Research Initiation Grants: Nurturing the Creativity of Students with ADHD in Engineering Disciplines

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Engineering breakthroughs play a crucial role in our nation's ability to face the significant challenges of the coming decades. A critical need exists in engineering education to draw on the divergent thinking and risk-taking necessary for revolutionizing industries and making radical technological discoveries. This study builds on the literature that establishes the concurrence of strong divergent thinking skills and unparalleled risk-taking potential in individuals with ADHD. This group of student is significantly underrepresented, some work suggests that only 3% of college students with ADHD choose to study engineering The objectives of this study are: 1) to investigate if engineering students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have greater potential than their peers to develop transforming solutions for complex problems, 2) to determine impediments that significantly limit the participation of these students in engineering programs and put them at a higher risk of academic failure and 3) to identify the fundamental elements of specialized engineering programs that promote the recruitment and retention of students with ADHD. This work is potentially transformative because it addresses the significance of the unique traits of students with ADHD, who may be at high risk for academic failure but have the potential for creative productivity. Using both existing valid measures of creativity and established psychometric scales, the researchers propose to measure student performance in engineering among ADHD and control cohorts, as well as to identify impediments to ADHD students' success through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The significance of this project is two-fold, as it has the potential to positively affect the growth, competitiveness, and security of our nation, as well as the well-being of an academically and socially vulnerable group of students. Individuals with ADHD and their families experience tremendous distress because their talents largely go unrecognized. This project may lead to a paradigm shift in how these individuals are perceived by both our society and our educational system.