Collaborative Research: Research Initiation: Factors Affecting Underrepresented Minority Student Success and Pathways to Engineering Careers at Majority and Minority Institutions

这个项目的动机是需要制定实用的策略，以扩大非裔美国学生在工程领域的参与。虽然大学准备不足是工程专业学生入学率低、留校率低和毕业率低的一个因素，但有证据表明，职业坚持与身份发展、社会和学术互动直接相关。对于来自传统黑人学院和大学（HBCUs）和以白人为主的机构（pwi）中STEM中代表性不足群体的学生来说，人们普遍认为，家庭、同伴和导师支持形式的社会资本对他们在专业学习领域的坚持至关重要。然而，学生群体中的嵌入式网络，特别是少数工程亲缘群体，在工程学生的身份形成和学业成功中所起的作用尚未得到很好的理解。其他因素，包括机构支持、教职员工对代表性不足的少数族裔学生的态度和信念，如何影响这些学生融入所在机构的社会和学术体系的能力，以及这些因素如何影响他们作为工程师身份的形成和发展，目前也不清楚。这些因素的影响将在本项目中进行研究。从心理学和人类学的角度对影响pis和hbcu学生社会和学业生存的因素的洞察，将有可能导致新的方法和途径，以扩大参与和提高代表性不足的少数民族学生在工程领域的成功。这个跨学科、跨机构的研究启动项目的中心目标是对托莱多大学（一所以白人为主的大学）和阿拉巴马农业机械大学（一所历史上的黑人大学）中少数族裔学生的成功和工程职业道路的影响因素进行比较研究。具体而言，比较调查将集中在三个方面：1。教师和工作人员对代表性不足的学生的态度和信念，以及这些态度如何影响他们的课堂，建议互动和期望，以及他们对学生的归属感和学业成功的影响；2. 两所院校现有的制度支持机制和学生对其有效性的看法，以及他们认为这些机制在学业成功中所起的作用；和3。学生组织的影响-特别是代表性不足的少数族裔工程亲和团体及其嵌入式网络对两类机构中非裔美国学生的社会和学术整合的影响。本研究将结合现有关于教师/教师对学生的期望、态度-行为过程的双过程模型和成就目标动机理论的文献，研究教师的内隐态度、学生对学校和项目的感知和感受，以及他们的学术和社会成果。研究将采用多种来源和多种方法，包括焦点小组访谈、结构化和开放式调查、社会网络分析以及内隐联想测试（IAT），来捕捉PWI和HBCU大学工程专业学生的经历。IAT将被用来评估教师可能不愿意明确表达的偏见，因为规范的压力，或者因为它们与平等主义的自我形象相冲突而受到压抑。IAT使用反应竞争来间接测量态度，已被广泛应用于研究针对各种外群体（如种族和性别）的内隐偏见，但以前尚未应用于工程教育背景。研究结果将用于确定现有实践可以改进的领域，并为设计项目和干预策略提供信息，以提高这两种院校中代表性不足的工程专业学生的成功率。

This project is motivated by the need to develop practical strategies for broadening the participation of African American students in engineering. While inadequate college preparation is a contributing factor in the low enrollment and poor retention and graduation rates among underrepresented students in engineering programs, there is evidence that professional persistence is directly linked to identity development and social and academic interactions. For students from underrepresented groups in STEM at both Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs), it is generally recognized that social capital in the form of familial, peer and mentor support is critical to persistence in their major field of study. However, the role that embedded networks within student groups in general and minority engineering affinity groups in particular play in engineering students' identity formation and academic success is not well understood. It is also not clear how other factors including institutional support and the attitudes and beliefs of faculty and staff toward underrepresented minority students affect the ability of these students to integrate into the social and academic systems at their institutions and how these factors influence the formation and development of their identities as engineers. The influence of these factors will be investigated in this project. The insight gained into the factors affecting the social and academic survival of students at PWIs and HBCUs from the psychological and anthropological perspective proposed will potentially lead to new approaches and pathways to broadening participation and improving the success of underrepresented minority students in engineering.The central objective of this interdisciplinary, interinstitutional research initiation project is to conduct a comparative study of the factors affecting the success and pathways to engineering careers of underrepresented minority students at the University of Toledo (a Predominantly White Institution (PWI)) and Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University (a Historically Black University). Specifically, the comparative investigation will focus on three areas: 1. The attitudes and beliefs of faculty and staff toward underrepresented students and how these attitudes influence their classroom, and advising interactions and expectations, and the impact they have on the students' sense of belonging and academic success; 2. The existing institutional support mechanisms at both institutions and students' perceptions of their efficacy and the role they perceive these mechanisms play in their academic success; and 3. The influence of student organizations - specifically underrepresented Minority engineering affinity groups and the embedded networks therein on the social and academic integration of African American students at the two types of institutions. The study will be embedded in the existing literature on faculty/teacher expectations of their students, the dual process model of attitude-to-behavior processes, and achievement goal motivation theory to examine faculty implicit attitudes, students perceptions of and feelings about the institution and program, and their academic and social outcomes. Multiple sources and multiple methodologies will be used to capture the experiences of engineering students in PWI and HBCU universities, including focus-group interviews, structured and open- ended surveys, social network analysis, as well as the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The IAT will be used to assess biases that faculty may be unwilling to explicitly express because of normative pressure or because they are repressed as they conflict with an egalitarian self-image. The IAT, which uses response competition designed to measure attitudes indirectly, has been widely applied to study implicit biases against a variety of outgroups (e.g., race and gender), but has not previously been applied in the engineering education context. The results will be used to identify areas where existing practices might be improved, and to inform the design of programs and intervention strategies to improve the success of underrepresented students in engineering at both types of institutions.