Search

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

This 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]

This work in progress paper describes the motivation for and development of a survey instrument to collect information about engineering graduates' career pathways. In this work, we begin to reframe interpretations of what it means to be an engineer and understand why alumni make particular career choices. The survey will be distributed to graduates of engineering departments at a single institution. Items will include job titles, job sectors, perceptions of relatedness to engineering, job experiences and beliefs, and engineering experiences and beliefs. These data allow for increased sensitivity to the multiple pathways that graduates may take, as well as how alumni may connect with engineering even when employed in non-engineering positions. We discuss the descriptive and predictive power of the survey in understanding the career landscape for engineering graduates and key factors that may influence their decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper describes a new statistical method for engineering education, Topological Data Analysis (TDA), and considers the important decisions made during analysis and their impact on the quality of the results. We also describe why this new method may provide novel ways of understanding multidimensional data for student attitudes, beliefs, and mindsets. In this paper, we discuss the considerations that researchers must understand in conducting TDA with engineering education data. In the data analysis, a researcher must choose a filtering method, clustering method, number of filter slices (n), overlap in data, and cut height (ε) for each dimension. The importance and effect on the consistency and quality of the data differ for each decision. Some have a large impact on the results of the analysis (e.g., cut height [ε]), while others have a moderate impact on the resulting map appearance but not key structural features identified (e.g., number of filter slices [n]). We illustrate these methodological decisions as well as the results of TDA and its usefulness for engineering education using data from a project investigating first-year engineering students' underlying attitudes, beliefs, and mindsets to characterize the latent diversity of these students. A paper-and-pencil survey was administered to 3,855 students at 32 ABET accredited institutions across the U.S. in Fall 2017. After cleaning the data using attention checks within the survey, 3,711 student responses were examined for validity evidence. Exploratory factor analysis (for newly developed scales) and confirmatory factor analysis (for existing scales) were conducted. The resulting factors with strong validity evidence and high variability among engineering students were used in the TDA to map students' latent diversity. The results of this map indicate six distinct data progressions as well as a sparse group of students whose responses were not similar to the majority of the dataset. This work illustrates the opportunities for using TDA and provides a discussion of the different researcher decisions that are involved in this statistical technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper describes the development of a scale to measure how first-generation college students use engineering as a tool for making a difference in their community and world or personal agency. Personal agency is a capability that every individual holds; it is described by Bandura as an individual's beliefs about their capabilities to exercise control over events that affect their lives through purposeful and reflective actions. Agentic actions allow students to explore, maneuver and impact their environment for the achievement of a goal or set of goals. This study identifies how cognitive processes of forethought, intention, reactivity, and reflection shape a students' agentic behavior and together influence first-generation college students' goal of making a difference in their community through their engineering degree. Data for this study came from a large-scale survey of 3,711 first-year engineering students. First, the personal agency scale was tested for validity evidence using a split-half sampling technique. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted on one half, and confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on the other half. The exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis showed that the scale to measure personal agency is valid and reliable for the first-generation college student population. The results of this work situate first-generation college students in engineering as active contributors to their environment. This study is an initial step in examining how first-generation college students are active producers of their own lives and not passive recipients of their life's circumstances. Personal agency can be used as a lens to understand how underrepresented students in engineering are empowered to act upon their world to (re)shape it. This theoretical framing and measurement support asset-based approaches to understanding a community of students who are often deficit theorized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This IUSE (Improving Undergraduate STEM Education) NSF (National Science Foundation) grantee poster describes our work deploying a national survey (the SUCCESS survey--Studying Underlying Characteristics of Computing and Engineering Student Success) to collect data on students' non-cognitive and affective (NCA) factors. This survey, which is the first of its kind to be launched on a national scale, measures 28 NCA factors that may contribute to student success including personality, grit, identity, mindset, motivation, stress, gratitude, mindfulness, and belongingness. Many engineering and computing students have strong incoming academic records and standardized test scores that indicate potential for success in their programs; nonetheless, many struggle when they reach university. Cognitive measures like SAT/ACT are weak predictors of academic success, and NCA measures may form the constellation of characteristics that offer further predictive power. In this paper, we present construct validity evidence from a confirmatory factor analysis for the SUCCESS survey using a national sample of n = 2672 students, as well as findings from our think-aloud interviews to support face validity. Through confirmatory factor analysis, we removed several items from our survey that did not load onto factors as expected thus improving the measurements and reducing survey length. In addition, the think-aloud interviews allowed us to adjust the wording of questions and to add further demographic options to the survey. Our future work includes using cluster analysis to develop non-cognitive profiles of our participants. We will also use our national dataset to develop predictive models for student success, defined in both academic (e.g., GPA, etc.) and non-academic terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As researchers continue to investigate underrepresentation and retention of women in engineering, they often focus on undergraduate women. However, women are also departing from the engineering workforce and many attribute their decision to depart to the environment that is often characterized as masculine or exclusionary. Studies have shown that once beginning a career in engineering, 25% of women leave the field within five years. To address the underrepresentation and retention of women in the engineering workforce, it is vital for engineering education researchers to understand the lived experiences of these women in the engineering workplace. This systematized literature review synthesizes research on the experiences of women within the non-academic, engineering workplace. This review examines female engineers from an international perspective and is not limited to female engineers in the United States. Using scholarly articles, this review seeks to answer the following questions: 1) What types of experiences do women in the engineering workforce encounter in the workplace? 2) How do these experiences influence women to leave or persist in the engineering workforce? In addition to answering the following questions, this review also seeks to identify any areas where further research is warranted. Using qualitative methods and analysis, three themes central to the experiences of women in the engineering workplace emerged. Women in engineering industry encounter experiences that include masculinized and non-supportive workplace cultures, various forms of discrimination and harassment, and the pressures associated with the day-to-day duties of their specific role. While some women can endure the exclusionary environments and inappropriate behavior, other women decide to depart from engineering industry altogether. This review informs engineering industry of the experiences that may provoke women to leave the engineering workforce and thereby enables them to create workplace culture and environments that are inclusive of women-which will help broaden the participation of women in engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability has increasingly become a more prevalent topic in engineering as the need for global solutions that holistically improve the environmental, enhance quality of life, and are economically feasible have become more pressing. However, few studies have examined students' sustainability related career outcome expectations for upper-level engineering students, and, in particular, how these interests can be used to broaden participation in engineering. This time point is a critical one as students will be transitioning from college to industry where they may be positioned to solve pressing societal and environmental problems. To fill this gap, in this paper we answer the question, "What differences exist between men and women's attitudes about sustainability in upper-level engineering courses?" in order to better understand how sustainability topics may promote women's interest in and desire to address these needs in their future careers. We used data from a pilot of the CLIMATE survey given to 228 junior and senior civil, environmental, and mechanical engineering students at a large East Cost research institution. We asked the same questions as a previous study, called Sustainability and Gender in Engineering (SaGE), focused on first-year engineering students, "Which of these topics, if any, do you hope to directly address in your career?" with a list of ten sustainability outcome expectations. We used Pearson's Chi-squared test with Yates' continuity correction to compare men and women's answers. We found significant gender differences in students' desire to address energy, terrorism and war, water supply, food availability, and opportunities for woman and/or minorities in their careers. Some of these differences persist from first-year through upper-level classes, as compared to the results from SaGE in first-year students, while others develop during students' undergraduate education. Our results begin to help us understand the particular differences that men and women, even far along in their undergraduate engineering careers, may have in their desire to address certain sustainability outcomes in their careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research paper, we explore engineering students' identity development across the four or more years of undergraduate engineering education. The focus of this work is subject-related role identities, or how students position themselves and are positioned by others as the kind of people that engage in engineering, mathematics, or physics. We collected responses from 586 engineering students at a large, public East Coast university using an electronic survey during the spring semester of 2016. Survey items were taken from previously developed instruments and included measures of students' interest in engineering, students' feeling of recognition by others as an engineer, and students' beliefs about their performance/competence in engineering. We also measured students' overall attitudes about their identities as a physics person, math person, and engineer. Student responses were compared by academic year at the university (i.e., first year, second year, third year, or fourth or more year) using ANOVA and post-hoc Tukey's HSD for significant results. Our findings illustrate differences in students' engineering performance/competence and recognition beliefs as well as differences in their engineering, mathematics, physics overall identity measures. The post-hoc Tukey's HSD tests reveal a consistent pattern of identity development with lower identification in the second year of engineering education and identification progressing to the highest levels in the fourth year. This research provides evidence that these subject-related role identity measures can be used with students across undergraduate engineering and that they can differentiate among students by year at a university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students' engineering career choices are not well understood. There are a variety of factors, including irrational ones, which affect students' ultimate career decisions. Among them, out-ofschool experiences in high school can impact their career interests and decisions. We examined differences in incoming engineering students' high school extracurricular experiences, and how those experiences influenced current and future selves, as well as career plans. The data for this work come from a national survey, distributed in Fall 2013, of 15,847 students from 27 different institutions across the U.S. Among the students, 2,007 students were interested in an engineering career. Chi-square tests were conducted to examine differences in male and female engineering students' reported out-of-school experiences in high school. Additionally, regression analysis was used to study how students' high school experiences and interests predicted their engineering identity both now and in the future. Gender interactions were also examined to see if a particular interest was more or less important for women in forming their engineering identities. Students who were interested in tinkering, chemistry, engaging with the natural world, and participating in science competitions were more likely to have defined engineering perceptions of their selves now and in the future. Moreover, gender interactions were found for students who tinkered with mechanical and electrical devices and talked about science. Finally, students' engineering identities, both now and in the future, were used to predict engineering choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latina undergraduates pursuing an engineering degree continue to be an underrepresented group at four-year universities. Compared to their male counterparts, fewer women enter the field of engineering; however, of those Latino/as who do matriculate, they have the same likelihood of persisting as their White counterparts. Furthermore, a dearth of underrepresented students such as Latino/as and first-generation college students enter or remain in the field of engineering. The need for increased gender and racial/ethnic representation in engineering is a documented need allowing for the production of a wider range of innovative products that take into consideration different perspectives that represent the make-up of the nation as a whole. Recent studies demonstrate that Latinas who are enrolled in the field of engineering remain in engineering at higher rates than other ethnic minorities. In order to increase and retain greater ethnic and gender diversity in engineering, this research seeks to examine what motivates first-generation Latinas in engineering at an urban public university to pursue engineering and persist. Past research has investigated the experiences of first-generation students more generally, without distinguishing specific populations or their choice of study. In addition, several studies investigate why first-generation and underrepresented students drop out of college; some have found that it is due to an unclear purpose for college, adjustment issues to the college environment, and feelings of isolation. The perspectives of first-generation Latina engineering students are captured through conducting eight qualitative in-depth interviews and through analyzing their narratives. This research elucidates some of the reasons why Latinas choose engineering in college and why they continue in engineering using Achievement Goal Theory (AGT) as the theoretical framework. This theory posits that goals are cognitive accounts of what a person tries to accomplish and one's purposes or reasons for doing the task. This research demonstrates that participants displayed a higher sense of purpose, not only in mastery and performance, but also in a sense of self-reliance and intellectual self. This research serves as a point of departure towards highlighting ways in which the field of engineering can become a more desirable major for first-generation Latina women. The results of this work point to specific methods for accomplishing this goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are few studies on how a student's choice of engineering is affected by having an engineer as a family member, yet there are persistent hypotheses about these types of familial influences. Engineering major choice is an important step in the engineering pipeline since paths into engineering are relatively closed after the freshman year. In this work, we explore the influence of familial engineers on students' choice of engineering through a mixed methods approach. The quantitative portion of this study comes from the nationally representative Sustainability and Gender in Engineering (SaGE) survey, completed by 6,772 students enrolled in first-year English courses during Fall 2011. The qualitative data come from seventeen interviews of high school students conducted during in-depth observations at two public U.S. high schools in 2013. A linear regression predicting the likelihood of a an engineering career was constructed with family members' professions and career influence input as predictors, along with controls for students' academic performance, their family's general support for math/science, and their socioeconomic status (SES). From the interview data, students' own narratives about "who has influenced [their] career choice" were coded to triangulate the quantitative data and provide some explanatory power. The results show that siblings or other relatives being an engineer has a stronger positive influence on students' engineering choice than their parents. These results are supported by students' narratives that their "other" family influences are a stronger influence than direct parental influences except for students who reported a strong, positive relationship with a paternal engineering role model. Notably, no gender differences were found in this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper examined the factors influencing students' access to work-integrated learning experiences (WILs; i.e., internships and co-operative education). Several studies have examined how WILs enrich students' academic and career development. Yet, fewer studies examine the considerations associated with who participates in WILs and how these types of experiences shape students' beliefs about themselves as engineers or their career plans after participation. This study examines the narratives of 25 students who did and did not participate in WILs to understand why students choose to participate in WILs, the considerations and challenges to participating in WILs, and the impact of WILs on students' identity development. This research used an adapted framework of identity trajectory theory, which consists of three interlocking strands-institutional (i.e., programs, practices, procedures, etc.), networking (i.e., social networks, faculty interactions, etc.), and intellectual (i.e., field of study, learning progression, career trajectories, etc.). We used analysis of narratives to draw out key themes related to how institutional resources and students' networks facilitate their access to WIL experiences. Analysis also highlighted how WILs affect students' identity development as engineers during undergraduate education, including their career intentions upon graduation. We identified five big ideas that were expressed by the students to address the research questions. These ideas include: 1) Institutional structures and resources facilitate students' access to WILs; 2) Students utilize personal and professional networks to improve access to WILs; 3) Various commitments and responsibilities inhibited students' access and engagement with WILs; 4) WILs positively influence latently diverse students' identity development; 5) Individuals who did not engage in WILs identified supplemental opportunities to support their engineering identity. We highlight how these experiences, or lack thereof, influence students' perceptions of themselves as future professional engineers. These results have implications for practice and policies in engineering education, particularly enhancing students' access to WILs and constructing WILs that support students' identity development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Design process representations often attempt to show the iterative pattern of design through a circular or spiral representation. Expert designers iterate, constantly refining their understanding of both the design problem and solution. In other words, a designer's ability to manage the design process--plan, reflect, and incorporate new insights--may be indicative of proficiency in design. When first ideas do not work, these abilities can be leveraged to learn from failure and generate new solution attempts. Despite instruction and representation indicating the cyclical nature of design processes, beginning designers often work in a step-by-step, regimented way. Among beginning designers, reactions to failed ideas are wide-ranging: some positive and some negative; some leading to action and some leading to apathy; some toward dedication and some toward disinterest. In short, how the designer frames failure experiences can determine whether or not each experience will be a benefit to their learning and final design. In light of the disconnect between beginning designers' capacity to manage failure in design iteration, further study of the cognitive processes of beginning designers as they encounter failure is needed to strengthen design education. This case study describes patterns of self-regulation used by high-school design students as they navigate failure and iteration in a five-day design challenge. We present a framework that aligns constituent parts of design--analysis, synthesis, and evaluation--and phases of self-regulation-- forethought, performance, and self-reflection. Furthermore, instances of failure or success in these cyclical phases are identified. Then, using think-aloud data from a pair of design students, linkography is applied to represent the process as a network of interconnected actions while designing. Connections forward and backwards in the design process are interpreted as instances of forethought or reflection. The linkographic representation of the design process, corroborated with analysis of documentation in design journals and design artifacts, supports conclusions regarding the selfregulation strategies of beginning designers. Though contextualized and limited to one design team, the account of these designers is a useful starting point for coming to understand how beginning designers experience failure in design. These findings also offer insight into the design of educational experiences where failure may occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a status update for an NSF-funded project aimed at developing and collecting validity evidence for an instrument to help colleges improve the impact of their student support investments. By enabling the assessment of support provided to undergraduate students in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), such an instrument will aid STEM educators and college administrators in monitoring progress and identifying unmet needs in local environments, thereby providing data-driven evidence for targeted interventions. In this executive summary, we present: 1) an overview of the instrument development process; 2) an evaluation of the prototype for face and content validity; and 3) a revised instrument and pilot data to determine test validity and reliability across varied institutional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated faculty perceptions and needs salient to the future of the journal Chemical Engineering Education (CEE). Specifically, we sought to understand (a) how faculty use CEE and what they value about it; (b) barriers and improvements to publication and use; and (c) perceptions of the "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Consideration Requirement," which began in 2021. To guide this work, we posed the following research questions: 1) What is the perceived utility of CEE? How do faculty use CEE? What do they value about the journal?; 2) What are the opportunities for improvement? What barriers preclude publication and use?; and 3) What are the perceptions of the "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Consideration Requirement," which began in 2021? We also analyzed the data for an overarching question: What values, attitudes, and beliefs do chemical engineering faculty express about practitionerfocused and discipline-specific education research publications? We conducted focus group interviews representing different CEE constituents (e.g., those who read but have not published, those who have published often) and represented varied perspectives (professional track, tenure track, tenured, varied institution types). As a first step, we report the analysis of a set of five focus groups, including 12 faculty members total. We found that many faculty appreciated the practical nature of the journal for its capacity to offer inspiration for teaching and widespread impact. When asked about the DEI requirement, some faculty raised concerns, being careful to express that they valued DEI, but showing uncertainty about how, for instance, a description of a laboratory experiment could meet this requirement. This discussion suggests a need to support authors publishing under the new DEI guidelines. In this paper, we summarize some of the initial findings from this work and also seek to continue and broaden the conversation with the community through presentation in the ASEE Chemical Engineering Division. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper investigates how students who self-identify as cisgender might hold different personalities and engineering attitudes than students who identify as either male or female and do not identify as cisgender. These students may have a deeper understanding of diverse gender identities and may act as allies in an engineering context. A better understanding of these students provides insight into the types of students entering engineering that can help support and promote diversity. We used quantitative methods to analyze survey data from first-year engineering students relating to constructs of attitudes, personality, and engineering identity. The investigation revealed significant differences between students who identified themselves as cisgender and students who are presumed to be cisgender but do not explicitly identify themselves as such. Cis-identifying students were found to have stronger STEM-related identities and possess personality traits that made them more likely to accept and adopt certain social movements when compared to students who responded as male or female but did not label themselves as cisgender. These results inform a potential role for these students in helping students with minority gender identities to feel belonging within the engineering community. This work offers one of the first probes into nuanced gender identity in engineering education, particularly with teasing apart data that rises from the creation of inclusive demographic survey questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the final year of the project, CAREER: Actualizing Latent Diversity: Building Innovation through Engineering Students' Identity Development (NSF EEC 1554057). Engineering has a history of attracting and graduating look-a-like and think-a-like engineers. Those who look or think like a "stereotypical engineer" may feel more welcome in engineering and may be why engineering has attracted and graduated similar students. This research project considered the unique ways of being, thinking, and knowing--what we call latent diversity--that can be highlighted and valued. Students' latent diversity may or may not align with the values in engineering education that focus on a social/technical dualism, meritocracy, and rigor, which are built-in Whiteness and masculinity. Students, particularly minoritized students (i.e., women, Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students), may feel pushed out of engineering or they may feel the need to conform to these values to fit in. These messages create an engineering education that limits who can be an engineer as well as how these engineers are prepared to solve complex engineering problems. In this paper, we use an example of one student, John, and how he navigated his experiences through engineering over four years. We discuss how key themes of mental health and neurodiversity intersect with his identity development as an engineer over time as well as overlap and were complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. We use this rich, single case as an example of how the mixed methods research in this study provides a nuanced understanding of students' trajectories in engineering. We also discuss the implications of this work for inclusive teaching and provide connections to existing resources and tools developed from the research project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Work In Progress (WIP) research paper explores the impact of traumatic events on student learning alongside the emergence of team roles and belongingness in first-year engineering course. Previous work studying engineering culture has noted a divide between social and technical content, the emergence of a chilly climate, and that this culture influences engineering teams. While previous research has examined engineering culture, limited work has explored how these elements intersect and are enacted. For our study, we seek to understand how students working on a first-year engineering design team negotiate their team roles and experiences. Specifically, we examine the complex interactions between an all female team and the tensions that arose amidst conflicts with inclusion, power dynamics, and an unannounced traumatic life event. We show how these tensions might contribute to a chilly climate in engineering education not just from the dominant masculine culture but also from peer interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper examines how four first-year engineering students interact with one another in teams to answer two research questions: 1) How do students experience working in diverse teams? and 2) Do their perceptions of diversity, affect, and engineering practice change as a result of working in diverse teams? Despite engineering's emphasis on developing students' teaming skills, little research has been conducted on how students develop sensitivity to students from different cultures and backgrounds within diverse teams. We interviewed four students in a first-semester, first-year engineering team twice for a total of eight interviews to understand their experiences working in diverse teams. Each interview was analyzed using a modified form of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to understand the lived experience of each participant. In this paper, we present the results from the qualitative analysis of one team's complete interviews as a first step in the larger research project. Results from this first-year engineering team show that in spite of explicit instruction and discussions about the importance of diversity, these students did not wholeheartedly value diversity in teaming activities. This team renegotiated and compromised their operationalization of what diversity meant in their engineering team. While based on individual values, this compromised understanding of diversity in engineering-teaming tasks led to inequitable experiences and lack of growth across the team. It limited the roles students took on during teaming activities, helped establish boundaries around communication in the team, and influenced the type of work teammates were trusted to take on and complete. Despite being from diverse parts of the world, having different experiences with and perceptions of diversity, this student team felt they were more homogeneous than different. Our work highlights the need for a deeper examination of the intricate complexity of teaming experiences during inquiry and design activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]