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There are critical conversations happening right now around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in engineering professions and engineering educational settings. Educational settings need to prepare students to collaborate with diverse populations in their engineering workplace. DEI concepts can be incorporated in first-year engineering curriculum to enhance student design and exposure to diverse cultures during this unique design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) teaching module. This paper describes the development of a DfAM workshop that incorporates historical and cultural themes. Students' perception of the design experience will be measured using an engineering self-efficacy validated tool, pre- and post-workshop survey, and measured design outcomes (CAD model) after engaging in a DfAM workshop. The workshop uses activities guided by the Kern Engineering Entrepreneurial Network (KEEN) framework which includes curiosity, connections, and creating value. The workshop introduces the entrepreneurial-minded learning (EML) with DEI efforts through the design prompt. It is beneficial to make connections from historical designs to inspire novel approaches to design opportunities. Reflecting on individual's unique designs and their individual influences from historical approaches can bring awareness. It can be difficult to initiate conversations around DEI, especially in engineering design classrooms. The incorporation of DEI in this DfAM workshop helps to naturally coach students to engage in an inclusive classroom environment where they feel an increased sense of belonging and become more socially aware of others differing cultures by talking about one's own unique background with classmates. This workshop spearheads discussions on diversity, equity, and inclusion focused on engineering design. Historical inspiration can increase student creativity and improve sensitivity and appreciation for other cultures. During the DfAM workshop, students search for art forms from their own cultural background or a significant time in history that are then used as inspiration to create unique logos and CAD designs to then produce 3D printed models. Presentations are made to explain the individual's design. Student work is displayed in an art gallery format and viewed by the entire class. Preliminary evidence showed that the students enjoyed presenting designs with cultural elements. The presentations elicited questions from fellow classmates that provided opportunities for cultural conversations and an in-class discussion that promoted inclusion in the engineering classroom. This work provides a pathway for educators to implement DEI in engineering design activities that can better prepare students for the future of work in a diverse, equitable population. [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 investigate the influence of a job-shadowing program on first year students' retention in STEM majors. Many students enter STEM majors with little knowledge about what a career in their fields entail and may be discouraged from persisting in those majors if they face obstacles in their first-year STEM classes. This NSF-funded IUSE project developed an intervention to address this issue by pairing first-year STEM students with a near-peer mentor currently enrolled in a co-operative education program and allowing them to job shadow the mentor at their place of employment. The goal of the job-shadowing was to allow first-year students to increase their knowledge about careers in STEM fields, and their self-efficacy to succeed in STEM majors. The program was implemented for three years, with three cohorts of first year students, with 136 total students participating across the three years. Results of three years of implementation of this intervention will be discussed, as well as the lessons learned from shifting the intervention from face-to-face activities (touring the company, observing hands-on activities, participating in company events), to a virtual shadowing program during the covid-19 pandemic. Findings indicate that students who participated in the job shadowing program were retained at a higher rate than a comparison group with similar demographics and academic profile. Students found the program to be valuable to learn about STEM industries and reported that participating in job shadowing increased their interest in remaining in their majors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chemical engineering education needs a new rational approach commensurate with the evolution and expansion it has undergone via the inclusion of key elements from several fields: pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, biotechnology, and food and consumer products, among others. With the expansion of industry and growing needs for communication and leadership skills in the 21st century, practicing engineers are expected to be technically knowledgeable and professionally skillful. However, the typical chemical engineering undergraduate core curriculum has not adapted to prepare students for the multiple needs encompassed by the chemical industry. Lack of industry-relevant examples/topics and applications in the course contents results in less motivated and/or engaged students. Students therefore often struggle to identify with the profession and are not ready for the workforce when they graduate. This NSF PFE: RIEF project examines a unique experience where a student-faculty-industry integrated community is created to help bridge the gap between industry needs and the competencies developed within chemical engineering programs. The project's main goal is to better understand how implementing up-to-date industry problems into one of the sophomore chemical engineering courses impacts students' engineering identity formation and self-efficacy development. To analyze the impacts of the intervention, this project employs design-based research (DBR) approach to guide the development, implementation, and evaluation of materials and methods reflecting the proposed synergistic model for a course and program design. Implementing up-to-date industry-relevant problems into the course will foster student-industry-faculty engagement (PI, engineering Co-PI, and course instructor), develop student knowledge, skills, and abilities needed in the chemical engineering world today and in the future, and support professional identity formation. Moreover, industry-student engagement through the methods proposed will develop students' societal and environmental awareness. This paper provides findings from Spring 2021 that will be presented in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Grantees Poster Session during the 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaporative cooling, used in many industrial and residential applications, is a complex coupled heat and mass transfer process where fluid cooling occurs due to water vaporization and the conversion of sensible to latent heat. In this paper, the development, testing, and implementation of a small, highly visual, Low-Cost Desktop Learning Module (LCDLM) for demonstration of evaporative cooling phenomena in the undergraduate classroom will be presented. The newly developed cross-flow direct evaporative cooler module is constructed from inexpensive expanded aluminum packing media, an off-the-shelf, battery-powered computer fan, a simple water distribution system with a battery-powered pump, and clear acrylic housing. The LCDLM is operated in a non-steady-state recycle mode where a small volume of water is circulated and, depending on the water temperature, either heats or cools incoming air. Preliminary data for simple experiments that can be repeated in the classroom are presented showing the effect of varying the initial water temperature, water flow rate, and air velocity on the cooling rate and temperature profiles in the module. These variables can be easily controlled in the classroom so that students can quickly observe their effect on the performance of the evaporative cooler. Finally, we outline worksheet and conceptual assessment questions to accompany classroom activities and present conceptual assessment results from a spring 2022 pilot classroom implementation of the evaporative cooler LCDLM in a Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer course. Significant student learning gains were observed after implementation, suggesting a positive influence of the LCDLM on understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the outbreak of the pandemic, our School of Engineering spent summer 2020 reworking our classes so that our students could have comparable class experiences whether attending class in person or on-line. This presented a challenge on how to deliver a team centered hands-on design project in our sophomore level material and energy balance course. As part of this project, teams are required not only to research, design, construct, evaluate, test and report on their product, but also to develop a mathematical model to predict their product's performance. It is important that the students have a fun yet inexpensive project to design and build, but they must also develop a mathematical understanding of the fundamental engineering principles that make their design work. Through this mathematical modeling the student cultivates the connection between mathematics and science, as well as understanding the fundamental engineering principles that make their products work. This paper will describe the details of the design project, which includes the design criteria and constraints, how the students are introduced to the project through a professionally produced introductory video, and an introduction to the engineering design and decision-making process, while also teaching basic engineering concepts. Activities will be provided which helped to scaffold the underlying math and science concepts to support the design decisions. CATME was utilized in forming design teams - while balancing the teams by schedule, gender, race/ethnicity, GPA, and in-person/online. This allowed team members to participate equitably by developing the mathematical model (which was not restricted to the online students) and building and testing the product (in-person students with input from the online students) (while remaining socially distanced and testing outdoors) and all team members worked on the final design project report. Design testing videos and pictures will be included to illustrate the variety of successful design solutions - in addition, the list of design materials which were provided for the teams to select from for the construction of their design. The results of this project (fall 2020) will be compared to (fall 2021 - under a less restrictive COVID protocol) and pre-COVID (2002, 2008 and 2011) semesters - when this project was used in a first-year introduction to engineering design course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to COVID-19, we redesigned our introductory chemical engineering course to fit our students' current learning context. This adapted course for 30 sophomores and juniors not only had to address our students' academic and curricular requirements, but also meet their social and community needs. As an entry point into the discipline-and the very first engineering class our students would take-we sought to foster connections between students that would support them through a semester many students find challenging, and continue with them when they join the major. Drawing from the community of inquiry framework, and strategies to build social presence in online courses, we implemented changes to meet these challenges. We assigned students to learning teams (4-5 students) in which they engaged in Zoom breakouts, and group homework and projects throughout the term. We also exchanged a midterm for a "community contribution" grade that incentivized participation during the Zoom sessions, engagement in discussion boards, and development of student-created class resources (e.g., video problem walkthroughs, study guides). After implementing these changes, and others necessary to adapt this face-to-face course to an online format, we saw an improvement in student learning outcomes across multiple measures. This included improved final exam performance-with effect sizes (Cohen's d) of >0.4-and increases in student-reported feelings of learning and course quality. Students also reported that the student-created resources and videos to be valuable to their learning, which was supported by video analytics data, where student-created videos were viewed just as often as optional instructor-created videos, and surveys that showed these studentcreated resources as the most helpful to student learning in the course. Due to the success of these changes, we have continued with the changes brought about by our redesign, and would encourage our colleagues to consider how to center community building within the design of engineering courses as we have shown in this case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mechanics of Materials course is an entry-level class required for several engineering majors such as Civil, Mechanical, Biomedical, Material Science, and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Connecticut. The course has a large enrollment of 100 students per section with a total of 400 students per academic year. A recent study evaluated the impact of using real-life examples by asking students to share images of engineering concepts. It has been found that while this activity benefits the learning of students, only a small group of students was motivated to actively participate. It was hypothesized that the single-domain approach relying on photography skills as the main interest of students is a limiting factor in broadening the participation of students. The course was re-designed in the summer of 2020 as part of a research project funded by the Engineering Education Center of the National Science Foundation to create an inclusive learning environment that empowers neurodiverse learners. The strength-based approach was adopted for the course to enable students to express their learning through their interests and strengths in different dimensions. In the academic year of 2020-2021, a series of optional small strength-based projects (SBP) were added to the course to further improve student engagement and participation. Students were able to contribute to the course based on their personal interests and expertise. Students were prompted to identify one or more areas of interest such as photography, drawing, filming, sports, programming, game design, comedy, woodworking, cooking, planting, poetry, reading, or puzzles. After students identified their area of interest, the instructor assigned individual, or group projects aligned with the students' interests and course content. In the first cohort (fall 2020), more than 25% of students participated in this activity compared to 5% in the previous single-mode approach. The participants created unique projects that are being used as learning materials in the course. In the second cohort (fall 2021) more than 40% have participated. This paper discusses the observations from this pilot implementation, the impact of strength-based projects on the students' engagement, and the improvement in the students' learning experience. A survey was used to collect the participants' feedback on whether this activity reinforced their sense of inclusion and improved their skills related to the implementation of their knowledge in real-life problems. A second survey collected data on student's perceptions of the extent to which the strength-based projects allowed them to draw on their strengths and the adequacy of support received for completing them. Modifications have been made to the structure of these strength-based projects in the academic year of 2021-2022 to enhance the students' experience and improve the quality of the projects. The changes, expected outcomes, and results of the survey from both cohorts are presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work describes the initial stages of creating an interactive Open Educational (OER) textbook on mass and energy balances and the planned process for soliciting student feedback and making students co-creators on the textbook. The authors have taught the mass and energy balance course for several years and have been challenged by increasing numbers of students that do not purchase the recommended textbook but rely solely on posted lecture slides and relevant material, in-class notes, class recordings (lately), freely available internet videos, and possibly illegal electronic textbook copies. After obtaining some experience with PressBooks and H5P from a pandemic-induced online-lab project, and aided by an institutional OER fund, the authors decided to convert their class notes on energy and mass balances into an OER using those two tools. The aim is to provide students with a free centralized repository for course content and practice that will (1) enhance student understanding through non-text additions (quizzes, videos, and interactive activities) that meet multiple learning styles and (2) will be available to all students regardless of financial ability. The major challenges with the ongoing content creation have been time availability for such a task and avoiding copyright infringement when creating property tables or charts, as will be discussed. Regardless of challenges, significant material has been created and the current status of this ongoing process is shared. A working version of the textbook will be used in Fall 2022 by two cohorts of 150 total students that will be questioned about their opinion on OER, in general, and the specific material through a set of primarily Likert questions and a focus group. The students' perceptions on the quality, applicability, and helpfulness of the material; the rates of material usage; and students' suggestions for improvement will be collected. In addition, methods to make students active content creators and the anticipated results of such attempts are discussed. Finally, the timeline of this work in progress, the future of OER in chemical engineering, and the possibility of contributions from a wider academic community are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work in progress compares two different implementations (A & B) of a spatial skills training program to investigate the effects of the length of training and incentives to encourage persistence on improvement in spatial ability. In implementation A, students are required to complete SVS training and their scores on measures of spatial ability are used to determine part of their course grade. In implementation B, students are again required to complete SVS training but to a greater degree than in A, and with course credit given based on the amount of training completed and not SVS test score. In both implementations, student spatial ability was measured using the PSVT:R both pre- and post-training, and students in both cohorts A & B started and ended up at a similar spatial skill level. The software based training was found to be effective in improving the spatial ability of the lowest performing students who scored less than 70% (passing score) on the pre-test. Approximately 65% of these students who did not initially pass the PSVT:R were able to pass after completion of the training. Additionally, the lowest performing students improved their score significantly on the post-training PSVT:R regardless of the amount of training they completed; however the change in PSVT:R test score and amount of training was found to be weakly correlated for the low SVS group in one cohort and moderately correlated in the other. Persistence in the training was also measured and yielded an interesting result in that the students with the lowest persistence in Cohort B had the highest average initial test score, yet came out with the lowest post-training pass rate, perhaps indicating persistence is a critical factor in SVS improvement. Future work will seek to better define measured variables such as persistence and amount of training with additional data, as well as to examine the effect of confounding factors such as taking a design course itself on improvement of spatial ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Curriculum Committee of AIChE's Education Division surveyed chemical engineering departments across the United States and Canada in Fall 2021 about material and energy balances (MEB) courses. Courses have been described by 84 faculty at 75 institutions. MEB is taught primarily to first-term sophomores (78% of schools) majoring in only chemical engineering (46% of schools). Over 70% of the schools require only one MEB course, and 24% require two courses. All schools require general chemistry as a prerequisite, with half requiring Calculus II (integrals). Faculty do not expect incoming MEB students to be experienced or proficient in any software packages, but they are expected to be at least novices in word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software. Over 40% of schools expect at least novicelevel understanding of computerized algebra systems, primarily MATLAB. Schools provide students with computer labs, with almost 60% of schools maintaining the labs at the college level. Exams and homework are the most popular assessments, appearing in over 90% of courses. Over half of the courses also have pre-announced quizzes, and team homework is used in 45% of the courses. In a majority of the courses (67%), twenty percent or fewer of the assignments are completed with a computer. The Felder, Rousseau, and Bullard textbook is used in nearly 80% of the courses. Textbook topics through energy balances on reactive systems are covered in over 70% of courses. Only the topics of computer-aided balance calculations and transient balances receive low coverage, in under 50% of the courses. Second courses in MEB tend to emphasize energy balances. In professional skills, only formal problem-solving strategies are covered in over half of the courses. Lecture section sizes are 40 students or smaller for over half of the reporting courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted vital elements of personal and public health, society, and education. Increasingly with the viral pandemic, misinformation on health and science issues has been disseminated online. We developed an undergraduate training program focused on producing and presenting research to combat the rampant spread of this misinformation. Online misinformation represents a complex, multidisciplinary problem. Consequently, recruitment of students to the program was not exclusive to those from Computer Science or Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) educational backgrounds. Participants were actively recruited from fields such as Linguistics, Social and Political sciences. This data analytics outreach program aimed to train educationally and demographically diverse undergraduate students in computational techniques and presentation skills through guided research regarding the current burst of misinformation. Over ten weeks, participants were instructed in an online curriculum covering five milestones: Python programming, data processing, machine learning with natural language processing, visualization, and presentation. Subsequently, participants were engaged in Computer Science research analyzing a real-world data set gathered from Twitter™ 1 between January and June 2020. Participants were organized into teams to investigate subtopics within the broader subject of misinformation: 1) detecting social media bot accounts, 2) identifying propaganda with computational methods, and 3) studying the discourse surrounding science preprints (i.e., papers that have been posted to the Internet but have not been peer reviewed). The program culminated in an exposition where each team presented research results to program officers, senior faculty, deans, government officials, and industry experts. Here we present the program curriculum, metrics of educational effectiveness, and feedback collected from participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"There's never been a brighter outlook for young computer science students than today" [5]. Technology has been growing so drastically over the last few years, but higher education institutions do not graduate fast enough to meet the job market demands. Many industries and organizations have open positions that can't fill simply because they are not able to find the right person for it. Computer science graduates have some of the highest starting salaries and are in such a high demand that they can pick and choose the type of job and industry they wish to work for. This is because there has been a steadily increasing demand for bright graduates in all areas specially data science and cyber security. It's important for graduates to stay up to date with the latest trends in computer science research, gain hands-on and teamwork experience, and be good problem solvers before graduation. In this paper, we will elaborate the steps that should be taken by the institutions of higher education in order to graduate students with this type of quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main task of engineers is designing and manufacturing of useful products. Rapid progress in science and technology is creating more innovative techniques and more advanced products. For today's engineering graduates to be successful, they must be able to solve complex and open-ended problems, and be capable of independent and critical thinking. Critical thinking (CT) can be simply defined as the analysis of available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to form a judgment. Nurturing of critical thinking skills in students is generally deemed an uphill task by instructors at engineering universities. Quantitative assessment of CT skills and tasks is an even grayer area. This paper presents an overview of the different issues related to instruction and assessment of CT skills, and the various methods adopted, especially in the context of engineering education. Some of the more interesting issues discussed are classroom exercises for CT assessment; self-assessment of CT skills; CT assessment design, quantification, and summative assessment; taxonomy of CT assessment; and limitations of standardized CT assessment. This brief but in-depth review can be useful for engineering students and instructors targeting the development of CT skills, and for other branches of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University innovation is a crucial component of building an "innovative country." The innovation of university students constructed the university innovation system. Therefore, cultivating undergraduate students' ability towards scientific literacy and creating an innovative environment is especially crucial. To address the problem of undergraduates' lack of self-innovation consciousness and scientific research ability in the conventional talent training process that focuses on intensive lectures and is evaluated by the paper test. In this article, through literature research and case studies, taking a certain engineering college located in Beijing, China as an example, a series of programs were implemented, including training of scientific research skills, research interest group discussions, and training of scientific research projects. Two hundred forty undergraduates of the same grade are randomly selected and divided into three classes to cultivate scientific research literacy in different extra-curricular learning modes. Afterward, tracking, comparing, and analyzing the practical data of those undergraduate students for three-year extra-curricular learning reveals the outstanding achievements yielded from a series of China's policy-driven university training programs and the improvement of university students' scientific research capabilities. This article puts forward a "trinity system" development scheme and mode and Carries out innovative talent training engineering practice by studying and analyzing the orienting and results under different training modes. More specifically, inspiring students' enthusiasm by taking practical projects training; building the whole-process progressive training modes of centralized teaching, self-study, student seminars, and project training as the core to improve their scientific literacy. The scientific research atmosphere is enhanced and constructed to collectively drive individual development and form a sense of innovation in virtuous competition and cooperation. This study exhibited the effective practice for improving undergraduates' scientific literacy and the construction of the innovation environment, also provided reference for exploring the establishment of a multi-dimensional evaluation model for assessing students, cultivating top-notch innovative talents, and promoting the development of the overall innovation ability of the university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the effectiveness of an intervention model aimed at propelling low-income, academically talented (LIAT) engineering students in a Hispanic Serving Institution (HIS) into actions, immersing them into real-life contexts. The model, named the LIAT College Access and Success model (L-CAS), integrates elements from Lent's Social Cognitive Career Theory and Tinto's Departure model in a framework provided by a structured scholarship program designed to mitigate the economic hardship of students while also providing a multistage intervention plan to improve their success metrics. In this paper, we revisit the theoretical foundations of the LCAS model and the academic setting where it was implemented to look at the data acquired throughout its application during three years on a pilot group of 92 students. We assess the model effectiveness for springing LIATS into actions leading to their success while reflecting on the results obtained so far. We also discuss opportunities for improvements and the projections for a scaled porting of the model to a campus-wide level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theoretical framework of self-determination theory (SDT) [1], [2] suggests that providing a learning environment which supports students' autonomy, competence, and relatedness promotes students' autonomous motivation and desirable learning outcomes. To promote choice and autonomy in a cyber forensic course at a large research university, students were given a variety of assessment options in place of their regular high-stakes exams. Based on the principles of SDT theory, we hypothesized that meeting the students need for autonomy through these assessment choices would increase students' motivation to learn and lead to a better understanding of the learning materials. We also explored students' perceptions of the multiple assessment options and their reasoning for choosing their preferred option. A mixed-method approach was used to explore students' perspectives about their learning experiences related to different assessment methods. Findings revealed that students' autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs were correlated with the autonomous form of motivation (i.e., intrinsic, integration, and identification). Furthermore, students' basic needs and autonomous motivation were correlated with students' adaptive beliefs about assessment. The qualitative results showed that students had reasons varied based on the type of format they chose for their exam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

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

The purpose of this research is to identify the important quality attributes for effective teaching in a systems engineering course. An action research case study approach was applied to illustrate this unique experience where two professors taught the same systems engineering course in succession, with vastly different pedagogical strategies. The initial pilot results exemplify the value of respect for students, delivery of active experiential learning, engagement with students and providing assessment feedback to students to teach a systems engineering course in an engineering management department. Active or performance-based methods encourage students to be actively involved with and participate in their learning. Developing and using case studies to enhance higher level learning in engineering education is part of the active learning pedagogy. Active learning engages students in higher order thinking. The case study can help integrate practice with theory. The findings illustrated that respect for students, and overall delivery questions received the highest percentage positive response differences between the two instructors. The students rated increased understanding and instructor executed learning objectives with the highest positive rating response difference of 100% between the two instructors. The course instruction and treating students with respect had the next highest differences in positive responses, 89%, between the two instructors. Limitations of the study are based on the case study action research approach applied within the course. However, the action research case study approach did enable the comparison of lecture-based pedagogy versus active experiential learning to demonstrate the value of more expansive pedagogies to teach systems engineering as well as the need for respecting the students and enhancing student engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes the challenges and opportunities of developing, running, and synergizing four undergraduate and graduate technical leadership programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). These include UPOP, GEL, GradEL and CommLab, each of which came into existence over the last twenty years with different audiences but a common ambition to amplify the leadership abilities of MIT's graduates as future technical leaders. The benefits of integration include increased depth of student involvement, better academic integrity, as well as cross-program longitudinal assessment. Challenges of the programs under the umbrella of Technical Leadership and Communications (TLC) include organizational positioning, and convincing both students and faculty that these skills are force multipliers for increased impact. Despite tremendous progress in codifying engineering leadership and delivering impactful experiential learning to our students, these programs and their overall governance remain a work in progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While industry, faculty, and students alike recognize the need for leadership education in undergraduate courses, there is still a gap between the students' experience in applying these skills and industry expectations. In academia, these skills are typically measured during teambased senior design courses. Courses may invite guest speakers to provide a wide perspective of successful leadership. The assumption is that students will appreciate this diversity, thus helping them remember, understand and apply the lessons. This study provides an analysis of how a group of students valued these types of trainings with respect to three categories: the course objectives, their upcoming professional careers, and their personal lives. The students are surveyed after each of seven guest lectures using quantitative and qualitative measures. Results show that students reported valuing these trainings with respect to each category, with the value to their professional careers being the highest ranked. This study shows students approve of learning leadership topics through guest lectures even when assigning varying degrees of value for each lecture and each of the three categories. However, students do not understand how these topics can relate to their project such that they can apply these trainings for the development of the skills. This study will help define better practices for leadership education within engineering curriculums to help determine whether providing leadership education concurrent to real-world experiences is effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Role-playing has been used in psychology, history, nursing, language instruction, and other areas to increase student engagement and improve learning outcomes. Here it is utilized for an injection molding project in four week-long online exercises in a quarter-long Design for Manufacturing course. The course covers manufacturing basics, comparative analysis of processes, and manufacturing fitness for design. For the simulation, groups are formed into groups representing assembly, customer satisfaction, marketing, and purchasing to develop design requirements for an imaginary customer. Teams are then formed with representatives of each group to develop new, combined design requirements and use them to create a design to present to their "customer." All communication between the groups and teams were in an online discussion forum and coded for their breadth and depth with respect to the course learning objectives. An anonymous summative survey was used to assess the student response to the activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American Society for Engineering Education's Engineering Technology Council advocates. The degree is engineering technology, the career is engineering™. However, motivating and supporting Engineering Technology students to persist in pursuing a career in engineering continues to be a significant educational challenge. The researchers have identified an area that appears to be lacking but has the potential to support students as they navigate this and other challenges. This paper is the first of many that will explore the integration of research in an applied program. While future work will include the construction and implementation of a novel framework on Conscious Research (CR), this work verifies the level that research is implemented in the classroom so that additional work to implement the CR framework can be further defined. The researchers suggest that faculty can provide substantially more effective and engaging instruction in freshman through senior courses when students are continuously involved in the use of research throughout the educational experience. For example, the CR cycle can be used to formulate a question, conduct a literature survey, re-formulate the question, propose a solution, an improvement, or an updated approach, design/build/implement the proposed approach, and present to others. In this cycle, the search for discovery and innovation materializes. This preliminary work investigates the use of research materials, introduction of practices, and those performing this kind of work in the classroom, at every level. This study is done at a large research institution where research is pervasive throughout and there are many engineering technology students. Researchers chose the Student Perception of Research Integration Questionnaire (SPRIQ) to assess student perception of research in their learning environment. The first step in assessing the implementation of CR in a program. The results from this assessment will provide an understanding of how research is utilized in engineering technology programs with the basic assumption that the utilization of research attracts, motivates, and engages students and faculty alike in a sustainable culture of excellence vertically within each program, horizontally across engineering technology, and upwardly to the graduate program. The result of engaging in critical research is a better-prepared graduate to enter the engineering profession or advance to graduate school and tackle the demands of the 21st-century engineering industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational thinking has become pervasive across many technical and creative disciplines. Creating a computationally literate workforce capable of recognizing and eliminating algorithmic discrimination requires diverse perspectives and lived experiences. Your Voice is Power is a 5-class period curriculum targeted for K-12 audiences that seeks to promote racial equity and increase interest in computing careers by integrating elements of computing, music, social justice, and entrepreneurship. Centering around the song "Entrepreneur" by Pharrell Williams, students engage in lyrical analysis to extract and explore themes of social justice using the OUTKAST Imagination framework. Students then engage with musical concepts from a computing perspective and implement them using EarSketch, a web-based, learn-to-code through music remixing platform developed at Georgia Tech. In this paper, we present a description of the Your Voice is Power Curriculum and results from an evaluation study. The curriculum overview includes a description of the content and activities, as well as a discussion of the frameworks and theories underlying the curriculum's development. We also present results from a program evaluation covering both a pilot and a full implementation of this newly developed curriculum during the 2020-2021 academic year. Participating high school students and teachers were recruited to respond to online surveys regarding their awareness of and interest in computing, music, and social justice, and their experiences in the competition. Teachers felt that competition participation conferred a variety of benefits to their students and expressed positive attitudes around the social justice focus of the curriculum. Students provided largely positive feedback on the competition and reported a positive impact on their understanding of social justice and equity. Students also demonstrated high levels of understanding of the ubiquity of coding skills and applications. Taken together, program evaluation results show that this integration of themes is effective in engaging students in difficult conversations about race while building interest in computing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With an increased emphasis on K-12 engineering education [1], [2], researchers and practitioners alike are grappling with the necessary considerations for developing equitable engineering programming. Some programs with a heavy emphasis on developing technical skills or engaging with specific engineering content may not attend specifically to critical theorizations of learning [1]-[3]. As a result, such program designs may not consider youths' prior experiences with engineering or issues of power as consequential to participation [4], [5]. Further, those that seek to develop learner-or youth-centered programs have little research to support them. Although important strides have been made [6]-[9], there is still much to know about how young people have experienced engineering programs from their perspectives and what concerns they may have about participating in them. Further, even less work has explored what makes engineering design work meaningful for youth [10], interrogating what they want to learn and experience in engineering spaces [11], [12]. Centering youths' experiences and voices, particularly those of historically marginalized youth, offers a possible way toward more equitable program design. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the development of more equitable and inclusive engineering programming by centering focal Black and Latina/o/x youths' self-raised experiences in engineering programs as important data for educational design work. The study is drawn from a larger qualitative study seeking to understand how the seven focal youth began to engage in engineering work and discussed their various engineering experiences, within a community program co-designed by the author. I forefront a constant comparative analysis of interview data to examine focal youths' discussions of their various engineering experiences and how they discussed their experiences in relation to themselves. I drew on critical sociocultural theories [13], [14] to help me locate youths' discussions of their experiences as contextual, socially mediated, and operating under larger systems of oppression (e.g., racism, classism, and misogyny). The research questions guiding this particular study are: In what ways do Black and Latina/o/x youth critically talk about their engineering experiences? Specifically, how do they narrate engineering in relation to themselves, if at all?. Findings revealed that youth experience and position engineering as a heavy science, technology, and math space, which seemed to create a sense that engineering work was narrow. Further, although varied in nature and degree across youth, all youth discussed an awareness of engineering experiences as potentially being uncomfortable or othering. From actual experiences or theoretical knowledge, youth discussed engineering experiences as places where racism, gender, classism, or other systems of oppression might come to bear on their participation. These findings show the immense amount of work historically marginalized youth may do to understand themselves in current engineering spaces while emphasizing the important challenge of imagining and designing youth-centered engineering spaces that celebrate all aspects of youth and actively counter oppression. Findings imply a need to continue to interrogate youths' prior experiences with engineering and unpack ways systems of oppression operate in all dimensions of youth engineering work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research and teaching are two crucial aspects of faculty responsibilities for some Engineering Technology and Multidisciplinary Engineering Programs. It would be worth discussing how faculty can manage a research project and engage with students through capstone projects. As a case study, a building structural analysis project is presented in this paper. This building structural analysis project can be broken down to several components. One of the subcomponents is a quadcopter platform, and the other one is an underwater robot platform for a building analysis. These two components were managed as two capstone projects. Two capstone projects were carried out as a part of this building structural analysis research project at Texas A&M University. The first capstone team designed and built a custom quadcopter that could fly close to the building to find potential damage to the building. The second capstone team designed and built an underwater robot to inspect the portion of a building structures that are submerged such as bridges. For this multidisciplinary project, three faculty members from two departments of Engineering Technology and Construction Science formed a team and advised the students. The Engineering Technology department at Texas A&M University has an Electronics Systems Engineering Technology (ESET) program and Multidisciplinary Engineering Technology (MXET) program. For the second capstone project team, students have created an underwater robot for a building analysis. These four students are from the Multidisciplinary Engineering Technology (MXET) program. This second capstone started in Fall 2020, and it was concluded in Spring 2021. In this paper, the details of the second capstone project will be provided. Moreover, the details of the integration of the two capstone projects will be introduced and discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Work in Progress paper describes the effect of Homework 0 (HW 0), an activity offered at Western University designed to support Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) students' successful transition to the first year of college. This transition is a critical time as students face several personal and academic challenges [1] or most, college means a new lifestyle and level of independence [1]. Pre-college academic activities are positively correlated with a student's persistence and graduation [2] because these activities can support the development of a student's sense of belonging [3] to the university, their academic community, their profession. Sense of belonging, or a feeling of mattering [4], is a well-researched and documented predictor of retention and success [5]. Relationships and social networks are critical elements to success in the first year [3] of college. Researchers urge university personnel to engage early and frequently with first-year students to cultivate their social capital further in college [6]. Taken together, these theoretical lenses served as the foundation for the pre-college activity, HW 0. HW 0 consists of three asynchronous academic assignments students completed in the summer before their first full-time semester and follow up activities are completed during the first semester. These assignments were designed to provide a way for the student to learn about resources, activities, and engagement opportunities as well as to reflect on the challenges they are going through and to define strategies to face these challenges. The main research question guiding this study is how does engagement in a pre-college activity influence a student's sense of belonging, thus, success. Survey data collected in these activities has been analyzed to identify patterns among students and thus, identify the needs among them and define better programs to support them. Results from the 2021 program offering, included in this paper, indicate students who participated developed a greater sense of belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional development for engineers is an essential part of career advancement and can include a wide variety of learning opportunities, ranging from asynchronous short courses to comprehensive synchronous in-person courses. Adult learning theory supports the positive influence of student engagement, but this engagement may be different from university classroom settings. There is an abundance of literature that indicates student engagement in the learning experience is important for student learning and other important educational outcomes. There is also evidence that the adoption of engaging teaching practices in professional development settings is limited. Much of the research on adoption is done in K-16 settings, which fails to address the impact among a significant population of adult and professional learners. The purpose of this research is to investigate how a teacher of synchronous engineering professional development (SEPD) courses incorporate engaging instructional practices. We used single case study analysis to closely examine and identify personal experiences and contextual details to illuminate contextually sensitive activities that were helpful in increasing learners' engagement in SEPD courses and could help others understand these phenomena and make changes in their courses. We interviewed one instructor about the course design and use of engaging activities, and the results will inform efforts to increase the use of engaging teaching practices in SEPD courses. The single case study showed this instructor used a variety of different activities to engage students in the learning experience, including self-directedness, lifecentered experience, collaborative learning, and expecting a payoff. The instructor shared that previous professional development opportunities and extensive experience trying and improving teaching practices were influential on their current approach to teaching. The results highlight the importance of professional development for teachers, that it must incorporate specific approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the remote learning mode due to COVID-19, educational laboratory modules lacking the active data acquisition step tend to lose students' engagement and diminish their eagerness to explore further knowledge. Such shortcomings are more profound in practical fields of study, such as Biomechanics. The goal of this paper is to present a remote laboratory delivery and evaluation method where students can apply principles of kinematic and kinetic biomechanical analysis on their own body motions with a computer vision algorithm to interactively solve a motion analysis problem. In this preliminary study, students were given the freedom to choose a specific body motion to be captured and analyzed, such as elbow, knee, wrist, and neck joint movements. Motion specifications included determination of the motion type, and also the starting and ending angular or linear positions. Readily available labels were utilized as passive joint markers. Students were then instructed to video record their joint motions using their laptop cameras. A custom video tracking algorithm specifically designed to track spatial locations was then employed to capture relative positions of the recorded motions. Laboratory instructions asked the students to perform kinematic calculations on the algorithm's generated positional data to determine joint velocities and accelerations, and then perform kinetic analyses to estimate the associated muscle forces. Laboratory requirements were concluded with a reflection prompt to evaluate the activity's workload and effort perceived by the students. These activities were delivered twice in two different academic terms. Samples of the produced kinematic data using our methods were verified in comparison with a standard physical motion capture system, where similar joint motion descriptive results were observed. Results show that the completion rate of laboratory requirements was 97% in the first term of delivery, and 100% in the second term, as supported by the full technical reports submissions that included critical data analysis and reflections of the laboratory experience. Student reflections were very positive and expressed how the lab activity was interesting as it kept a high level of engagement and provided a way to make connections between practice and theory. In conclusion, the proposed approach may improve the students' laboratory experience in learning biomechanics through a motion analysis scenario, and allow them to remotely be fully engaged, active, and passionate learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This complete research paper assesses the long-term benefits of first-year student participation in an Engineering Living-Learning Community (ELLC) at a relatively small private university. Prior research on ELLCs has examined short-term results such as first-year student engagement, academic performance, and retention, but relatively few studies have reported data on long-term outcomes such as graduation rates and GPA at graduation. This paper reports the outcomes of four cohorts of Engineering students who entered the study university between 2013 and 2016. Students participating in the ELLC had significantly higher 4-year graduation rates in Engineering (55.7% vs. 42%) and in STEM (64.3% vs. 51.2%), and higher 4-year graduation rates from the university (66.1% vs. 56.8%), than non-honors Engineering students who did not participate in the ELLC. Although the average first-semester GPA of ELLC participants was significantly higher than that of non-participants (3.15 vs. 2.82), the difference faded over time. The average GPA at graduation for ELLC Engineering graduates was 3.22, compared to 3.12 for non-honors non-ELLC Engineering graduates. To determine whether the ELLC's superior outcomes might be explained by differences in incoming student characteristics between the ELLC and non-ELLC groups, or by student participation in other programs such as a first-year seminar or athletics, multinomial logistic and linear regression were used to control for high school GPA, SAT scores, and other factors. The results indicate that ELLC participation doubled the odds of four-year graduation in Engineering or STEM over non-participation, both significant effects, and increased graduation GPA in Engineering by 0.07 points. This study suggests that a relatively modest intervention implemented in the first year alone may have lasting benefits on student retention and performance, even in small universities that might be thought to have less need for the community development an LLC provides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital textbooks are becoming more common in college-level computer, engineering, and science courses. For various reasons, some students quickly click on reading activities to earn completion points, without earnestly attempting the activities. We analyzed student earnestness in digital computer science and engineering textbooks across a semester. We found that student earnestness declines significantly as the semester progresses. We also found that earnestness levels at a semester's start have a tremendous impact on earnestness throughout the semester, namely that lower average earnestness at a semester's onset leads to a significantly more rapid decline. For example, one course with an initial 90% earnestness score fell to 76% by week 6, whereas another course with an initial 72% score dropped dramatically to just 32% by week 6. This finding emphasizes the importance of instructors ensuring students recognize the utility of the textbook activities from a course's start, and ensure that the activity workload is reasonable too, to start students with high earnestness. We close with recommendations for encouraging earnest completion early in the semester, which is crucial for maintaining earnest completion throughout the course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The broad fields of engineering design and entrepreneurship education have, in recent years, combined in novel ways to create interdisciplinary, real-world curricular experiences in higher education and K-12. Depending on the elements included from engineering design and entrepreneurship methodologies, some curricula espouse a more inventive focus, where problem identification and solution finding are likely to result in the creation of something novel, useful, and non-obvious. While some programs and curricula identify specifically as "invention education," we contend that the student learning experience exists on a continuum, ranging from less to more inventive, irrespective of the self-applied label. Even at the intersection of engineering design and entrepreneurship, a fertile ground for inventiveness, some curricular experiences are more inventive than others. Curricula that explicitly encourage inventive products and habits provide agency for students to build their own future and to develop ways of thinking and working that will support their success in life. Specifically, students engage unique skillsets, mindsets, and interests which enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion for underrepresented students who are more likely to be excluded when analytical skills are prioritized over inventiveness and cultural assets. This hypothesis is backed by preliminary data from inventive curriculum research which shows higher levels of participation in invention activities from underrepresented groups relative to typical rates in engineering programs. In this paper, we propose a definition of inventiveness to describe both attributes and student work products. We contrast inventiveness with analytical skills where methods and outcomes are typically known. To explore opportunities for inventiveness in curricula, subject matter experts evaluated 23 activities common in engineering design and entrepreneurship curricula and rated their expected student work outcomes with respect to inventiveness and analytical skills. We also evaluated nine problem statements from engineering design coursework with respect to their potential for resulting in inventive and analytical student work products. We contend that the inclusion of curricular elements that rate higher with respect to inventiveness are more likely to promote student engagement, particularly from underrepresented groups. This analysis may be applied when considering whether a curriculum is sufficiently promoting and rewarding inventiveness or inventive practices. We assert that as students advance from secondary to postsecondary schools and into multiple career pathways, their capacity and interest in engaging in innovation, invention, and entrepreneurial ecosystems will increase, thereby increasing equity in the designed world by empowering all student voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations General Assembly established a set of 17 goals in 2015 known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). They inspire concerted efforts around the world to be accomplished by the year 2030. Goal 17, "Partnerships for the Goals", embraces the fundamental strategy to achieve all the goals by the effective collaboration of all nations, institutions, organizations, and individuals. It relies on extensive global awareness as the fundamental ground to build the recognition of diversity and inclusion; striving to consider every perspective in our shared world. Academic institutions, particularly colleges and universities, should take leadership roles in educating the upcoming generation of professionals and leaders to accomplish this mission. Engineering schools and departments are required to demonstrate these as educational outcomes for their students. Specifically, Student Outcomes 2, 3, and 4 of ABET Criterion 3, all involve awareness, communication, and consideration of global contexts. This is critical to address the Sustainable Development goals as the students make up the future workforce in charge of advancing technical solutions for a better and sustainable world. This paper discusses a three-year experience in the Chemical Engineering Department, with the participation of 162 college students, in 33 projects, as a curricular requirement for a capstone course. The project provided a unique opportunity for students to become acquainted with problems around the world and to challenge them to consider multiple solutions. Student teams collaborated with foreign organizations (in the country they chose to address a problem) to analyze and propose solutions for challenges in that country. Activities are organized during the entire semester following project management techniques. They include an early presentation of the proposal, a scheduled progress report presentation, a poster, and a final presentation. Foreign partners are asked to provide their reflections on the experience. All classmates review and peer grade every deliverable from other teams. Students evaluate their teammates' performance and provide a self-assessment of their individual experience at the end of the course. A ChE Global Day was held at the end of the semester to display the posters and presentations to a broad audience with the support of university offices and centers focused on global experiences and international relations. Students earn up to 10% of the definitive grade of the course for these global engagement projects. This approach has proved to be fully sustainable, and with an overwhelming satisfaction of all the participants. It is important to note that the incorporation of a virtual platform during COVID-19 and the continuous monitoring and coaching by the instructor are producing best practices to foster communication between students and stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel cart/pendulum system for teaching dynamic systems and feedback control and discusses the use of the system in a class project. The cart has a pendulum attached to it that can be used for vibration suppression control in the downward position or for stabilizing the inverted pendulum in the upward position. A line sensor is attached to the front of the cart for line following. The cart/pendulum system has been designed to perform three different experiments. The cart is controlled using the combination of a Raspberry Pi and two Arduinos. Students program their control logic in Python. The class project is to program the robot to compete in three different events in a robot triathlon. The first event involves vibration suppression of the pendulum after it is given an initial flick (disturbance). The second event consists of racing around an oval line-following track while suppressing the vibrations with the pendulum in the downward (stable) position. The third event is to see how long the robot can balance the pendulum in the inverted (unstable) position. Student learning is assessed using final project reports, exam questions, and a comparison of student evaluation comments between this year and last year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though many students are aspiring engineers upon entry into university, at the end of the 4-year undergraduate period, nearly half will not complete their engineering degree [29]; this is known as the engineering retention problem. Research has shown that there are 6 broad reasons why a student might leave the engineering field and interventions that target several of these reasons are more likely to improve retention [29]. For this study, we observed a group of 54 first-year students enrolled in an introductory engineering course at University of Massachusetts, Lowell that were broken down into subsequent teams of 3-4 students. To aid each team, the role of the project manager (PM) was given to upper-level engineering students that passed a recruitment process. PM eligibility including receiving a B in the intro course and processing effective communication skills. Interested students apply to be a PM with a short essay on why they are interested in project management and leadership. An optional interview is conducted if the course instructor has not worked with the student previously. Project managers are responsible for leading, planning, and monitoring tasks within groups to effectively execute larger projects. Literature on the role of the PM states that the PM serves as a mentor and a bridge between the disconnect of professors and students in terms of teaching and support [28], [29]. Additionally, engineering identity, an integral part of continuing in continuing onto professional engineering [28], [30], is often cultivated throughout university due to students interacting with other social spheres of engineers, including their peers (team members) and mentors (PMs) [28], [30]. We conducted a pre and post survey for the semester-long course and conducted detailed interviews with a select group of students. Our data suggest that friendship has a positive influence on engineering identity, and that the extent to which the PMs actively directed and involved the first-year students in the progress of their projects reflected how the mentees perceived their overall effectiveness, ability, kindness, and approachability. However, the PMs did not have a positive influence on engineering identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]