Learning from the PROSE: Exploring professional organizations' role in supporting Black engineering student success

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Despite millions of federal investments to broaden participation, Black students continue to be underrepresented at all levels of engineering. Existing research not only provides evidence of the barriers to undergraduate engineering degree completion, it also reveals factors that positively influence the academic outcomes of high-achieving Black students. Factors like being more socially integrated on campus and being conscious of one's racial identity are among them; and involvement in certain types of professional organizations on campus provide a context for both of these factors to occur. As part of Learning from the PROSE (Professional Organizations Supporting Excellence), the aim of this study is to understand how students' engagement with identity-related organizations - like the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) and those that makeup the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC)- contributes to the successful completion of engineering programs. This project is focusing on the experiences of those who have already successfully completed their undergraduate education, namely Black graduate engineering students. The findings from this study will advance our understanding of the unique role identity-related organizations play in promoting the success of one of the least represented groups in engineering. The explicit focus on Black engineering graduate students who have graduated from a range of institutions allows us to deeply explore similar dynamics in different contexts. By extension, this will allows us to develop a robust set of strategies for supporting minority students at all levels of education, reinforce the efforts of professional organizations that align with various dimensions of their identity, and shed light on pathways to the professoriate.Although Black people represent approximately 13% of the U.S. population and are one of the fastest growing demographics in the nation, they made up less than 4.4% of engineering degree recipients at the undergraduate, Master's and doctoral levels during the 2015-2016 academic year. This work will learn from Black engineering graduate students that have successfully navigated engineering environments and self-selected to continue study in a graduate engineering program. Using the Model of Co-Curricular Support and Community Cultural Wealth as theoretical underpinnings, this qualitative and video-based research project will investigate how engagement in identify-related organizations as undergraduate students contributed to the successful navigation of their engineering programs. More specifically, this project aims to investigate the mechanisms by which professional organizations provide the critical professional and psychosocial support that contribute to the development and success of Black engineering students using a three-phase approach: performing a systematic literature review, conducting phenomenological interviews, and exploring novel means of dissemination. Although existing research typically investigates such experiences while being enrolled in undergraduate engineering programs, using a phenomenological approach, this study takes a comprehensive and reflective view that can only be obtained after the experience is over. Moreover, relying on a mixture of qualitative and video-based methods provides the basis for disseminating the research findings in traditional and novel ways. This study will uncover critical aspects of access to networks and support systems from the perspective of Black engineering students that have demonstrated persistence while highlighting partnership opportunities among existing on-campus programs that could promote a shift away from the siloed approaches to supporting student success. This study will also develop knowledge by serving as an initial investigation into the significance of engaging in multiple identity-related professional organizations simultaneously. Insights emerging from this investigation will likely have implications for other underrepresented groups (e.g., Latinx, LGBTQ, transfer students, etc).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.