An Engineer Like Me: How Perceived Similarity and Peer Effects Influence Student Major Choice

这个改善本科STEM教育（IUSE）项目将调查影响女性和少数民族学生在工程领域代表性不足的因素。来自普渡大学工程学院的数据将用于分析，这提供了一个检查大量工程专业学生的机会。该项目有以下目标：（1）调查学生的同龄人和榜样，无论是从学生和教师群体在每个专业，可以影响学生的专业选择，（2）调查学生在选择专业的过程中收到的消息和信息如何影响他们将进入哪个领域，以及（3）建立如何以及为什么主要的选择随着时间的推移而变化。分析将联合收割机方法从经济学和教育提供全面的混合方法分析如何课堂环境和活动可以影响学生的专业选择。拟议中的研究旨在解释为什么在工程学科的多样性存在很大的变化，作为学生的课堂经验的功能，学生的同龄人和教师的人口组成，而且学生通过课堂活动和干预措施收到的关于不同学科的价值观和职业前景的信息。该项目的成功完成将极大地补充正在进行的努力，以增加跨工程学科的招聘工作。工程教育在当今经济环境中的重要性和作用越来越受到关注。随着国家对更大，更多样化的工程劳动力的需求，更好地了解包括课堂环境和同龄人，学科代表的信息和部门级人口构成在内的多种因素如何相互影响学生的学术和职业轨迹是及时和关键的。该项目有可能在几个领域，特别是经济学和工程教育方面促进知识的发展。该项目的一个重要贡献将是更加注重向学生提供信息和信息。本研究项目的解释性调查方法使用归纳和演绎的策略是基于广泛的采访参与者。调查结果将产生新的见解，具有重要意义的战略发展，以招募更多的妇女和代表性不足的少数民族到不同的工程学科。 如果信息传递被证明是机构可以影响专业选择的重要途径，这种类型的干预将是非常可扩展的，并可能对其他STEM领域的女性和少数民族学生的代表性产生重大影响。该项目包括努力将这项工作的结果传达给更广泛的工程教育界。

This Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) project will investigate the factors that influence the under-representation of female and minority students in engineering. Data from the College of Engineering at Purdue University will be used for the analyses, which provides an opportunity to examine a large population of engineering students. The project has the following objectives: (1) to investigate how students' peers and role models, both from the student and faculty populations within each major, can affect students choice of major, (2) to investigate how the messaging and information students receive in the course of choosing their major can affect which field they will enter, and (3) to establish how and why major choices change over time. The analysis will combine methods from economics and education to provide comprehensive mixed-methods analysis of how classroom environments and activities can influence student major choice. The proposed research is aimed at explaining why substantial variations in diversity exist across engineering disciplines as a function of student classroom experiences the demographic composition of students peers and faculty, but also the messages that students receive regarding the values and career prospects of the different disciplines through classroom activities and interventions. The successful completion of the project will significantly complement ongoing efforts to increase recruitment efforts across engineering disciplines.The importance and the role of engineering education in today's economic environment have been receiving growing attention. With the nation's call for a larger and more diverse engineering labor force, it is timely and critical to better understand how multiple factors including classroom environments and peers, messaging from discipline representatives, and departmental-level demographic composition intersect to influence students' academic and career trajectories. This project has the potential to advance knowledge in several fields, notably economics and engineering education. An important contribution of this project will be the additional focus on messaging and information available to students. This research project's interpretive inquiry approach using both inductive and deductive strategies is based on a broad range of interview participants. Findings will generate new insights that have important implications for the development of strategies to recruit more women and underrepresented minorities into the different engineering disciplines. If messaging is shown to be an important avenue by which institutions can affect major choice, this type of intervention will be very scalable and could have significant impacts on the representation of female and minority students within other STEM fields. The project includes efforts to communicate the results of this work to the broader engineering education community.