CAREER:Investigating Co-Curricular Participation of Students Underrepresented in Engineering

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The objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award is to investigate how engineering students decide to participate or not participate in co-curricular activities and how these students perceive the impact of various types of co-curricular activities on their persistence, learning and entry into the workforce (or career) and what interventions encourage co-curricular involvement. This project is aligned with two of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) strategic performance goals: prepare and engage a diverse STEM workforce motivated to participate at the frontiers (T-2) and build the capacity of the nation's citizenry for addressing societal challenges through science and engineering (I-2). This project uses existing NSF-funded instruments to develop, test and distribute a new survey instrument; collect and analyze quantitative and qualitative data on co-curricular involvement, persistence and learning outcomes that can be leveraged to guide institutional policies and programs and to design effective innovations to retain diverse students in engineering that progress to the workforce; apply research findings to design, pilot test and evaluate an innovative, evidence-based intervention constructed to enhance student persistence and learning and to inform institutional policies and practices on retention; and collaborate with institutional programs and national professional organizations to expand and scale up the intervention and disseminate results of the project. This project advances the understanding of engineering students' pathways to include those traditionally underrepresented in engineering; methodologically contributes to informal learning of engineering students; shapes future research and development related to these populations; and informs research communities, policymakers, and institution leaders. Research on the student experience is essential to transforming engineering education, which will result in broader participation of underrepresented groups in engineering.