Exploring Military Veteran Students' Pathways in Engineering Education.

Military veterans hold tremendous promise for expanding and diversifying the engineering workforce. Yet, little is known regarding the educational pathways and experiences of student veterans into engineering. This project aims to address gaps in the literature on student veterans in engineering through a comparative case study across four institutions: University of San Diego, North Carolina State University, Purdue University, and Clemson University. The research plan incorporates content analysis of academic policies that student veterans encounter, interviews with key informants on each campus, focus group interviews with student veterans, and in-depth student interviews to elicit rich narratives. The theoretical framework builds on Tinto's student integration model and Schlossberg's adult transition theory. Data will be analyzed with the lens of intersectionality to elucidate differences stemming from the intersection of military status with race, gender, ability, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status. Findings will provide context and information for various applications, such as: development of new strategies to support student veterans' success, identification of overlooked areas to promote student veterans' participation in engineering, and generation of critical information for development of larger-scale studies for investigating student veterans in engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]