at each partner institution, to research best practices in recruiting and retaining low-income students at both universities and community colleges, and to research how such programs influence the transfer outcomes from two-year to four-year schools. This grant provides scholarship support for two cohorts of students, one starting their engineering studies in Fall 2020 and the other starting their engineering studies in Fall 2021. Each cohort was to be comprised of 40 students including 20 students at ECU and 20 students divided among the three partnering community colleges. In addition to supporting student scholarships, this grant supported the establishment of new student support mechanisms and enhancement of existing support systems on each campus. This project involved the creation of a faculty mentoring program, designing a summer bridge program, establishing a textbook lending library, and enhancing activities for students in a living-learning community, expansion of university tutoring initiatives to allow access for community college students, and promoting a new peer mentoring initiative. The program emphasizes career opportunities including promoting on-campus career fairs, promoting internship and co-op opportunities, and bringing in guest speakers from various industry partners. A goal of the program was to allow community college students to build relationships with university students and faculty so they can more easily assimilate into the student body at the university upon transfer. This paper presents the challenges presented to the project in the first year and the pivoting that occurred due the pandemic. Data is presented regarding recruitment of scholars in both cohorts and retention of scholars from year 1 to year 2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the lived pandemic experiences of civil and mechanical engineering students participating in a S-STEM scholarship program during the 2020-2021 academic year. The program, launched in 2020, is designed to facilitate the transfer of students from a community college to an urban-serving research university co-located in a Midwestern city. Findings reveal how the pandemic both challenged students and illuminated resiliency and sources of on- and off-campus support. A description of how findings have informed program goals and implementation is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maker programs, which involve hands-on production of physical or digital artifacts, are an engaging way to have youth pursue their personal interests as they learn the engineering design process (EDP) [1], [2]. Autistic youth often have deep interests related to STEM [3] and autistic college students are drawn to majors in STEM fields at higher rates than the general population [4]. However, young autistic adults often have difficulty joining or remaining in the STEM workforce [5]. With the goal of creating maker programming to enable autistic youth to engage in the EDP with peers and to prepare autistic youth for future careers, a multidisciplinary team created the Inventing, Designing, and Engineering for All Students (IDEAS) Maker Program. IDEAS brings together experts in maker education, autism inclusion, engineering, co-design, and research to bring interest-driven maker clubs into autism-inclusion public schools in New York City. The following paper describes the ways in which IDEAS supports autistic learners in both in-person and online formats, and how IDEAS teachers responded to adversity by redesigning the curriculum for remote learning, editing materials to best suit their students in a remote environment, finding opportunities for students to socialize and share their maker projects online in unique ways, and ultimately providing an enriching and unique experience for students during Maker Club. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the gender gap of students pursuing degrees and working in STEM fields has been decreasing over the last few decades, a large gap persists in engineering; with women earning only 19.8% of undergraduate degrees and women of color earning less than 3%. One successful STEM intervention is a program based out of a natural history museum in a large urban city. This program trains and mentors a select group of urban high school women (100% low-income: 85% under-represented minorities) through a curated curriculum in the first year, followed by persistent mentorship by a scientist for the last three years of high school. The alumnae of the program all graduate high school, with 97% attending college (as opposed to 51% of women who graduate from the local school district), and 89% earning a 4-year degree, of which 54% are in STEM (vs. 1% of Black students in district). However, most of the alumnae now working in STEM are in the natural sciences with none in engineering. Thus, to increase the number of future engineers and disseminate lessons that can be transferred to other curriculum and mentoring contexts, the goals of this project were to (1) design a new training and support program for adult engineers who mentor students. (2) Enhance the cultural relevancy of the curricula for students and their mentors. (3) Increase awareness among these mentors about implicit biases and stereotype barriers that impede the advancement of all women in STEM education and workforce. (4) Increase the number of students in the program pursuing higher education and careers in engineering. To meet those goals, the curriculum of the successful program was modified to feature the engineering design process in a culturally responsive manner through collaboration with an engineering college and school of education to create the new program. In addition to the curriculum, this paper demonstrates the conceptual frameworks of Communities of Practice, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, and a technique called Transformational Intergroup Dialogue to scaffold the emergence of mutually satisfying mentor-mentee relationships among individuals of differing social identities. To accomplish this, a mixed methods research design, capturing qualitative and quantitative data is being used. Qualitative methods include student journals, class observations, interviews, and focus groups. While quantitative data is collected from mentors through an Implicit Bias survey administered through Harvard University's Project Implicit. Students' interests and general dispositions toward engineering are gleaned from the Student Attitudes toward STEM Survey. The STEM career inventory survey is used to measure changes in young women's self-efficacy in STEM, interest in STEM careers, and 21st century learning skills. To further track and clarify the development of student interest, the students and mentors are using a data log to record the frequency and quality of their contacts with each other. Lessons from this research will have impacts that extend beyond a museum and into large urban academic and industrial research sectors. It will contribute to knowledge about gender-specific interventions that develop interest, self-efficacy, and persistence in STEM career pathways, especially for women in engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This NSF Advanced Technological Education (ATE) research and development project aims to design and test a Backtracking Technique for understanding the pathways students take through college and into careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and career and technical education (CTE), with the focus of this project on information technology (IT). The project gathers data about current and former students who started in the same cohort, includes institutional research data (e.g., grades, demographics, course-taking) and merges these data with employment data from surveys and lived experiences obtained from interviews. These data are analyzed to identify potential pathways and critical junctions that may lead to student success or other outcomes. The research team is led by a doctoral granting institution and a community college, and includes four additional community colleges that collectively serve rural and urban student populations. In this paper we share the potential of the Backtracking Technique to generate contextualized career pathway data for institutions and create visualizations that can aid in institutional decision-making through a study pilot. The pilot is an initial effort to test the project's aims of integrating institutional data with phenomenological data to model student progression through post-secondary STEM programs. The analysis will identify and verify influencers that support or hinder student success. Quantitative data analyses will consist of descriptive and comparative methods, which will be verified and informed by open coding and thematic analysis of the qualitative data. We share how the systematic investigation of institutional and phenomenological data used in the Backtracking Technique has the potential to: (1) generate practical knowledge about academic/career pathways in information technology for use by stakeholders; (2) identify and examine relationships among these pathways, students experiences, and psychosocial factors; and (3) add to the analytical methods available to institutional research professionals to document, investigate, and visualize student pathway information using data dashboards. This ATE project has great potential to transform the technician preparation for the advanced technology fields that drive the nation's economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first presents an overview of the objectives and the accomplishments of the S-STEM ACCESS project and then focuses on a specific ACCESS program activity - the technical and career-development seminars and panels - which support ACCESS scholars' knowledge and skills development and contribute toward achieving several project objectives. The technical seminars exposed students to state-of-the-art topics and industry practices related to the rapidly evolving field of cybersecurity. The career-development seminars included topics on obtaining security clearances, understanding different cybersecurity workforce career paths, as well as on pursuing graduate degrees and research-centered careers. Since seminars and panels were open to all West Virginia University (WVU) students, they helped publicize the ACCESS program and the B.S. and Area of Emphasis (AoE) in Cybersecurity and therefore served as a recruitment mechanism. The results of the external evaluation showed that the seminars and panels were of exceptional value to students who unanimously gave them high positive scores. Qualitative responses to the survey and focus group input revealed that students appreciated the seminars for providing opportunities to connect with professionals and peers, to learn about potential career paths, to gain the knowledge and confidence needed to successfully secure an internship position, and other benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this project was to examine the efficacy of a Virtual eSTEM Peer Mentoring Program to assist underrepresented minority women (UMW) in developing mentoring skills that are culturally responsive; self-efficacy in STEM; science identities; and to promote their intent to persist in their STEM degree and subsequent STEM careers. During the Summer 2020, graduate and undergraduate students enrolled in STEM programs at two historically black institutions were recruited to participate in a virtual peer mentorship program to broaden participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). A total of 34 students participated in the program during the 2020/2021 academic year (n = 8 mentors, n = 26 mentees) and were assigned a role of mentor or mentee based on their qualifications for the program. Additionally, all participants completed targeted online peer mentor or mentee training (based on their assigned roles), engaged in a mentoring relationship, and were provided the opportunity to attend STEM webinars featuring UMWs with careers in STEM. Of the 34 program participants, twenty-two identified as underrepresented minority women (UMW) mentee participants (four participants identified as male; their experiences are reported separately). Participants were required to participate in focus groups and individual interviews once the program concluded during Spring 2021. The current paper focuses on the experiences of the UMW mentees. Following a case study design, the current project examined the following research questions; 1) How, if at all, was participation in the online peer mentee program useful in furthering students' STEM self-efficacy?, 2) How, if at all, was participation in the online peer mentee program useful in furthering students' sense of community in STEM?, 3) How, if at all, was participation in the online peer mentee program useful in furthering students' development of a STEM identity? And 4) How, if at all, was participation in the online peer mentee program useful in furthering students' intent to persist in a STEM degree program and, ultimately, their intent to pursue a STEM career pathway? [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]

The focus of our current National Science Foundation (NSF: IUSE Award #1912253) project is the degree to which spaced retrieval practice, as compared to massed, increases performance on an end-of-semester exam in 10 different STEM courses (e.g., engineering, chemistry, biology). This paper presents an intermediate analysis examining the psychometric properties of the retrieval-practice exercises in two specific courses. The critical question is whether the psychometric properties of the exercises differ depending on whether they are spaced or massed. Preliminary results indicate that spacing does not consistently affect reliability of items, but can impact item difficulty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PAtENT (Pathways to Entrepreneurship) is a pilot program for an alternate pathway allowing doctoral candidates in STEM programs to satisfy capstone degree requirements by applying for patents. This model and the PAtENT program aim to bring greater alignment between doctoral degrees and the rapidly changing employment landscape, and have the potential to modernize the STEM Ph.D. In order to create flexible pathways to doctoral degrees that catalyze innovations, institutional support is needed to sustain exploratory and interdisciplinary research. A total of seven faculty and four graduate students participated in a qualitative study of PAtENT to address the overall research questions of a) what appeals to you about this alternative pathway, and b) what is needed to support alternative pathways in STEM doctoral degrees? This short paper describes the pilot program, its context, and presents findings from the qualitative study that inform next steps for all institutions interested in advancing research innovations in STEM educational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a critical shortage of STEM teachers in high-need fields, especially in Computer Science, Engineering/Engineering Technology, in the southern Appalachian region. This paper describes an NSF funded Noyce Track 1 Teacher Recruiting program at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) awarded in 2019. The program is administered in partnership with local high-need school districts in the First Congressional District of Tennessee as well as four nearby nonprofit educational organizations, namely the Gray Fossil Site/ETSU Natural History Museum, the Hands-On Museum, the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, and the Bays Mountain Planetarium, and three summer science camps: the ETSU Governor's School, the ETSU Renaissance Camp, and the ETSU Computing/Technology Camp. The program has three parts: 1) a summer teaching internship program for undergraduate STEM majors designed to recruit students into the teaching profession, 2) scholarships and mentoring for a Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program, and 3) a mentoring program and continuing professional development for newly minted teachers to retain them as teachers. It is focused on Physics, Chemistry, Engineering/Engineering Technology, Computer Science, and Mathematics. The heart of the program is a 4+1 bachelors/post-baccalaureate program in which students obtaining undergraduate degrees in high-need STEM fields are recruited for the MAT program. Thus far two cohorts of seven students completed the internship programs and all showed interest to become STEM teacher in their respective fields. Of them one student completed the MAT program and currently teaching in high-need school. We anticipate that ETSU Noyce program will create a group of teachers who will be able to inspire future generations of STEM professionals in Northeast Tennessee region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shares the experiences of a group of S-STEM scholarship students as they progressed through their first year of undergraduate mathematics education including a math placement exam, a math focused bridge program, and calculus course(s). In addition, connections between student experiences and their math identity development were investigated with the goal of better understanding math identity formation. The authors used a mixed-methods approach to explore the math-related experiences of 12 students over the first year of participation in an NSF-funded S-STEM program. Data includes answers to select survey questions and transcripts of student focus groups. First, each student case was examined to see if/how their responses to math-related survey items changed between pre and post survey administrations. Of particular interest were responses to a math-identity related item, "I see myself as a math person." Along with this, transcripts from focus group interviews were reviewed for quotes from these same students related to their math experiences, skill development, sense of math identity, and efficacy. Most students' responses to the math identity survey item either remained the same or changed only slightly however, students' focus group reflections on their math experiences were wide-ranging. The results of this study provide initial evidence that the summer bridge program is a positive experience for students, but the math placement exam is a barrier to the development of positive math identity, especially for underrepresented students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manufacturing makes a tremendous contribution to the U.S. economy by increasing gross domestic product and creating high-paying jobs as well as supporting all other sectors. The integrated nature of manufacturing is evident in its symbiotic relationship with innovation, national security, and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. Moreover, manufacturing is increasingly important to the balanced education of engineers in all disciplines. However, today's manufacturing is undergoing the greatest change in more than 100 years, and the current skills gap causes serious concerns about the ability of manufacturers to fill critical positions. Manufacturing needs a well-trained workforce that possesses skills like problem-solving and critical thinking to make effective decisions at all stages of the manufacturing process. One of the fundamental skills is to make good decisions at early stages that facilitate, not impede, the manufacturing process down the road. Traditional curricula designs tend to focus on a specific discipline, creating a silo effect rather than viewing manufacturing as a connected, systemic process needing decisions made with respect to the entire product development life cycle. This study investigates this belief by 1) examining if students understand product manufacturing as a connected, systemic process, 2) exploring in which manufacturing knowledge area, if any, students are deficient, and 3) analyzing if these knowledge gaps exist for both engineering and business students. To study these possible gaps, this research proposes a holistic design approach for manufacturing education to provide students with an integrated view of how products in the real world metamorphose from an idea into the hands of end-consumers. A dynamic decision making framework integrating product manufacturing topics across engineering and business courses is developed to highlight system thinking and decision making in the context of the entire product life cycle (i.e., product design, manufacturing process, manufacturing system, and business process). Utilizing the Understanding by Design model, we first established clear learning objectives associated with students' basic understanding of manufacturing knowledge in connection with product development life cycle based on Bloom's taxonomy (i.e., remember and understand). Next, the team created an assessment to collect acceptable evidence for the defined learning outcomes. Finally, learning modules were created by an interdisciplinary team of instructors to introduce the related manufacturing topics. A pilot study with current engineering and business undergraduate courses was conducted and pre- and post-survey data was collected and analyzed. The results of the study and insights from the research team are provided at the end of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual reality (VR) has made a successful transition from the entertainment domain to the skills training domain. As expected, there is now considerable research being conducted on utilizing the affordances of VR in higher education. A properly designed VR-based learning environment can engage students not only cognitively but also affectively and behaviorally. This paper provides details of the process of developing VR lessons for introductory level undergraduate courses in STEM disciplines. The lessons were prepared using a web-based VR development environment. Some challenges in developing these lessons were identified, and are shared. The impact of the VR lessons on students' perceptions and attitudes was analyzed using self-reported data that were gathered through surveys. The results of the data analysis are included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broadening participation in entrepreneurship is an important topic and critical challenge that continues to gain attention and intervention programs within the STEM entrepreneurial ecosystem. However, the challenges of people of color in STEM entrepreneurship are amplified in technology intensive and the high-growth space of STEM innovation. Researchers, practitioners, academic scholars, and policy-makers have focused on training entrepreneurs of color in an inclusive way that considers both similarities and the uniqueness of the individuals that may be interested in a career as an entrepreneur. The National Science Foundation I-Corps is one such training program. Established in 2012, the I-Corps program brings NSF-funded researchers and industry expert together in an entrepreneurship and innovation training course. The expectation is that the training will lead to a growth in the translation of "deep tech" and in the creation of entrepreneurial ventures. The I-Corps program consists of both regional training as well as a national training program. Participation in the national program requires the formation of a team that consists of a Technical Lead, Entrepreneurial Lead, and a Business Mentor. Under-represented Groups (URGs) and women participation in I-Corps has been relatively low since inception. In this paper, we use survey data to explore the relationship amongst the differing roles and their perception as a participant in the national I-Corps training program. We consider demographics and gender identity to explore the experiences of the National I-Corps program participants. Additionally, we explore the impact of the engagement of the I-Corps staff with the participants and the perception of inclusivity and biasness within the training program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite helping to solve problems in society and the environment and enabling financial independence, a disproportionately low number of women enter engineering careers. Contributing factors may include a lack of female role models and activities that would increase the interest and confidence in STEM pathways during the developing years. Our university has initiated activities to provide exposure to role models and STEM activities to young females. This year Ron Burton Training Village (RBTV) started a new STEM program for female students grades 6-11 which would span over 6 years. The students would attend a different experience every weekend and conclude the yearly experience with a capstone project. Our university partnered with RBTV for one weekend workshop experience. The program was intended to be an in-person event but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this program was conducted synchronously through Zoom virtual meetings. Our university is well known for "hands-on" learning, and we decided to keep the experience hands-on even if it had to be virtual. Students participated in STEM-related hands-on projects, connecting them to real life applications and boosting students' interests in different STEM disciplines. The program represents part of our university's ongoing efforts to interest young women in STEM. The core of the half-day workshop was three 45-minute STEM modules: Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The students rotated between the different workshops. The three modules are presented in this paper. Civil Engineering project was Soil Testing, Electrical Engineering project was Food Battery, and Computer Science project was Smart Picker. 38 female students participated in this new STEM program. A survey was conducted at the end of the event to evaluate the content of the program. Students were excited about our program, learning, and experiencing different fields of engineering. We received very positive feedback from the students. The students really enjoyed the hands-on experience. Students reflected that they would like to participate in more STEM related activities in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]