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The Improving Student Experiences to Increase Student Engagement (ISE-2) grant was awarded to Texas A&M University by the National Science Foundation through EEC-Engineering Diversity Activities (Grant No. 1648016) with the goal of increasing student engagement and retention in the College of Engineering. The major component of the intervention was a faculty development program aimed at increasing active learning, improving classroom climates, and decreasing implicit bias and deficit thinking among faculty. The program consisted of three workshops, a series of informal coffee hour conversations, and two deliverables from the participants. Workshop 1 consisted of an overview of the ISE-2 program and an introduction to social cognitive biases. Workshop 2 focused on how students learn, provided evidence for the effectiveness of active learning strategies, and exposed participants to these strategies. Workshop 3 prepared participants to apply the material to their own teaching. Coffee hour conversations were conducted on a near-weekly basis between the second and third workshops. Faculty participants created a teaching plan to incorporate what they learned into their own teaching. At the end of the academic year, faculty participants are tasked with completing a final reflection. In this paper, we will report the content of the workshops as related to the overarching goals of the ISE-2 program, along with how the coffee conversation topics complemented the workshop material. Lastly, we will explore the role of the teaching plans and final reflections in changing instructional practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of institutions offering entrepreneurship courses and programs has grown dramatically over the last decade. Many of these programmatic offerings have been driven by the passion of individual faculty champions. Unfortunately, the programming often remains the responsibility of that founding faculty champion. In such cases, if the faculty champion leaves, the entrepreneurship programming declines or may be completely lost. VentureWell, a not-for-profit that supports STEM innovators and entrepreneurs, has utilized its Faculty Grants Program to provide seed funding to faculty champions to create courses and programs that enhance student development of skills and knowledge associated with innovation and entrepreneurship. To foster lasting impact, the program sets the expectation that meritorious educational innovations will continue after funding ends. While this has occurred in most cases (over the last 5 years 72% of grantees' claim activities have continued, expanded or been institutionalized), continuation of the program typically remains the responsibility of the founding faculty members, an indicator that institutionalization is not yet complete. Research on propagation and institutionalization of educational innovations has suggested that an institutionalization plan should be constructed in three phases: (i) describe the gap between the current situation and the desired future situation, (ii) prepare a plan for bridging the gap, and (iii) prepare a plan for monitoring progress toward bridging the gap. This paper describes how VentureWell is integrating this three-phase approach to institutionalization, Designing for Institutionalization (DI), into its Faculty Grants program. The DI approach is an adaptation of the three-phase Designing for Sustained Adoption Framework, which supports educational developers to increase the percentage of educational innovations that are propagated beyond the original developers. Case studies of institutionalization efforts provide lessons that could be applied by others interested in institutionalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changing the extent to which first-year undergraduate engineering students identify with engineering may help improve retention. Research suggests that the degree to which students identify with engineering is positively related to their decisions to continue in engineering as a major. Therefore, identity frameworks have proven useful for furthering understanding of engineering retention. However most of the studies examining engineering identity have been conducted using qualitative research methodologies. While qualitative studies provide rich insights into engineering identity, evaluating engineering identity for hundreds or thousands of first-year students requires a quantitative instrument. Therefore, a current project is the development of a quantitative tool for measuring engineering identity. It uses information from six scales to measure different aspects of engineering identity. The scales are: identification, selfassessment, engineering embeddedness, university embeddedness, satisfaction, and retention. Since all six scales are not assessed each time the tool is administered to students, the paper will describe the two given thus far to students in the project: identification and self-efficacy. Further, it presents results responses from approximately 2,000 first-year engineering students at a large public institution. The paper addresses two questions: 1) How do engineering students respond to two scales related to identity frameworks; and 2) What has been learned by giving these two scales to first-year engineering students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes preliminary results of a literature search. The purpose of our study is to synthesize all of the relevant prior work regarding Hispanic students matriculating through two-year to four-year institutions and completing engineering bachelor's degrees. The approach we are using to identify and synthesize the articles is systematic review methodology. Systematic review is a set of methodologies to identify relevant primary studies (e.g., journal articles, technical reports, conference papers) from multiple sources and synthesize results from these studies. The inclusion criteria we have defined for the articles we will synthesize are: (1) provides a clear definition of how student success was defined, e.g., transfer, retention, graduation, intent to complete degree; (2) presents empirical evidence of at least one individual or contextual factor that contributes to success of students at two-year institutions or who have transferred from a two-year to a four-year institution in the United States; (3) presents results or comparison of Hispanic students, Hispanic-serving institutions, or STEM students; and (4) published as a report, article, conference paper, or dissertation in English. This study emphasizes Hispanic transfer students in engineering for several reasons. Firstly, representation of Hispanics in engineering careers is well below their significant and growing proportion of the U.S. population. Secondly, although substantial research has identified cultural and socioeconomic challenges that Hispanic students are facing, there is a dearth of large scale and/or quantitative work focusing on Hispanic students in engineering disciplines. Lastly, few (if any) systematic studies of effective interventions for Hispanic transfer engineering students exist. The intent of our study is to identify articles that have addressed Hispanic transfer students and synthesize results from the collected set. At present, we are still identifying articles that would support our study. This paper describes early results from the literature search to provide an overview of that has been found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing the number and diversity of graduates with undergraduate degrees in engineering continues to be highlighted in national reports. Improving the number of engineering graduates is not only a matter of recruitment but also a critical matter of retention. Currently, less than half of the students entering engineering persist and ultimately attain an engineering degree. Retention studies, in general, have evaluated cohorts related to specific lengths of time, such as first or second year retention. The studies have provided less information on patterns of student performance in courses in the engineering curricula and instead many times focus on success in a first course. The authors in this study examine how patterns of progression through course sequences might be used to improve retention in engineering. This approach visualizes how engineering students are progressing through course sequences. Engineering curricula are complex with multiple required courses, many of which have one or more prerequisites. Success in each course sequence in a student's program study of engineering is a prerequisite for student success in engineering; that is, if they do not succeed in the course sequence, they do not succeed in their program of study. Studies of student progress through various course sequences can provide different perspectives and findings on student success in engineering. This paper reports on how student success in course sequences can be visualized and what information can be gained in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calls for changes in the attributes that characterize engineering graduates have become common in reports on engineering education in the last twenty years or so. To help realize these changes, we have developed a new approach for engaging engineering undergraduates in projects associated with grand challenges in engineering as outlined by National Academy of Engineering, World Health, and others. The program was created to develop knowledge and skills for engineering design, lifelong learning, multidisciplinary teamwork, effective communication, applying engineering fundamentals to problem solving, and appreciating influences of engineering on people. Undergraduate student teams collaboratively address multidisciplinary research topics associated with grand challenges in engineering. Students participate in the program through teams of ten or more students representing at least three majors and several levels (first-year to seniors). Each team is mentored by one or more faculty members and a graduate student. Started as a small pilot program within a large engineering college in 2012, more than four hundred students have participated in the last three years, earning course credit for one or more semesters. Survey data show students see value in the program in several areas that were the intent of the program design. These areas include learning for a lifetime, understanding design, functioning on a multidisciplinary team, and understanding societal, cultural, and economic influences of engineering. More than 90% of survey responders report that they "strongly agree / agree" that in this course they have taken opportunities to expand their knowledge, skills, and abilities beyond just completing required assignments. More than 50% of survey responders rated their growth in understanding what engineering can contribute to the society "a great deal", as a result of their involvement in the program. Based on the growth in student participation, continued interest from students and faculty members, the program has been expanded to include industry sponsored projects which are multidisciplinary and vertically integrated. This paper will describe program conception, implementation, and evaluation. The authors will present data on what students perceive as benefits, impact of the program on recruiting for graduate programs, and transferring this approach to industry-sponsored student team research projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper describes results from an international survey of electrical and computer (ECE) educators and stakeholders about the current state and future directions of ECE education. Technological, economic, and social pressures are reshaping higher education, but there is little consensus about the future. IEEE created a Curricula and Pedagogy Committee (CPC) and charged it with forecasting the future of ECE education and to make recommendations regarding roles that IEEE will play in preparing for and crafting that future. To gather more information from members of the engineering education community, the committee conducted a global survey. Surveys were deployed in 2014 to those who (1) teach undergraduate students, (2) administer a degree program (i.e., Department Chairs), (3) serve as a top-level administrator over all engineering degree programs (i.e., Deans), and (4) work professionally in engineering. Survey items address areas including instructional strategies, instructional technologies, assessment strategies, curricula, evaluation of teaching, and preparation of graduates. With over 2100 respondents, these survey results can inform conversations about the future of ECE education. This paper focuses on responses from the over 600 academic respondents. When asked about teaching and assessing problem solving, moral/ethical reasoning, and design, respondents were most likely to teach problem solving and design. This suggests that ethics may not be getting the attention that is needed. Lecture was the most popular teaching practice employed for these three topics. Locally developed tests and instruments were used most often for assessing problem solving, design, and moral/ethical reasoning. Emphases on co-op, industry partnership, and internships tended to be relatively uniform in ranging from significant to almost none. Almost all engineering programs are presently accredited or expected to be accredited within five years. Evaluating teaching was done primarily using student evaluations but peer evaluations, self-evaluations, and administrator evaluations were also commonly used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]