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The article discusses the importance of the peer review process in the Journal of Engineering Education. The authors emphasize that peer reviewers play a crucial role in vetting and improving ideas, research designs, and findings, as well as in enhancing communication within the community. They provide tips for reviewers, such as noting both the strengths and areas for improvement in a manuscript, offering feedback on the written paper rather than personal preferences, and providing higher-level, conceptually geared feedback. The authors also highlight the importance of being kind and respectful in providing feedback to authors. The article concludes by announcing new members of the JEE Editorial Board and promotions within the board. [Extracted from the article]

Post-course instructor ratings are a common practice at universities in Europe, Australia, and North America. Rather than solely describing teaching practice, however, such ratings may be associated with a range of non-pedagogical factors. We explored engineering students’ instructor ratings at a large United States institution, investigating relationships between overall instructor rating and some of those non-pedagogical factors, including subject area, class size, and students’ course grades. Instructor ratings were more favourable in humanities courses than in science or math courses, and students gave higher ratings to instructors who taught smaller class sizes. The strongest relationship existed between overall rating and students’ course grades: students who received A’s rated instructors an average 0.84 points higher on a 6-point scale than students who received F’s. Students who withdrew from a course provided the lowest instructor ratings. When instructor ratings are used as metrics of teaching ability in discussions related to promotion, tenure, or salary adjustments, there is an inherent inequity in the system that must be acknowledged beyond already well-documented biases, as non-pedagogical factors often outside of the instructor’s control may be significantly associated with those ratings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increasing emphasis on assessing student learning outcomes from study abroad experiences, but this assessment often focuses on a limited range of outcomes and assessment methods. We argue for shifting to assessing student learning processes in study abroad and present the critical incident technique as one approach to achieve this goal. We demonstrate this approach in interviews with 79 students across a range of global engineering programs, through which we identified 173 incidents which were analyzed to identify common themes. This analysis revealed that students described a wide range of experiences and outcomes from their time abroad. Students' experiences were messy and complex, making them challenging to understand through typical assessment approaches. Our findings emphasize the importance of using a range of assessment approaches and suggest that exploring students' learning processes in addition to learning outcomes could provide new insights to inform the design of study abroad programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the need for recalibration and adjustments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the engineering education system. The authors acknowledge the limitations and time constraints faced by authors, reviewers, and editorial board members, and highlight efforts to find efficiencies in the review process. They also suggest shorter, conceptually focused feedback for reviewers to save time. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding the implications of the pandemic on structural inequities, students' prior knowledge, and work-life balance in the field of engineering education. The authors conclude by stating that a return to the "before times" is unlikely and that the journal is adapting to the new reality. [Extracted from the article]

This article provides engineering educators with a comprehensive overview of engineering leadership assessment and evaluation for undergraduate engineering students to help instigate positive change for the future of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Transfer students in engineering must navigate a myriad of information sources to obtain accurate information on how to matriculate into a 4‐year institution. Although some institutional and state‐level initiatives attempt to streamline the transfer process, students still report difficulties. Purpose This article explores the extent to which web‐based transfer information is fragmented across institutional websites and written using communicative strategies that could limit comprehension. Accordingly, this study characterizes information asymmetries—gaps in information—that affect transfer students in terms of two constructs: fragmentation and language. Method: We employed a convergent fully integrated mixed‐methods design with a stratified random sample of 38 US engineering degree‐granting institutions. The connections between the webpages were transformed into networks and clustered using k‐means and partitioning around medoids with measures of dispersion and centrality. A purposeful nested sample of 16 institutions was taken based on the clusters and explored using a two‐cycle mixed‐methods coding protocol to understand how fragmentation and language interact to create information asymmetries. The resulting themes from each construct were integrated to develop narratives across the sampled institutions. Conclusions: We found the web‐based information for transfer students to be a messy web of loosely connected structures with language that complicates understanding. We identified four fragmentation themes illustrating how transfer information is organized and six language themes capturing linguistic patterns across the webpages. We offer strategies for researchers and practitioners based on the narratives we developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Determining the root causes of persistent underrepresentation of different subpopulations in engineering remains a continued challenge. Because place‐based variation of resource distribution is not random and because school and community contexts influence high school outcomes, considering variation across those contexts should be paramount in broadening participation research. Purpose/Hypothesis: This study takes a macroscopic systems view of engineering enrollments to understand variation across one state's public high school rates of engineering matriculation. Design/Method: This study uses a dataset from the Virginia Longitudinal Data System that includes all students who completed high school from a Virginia public school from 2007 to 2014 (N = 685,429). We explore geographic variation in four‐year undergraduate engineering enrollment as a function of gender, race/ethnicity, and economically disadvantaged status. Additionally, we investigate the relationship between characteristics of the high school and community contexts and undergraduate engineering enrollment across Virginia's high schools using regression analysis. Results: Our findings illuminate inequality in enrollment in engineering programs at four‐year institutions across high schools by gender, race, and socioeconomic status (and the intersections among those demographics). Different high schools have different engineering enrollment rates among students who attend four‐year postsecondary institutions. We show strong associations between high schools' engineering enrollment rates and four‐year institution enrollment rates as well as moderate associations for high schools' community socioeconomic status. Conclusions: Strong systemic forces need to be overcome to broaden participation in engineering. We demonstrate the insights that state longitudinal data systems can illuminate in engineering education research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doctoral student recruitment is a dynamic, complex, and under-researched phenomenon. There is steep competition between programs for recruiting students with large amounts of resources at stake, especially within the STEM fields, and programs do not operate in isolation within such environments. In this paper, we explore how graduate programs position themselves relative to other programs as they recruit STEM doctoral students. Drawing from 47 interviews with graduate program leaders, 49 interviews with graduate students, and 63 questionnaire responses from graduate program staff and administrators, this research analyzes common recruitment practices of STEM doctoral programs alongside student perspectives about their decision processes. We reveal how competitive forces may lead programs to adopt non-evidence-based recruitment strategies that may not align with either program leaders' stated values or students' priorities. Although program leaders expressed the importance of students prioritizing academic factors in their decisions, our data revealed that programs commonly utilize financial resources as their main recruitment mechanism in practice. By demonstrating this incongruence, our paper aims to illuminate a potential blind spot so programs might choose to change seemingly institutionalized processes that may be out of alignment with their own stated values and those of the students they are seeking to recruit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines differences across demographic subgroups in the phenomenon of recent doctoral recipients seeking work but having no job offers for employment. Gender and race/ethnicity have been identified as two characteristics with considerable issues of representation in a number of science and engineering fields, particularly at the doctoral level. Using the NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates dataset, which includes over 298,000 respondents in the biological sciences, engineering, and physical sciences since 1977, we use logistic regression modelling to examine the likelihood of doctoral recipients having no offers at the time of graduation as a function of race, gender, family and funding variables. We find that across the fields of biology, engineering, and physical sciences, women and underrepresented minorities have a higher prevalence of having no job offers, but this relationship has notable interaction effects for family variables and doctoral program funding mechanism. Importantly, marital status accounts for differences in job offers between genders that deserves further exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bolstering transfer pathways to a 4-year degree can help fill the country's increasing need for innovative, diverse, skilled workers within engineering. Drawing on survey data from a sample comprised of a disproportionately large percentage of Hispanic/Latino students, this study focuses on understanding engineering transfer students' reasons for starting at a different institution. Financial/Affordability, Nonacademic Commitments, and Academic Flexibility were top reasons for starting at a different institution with multiple differences across subpopulations like Hispanic/Latino status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Engineers operate in an increasingly global environment, making it important that engineering students develop global engineering competency to prepare them for success in the workplace. To understand this learning, we need assessment approaches that go beyond traditional self‐report surveys. A previous study (Jesiek et al., Journal of Engineering Education 2020; 109(3):1–21) began this process by developing a situational judgment test (SJT) to assess global engineering competency based in the Chinese context and administering it to practicing engineers. Purpose: We built on this previous study by administering the SJT to engineering students to explore what prior experiences related to their SJT performance and how their SJT performance compared with practicing engineers' performance on the SJT. Method: Engineering students completed a survey including the SJT and related self‐report survey instruments. We collected data from three groups of students: those who had studied abroad in China; those who had studied abroad elsewhere; and those who had not studied abroad. Results: We found that students' SJT performance did not relate to their scores on the self‐report instruments, but did relate to their participation in study abroad programs. The students also performed better on the SJT when compared to the practicing engineers. Conclusions: Our results highlight the need to use multiple forms of assessment for global engineering competence. Although building evidence for the validity of the Global Engineering Competency China SJT is an ongoing process, this data collection technique may provide new insights on global engineering competency compared to traditionally used assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Background: Enrollment of US students in engineering graduate programs is declining, the proportion of underrepresented groups being even lower at the graduate level than it is at undergraduate levels. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore engineering undergraduate student perceptions about graduate study, how these perceptions impact their decisions to pursue graduate study, and whether or how these differ by sex and race/ethnicity. Design/Method: We administered a survey about graduate study to 1082 undergraduate engineering students from four US institutions. Student characteristics included sex, race/ethnicity, and year in college. Exploratory Factor Analysis identified factors related to Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT). We created multinomial logistic regression models to predict intention to pursue a master's or PhD degree. Results: Identified factors were Self‐efficacy, Outcome expectations, Supports, Barriers, and Choice actions. Model fit statistics indicate a strong model. Only Choice actions was not significant. Few sex and race/ethnicity differences held once factors were added to the models. Hispanic students were more than twice as likely to indicate they were planning on enrolling in a master's program relative to no graduate school. Conclusions: Self‐efficacy most strongly influenced graduate school intention. For every one‐unit increase in students' self‐efficacy, they were over 8 times more likely to plan to enroll in a master's program and 13 times more likely to enroll in a PhD program, relative to not attending graduate school. Implications for research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burgeoning college enrolments and insufficient funding to higher education have expanded the use of large lecture courses. As this trend continues, it is important to ensure that students can still learn in those challenging learning environments. Within education broadly and undergraduate engineering specifically, active learning pedagogies have been developed to overcome some of those issues in a traditional classroom setting. However, active learning has not been well established in large, lecture-hall classroom environments. This study investigates an active learning approach that was used for an introductory environmental engineering course of 269 students in a tiered lecture hall. Analyses using normalised gain scores illuminate statistically significant differences between learning gains in content delivered using the active learning method versus a traditional, lecture-only delivery. There were no significant interaction effects across different student characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Multiple reports call for undergraduate programs to develop engineers who have leadership abilities. Such preparation requires understanding how the undergraduate experience relates to student leadership abilities. Limited research has shown disagreement among faculty members and administrators about effective approaches for engineering leadership development. Purpose/Hypothesis The purpose of this research was to understand what precollege characteristics and experiences, university experiences, and undergraduate engineering program contexts relate to undergraduate engineers' self-reported leadership skills. Design/Methods Using hierarchical linear modeling, this quantitative study examined the variance of students' self-reported leadership skills as explained by their precollege characteristics and undergraduate experiences. The study drew from a nationally representative survey-based dataset of 5,076 undergraduate engineers from 150 undergraduate engineering programs from 31 colleges and universities. Results Although multiple facets of the undergraduate experience significantly relate to students' self-reported leadership skills, curricular emphases on core engineering thinking, professional skills, and broad and systems perspectives explain the greatest amount of variance. The lack of significant relationships at the program level suggests a lack of formal leadership development within the undergraduate curriculum at large. Conclusions Results indicate that entrusting the leadership development of undergraduate engineering students to the co-curriculum is an inefficient method of developing leadership skills for undergraduate engineers. The curriculum more strongly relates to engineering students' leadership skills. Identifying ways for faculty members to enhance this curricular focus could further development of technologically adept engineering leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Although interdisciplinarity has been a subject of interest and debate for decades, few investigations of interdisciplinary education exist. Existing studies examine the effects of interdisciplinary experiences on students' development of generic cognitive skills but not the development of interdisciplinary competencies. Purpose/Hypothesis This study sought to explore how engineering students' characteristics, college experiences, and engineering faculty beliefs relate to students' reports of interdisciplinary competence. Design/Method The study used a nationally representative survey sample of 5,018 undergraduate students and 1,119 faculty members in 120 U.S. engineering programs at 31 institutions. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we investigated the relationships among students' curricular and co-curricular experiences and faculty beliefs regarding interdisciplinarity in engineering education on students' reports of interdisciplinary competence. Results This study found that a curricular emphasis on interdisciplinary topics and skills, as well as co-curricular activities, specifically, participating in nonengineering clubs and organizations, study abroad, and humanitarian engineering projects, significantly and positively relate to engineering students' reports of interdisciplinary skills. Faculty members' beliefs regarding interdisciplinarity in engineering education moderated the relationships between particular co-curricular experiences and students' interdisciplinary skills, as well as between curricular emphasis and students' interdisciplinary skills. Conclusions This study identified a small set of experiences that are related to students' reported development of interdisciplinary competence. The study points to the critical role of the curriculum in promoting interdisciplinary thinking and habits of mind, as well as the potential of co-curricular opportunities that bring engineering students together with nonmajors to build interdisciplinary competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Although prior studies have shown how female students' college experiences influence persistence, graduation, and career choice, we consider how specific college experiences may produce different learning outcomes for men and women in engineering programs. Purpose This article explores how curricular emphases, instructional approaches, and co-curricular participation affect learning outcomes differently by gender. Design/Method This study used a nationally representative weighted survey sample of 4,901 students in 120 Untied States engineering programs. We used a multilevel regression approach to test for the interaction effects between gender and college students' experiences on learning outcomes deemed critical for career success. Results We identified the curricular emphases, instructional approaches, and co-curricular participation that affected learning outcomes differently by gender. Greater curricular emphasis on professional skills and a greater frequency of student-centered teaching led to greater self-reported design skills for women. Being more active in nonengineering clubs increased female students' self-reports of fundamental, design, and communication skills. Conclusions The findings of this study support investigation of ideas that might help female students develop learning outcomes more effectively. Future research should consider applying our analytical approach to identify how college experiences affect different groups of students differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Threshold concepts are transformative, integrative, and provocative; understanding these difficult concepts allows students to be capable of solving advanced problems. This investigation and evaluation of a metacognitive curricular approach explore variation in students' and teachers' discernment of structural complexity of concepts and its potential for enhancing students' learning and conceptual understanding of threshold concepts. Three trials of a metacognitive assessment activity administered to two cohorts of a civil engineering course (n = 276 andn = 264) were investigated. Students were presented with several answers (varying in structural complexity) to a question about a threshold concept and asked to mark each response. Quantitative analyses compared students' and teachers' marking schemes within and across trials, and qualitative analyses explored students' written reflections following the activity. Students' justifications for their marking schemes, their reflections on the activity's usefulness, and the convergence of students' and teachers' marking schemes suggest that the activity supported deep forms of student learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports on the development of metalearning capacity in the learning of athreshold concept– capacity of transformative significance relative to metalearning in the general response context of a discipline or subject. The development of metalearning capacity is framed within a protocol that invites students to self-construct a ‘learning profile’ of themselves; reflect on it in light of theoretical considerations; and accordingly self-initiate changes to their learning behaviour. Findings are consistent with other studies in different disciplinary contexts that employed the same methodology – namely, that metalearning activity can be successfully focused on a particular threshold concept to benefit a substantial majority of students in a variety of ways ranging across a positive reinforcement of self, a change in conception of what ‘learning is’, to self-initiated change. Metalearning activity is advocated as a theoretically sound, and pedagogically driven, learning intervention – one that adds value to the student learning experience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We present a three-part conceptual model that illuminates key dynamics promoting financial unsustainability within intercollegiate athletics. Revenue divergence comprises the first part as the influx of commercial athletic revenues primarily benefits a small set of universities housing prominent athletic programs. These schools then increase athletic expenditures, which promotes expenditures cascades as their spending spurs expenditure growth at other athletic programs. Because external revenues do not increase alongside expenditures at these other programs, subsidies ensue as student fees and institutional subsidies are increased to fill growing deficits. These increases, however, will be difficult to sustain in an era of tight academic budgets and rising student debt. We describe each part of the model using a range of organizational theories and use financial data from intercollegiate athletic programs to demonstrate that the patterns predicted by our framework are supported empirically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Neonatology is a relatively new sub-specialty so we aimed to review survival data in the context of advances in neonatal care. Method: Review of neonatal survival for very low birthweight babies over the last 50 years. Results: In the data collected from a single tertiary neonatal unit, survival for babies 501-1000 g improved from below 10% in 1959 to over 60% in 2009. Similarly, survival for babies 1001 to 1500 g has improved from approximately 50% to over 90%. During the study period, death due to extreme prematurity or cardiorespiratory problems, namely respiratory distress syndrome, fell from 90% in 1964 to only 45% of neonatal deaths in 2008. Conclusion: In addition to reporting the remarkable improvement in neonatal survival over this period, we have highlighted items of historical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVEPreterm infants receiving dexamethasone for respiratory morbidity frequently suffer restricted growth. The aim of this study was to investigate the interactions between dexamethasone treatment regimen and circulating IGFBP-3 and IGF-I levels, and the associations between these variables and linear growth rate in preterm babies receiving dexamethasone for chronic lung disease of prematurity. DESIGNA randomised, unblinded, clinical trial of two different courses of dexamethasone: a 42-day tapering course (the long course) and a repeatable 3 day pulse course. PATIENTSForty preterm infants (19 in the pulse group, 21 in the long group) with a birthweight ≤ 1250 g who were ventilated at 7 days of age. MEASUREMENTSLower leg length was measured thrice weekly by knemometry, and IGFBP-3 and IGF-I levels were measured prior to commencing treatment, at 14 and 42 days of treatment and at 36 weeks postmenstrual age (PMA). Interactions between variables were analysed by stepwise regression analysis and analysis of covariance (ancova). Associations between variables were assessed by correlation coefficients. RESULTSIn an ancova, mean daily dose of dexamethasone/kg (MDDD) and treatment group both significantly influenced IGFBP-3 levels (P = 0·0009 and P = 0·017, respectively), and tended to influence IGF-I levels similarly (P = 0·098 and P = 0·07). MDDD also significantly influenced mean daily increase in lower leg length (MDILL; P < 0·01). IGFBP-3 and IGF-I levels were significantly related to MDILL (ancova: P < 0·01). The correlation coefficients for IGFBP-3 and IGF-I levels and MDILL were 0·2 and 0·3 (both P < 0·0001), respectively. IGFBP-3 and IGF-I levels were highly correlated (r2 = 0·52, P < 0·0001) and both increased significantly with increasing PMA (P < 0·0001). IGF-I levels were higher in females (P = 0·036). CONCLUSIONThis study provides evidence that the growth-restricting... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an obituary of geographer Hildegard Binder Johnson. Johnson's childhood in Berlin, Germany; Johnson as a proponent of geography; Research and publications; Professional activities and scholarly recognition.

Group politico-territorial identities are potent realities in our fragile world, yet geographers have all but ignored them. Elements and processes involved in recognizing such territorially bound identities are discussed, with a stress on questions of scale and perception. The “legitimacy” of a group politico-territorial identity depends upon the scale of abstraction and upon the definer's perspective. The main problem lies in defining nation. At one level of abstraction, a nation is only a regionalism, yet many groups accept the concept of nation as fact. To appreciate the interplay between these points, several related concepts are also discussed. Some problems connected with group allegiances and orientations are identified. The paper concludes by briefly identifying different responses to the question of whether groups with distinct territorially based identities should have the right to separate territorial and political independence and by challenging geographers to become aware of such identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]