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

这个教师早期职业发展（职业生涯）计划奖的目的是调查工程专业的学生如何决定参加或不参加课外活动，以及这些学生如何看待各种类型的课外活动对他们的坚持，学习和进入劳动力（或职业）的影响，以及什么干预措施鼓励课外参与。 该项目与美国国家科学基金会（NSF）的两个战略绩效目标保持一致：准备和参与多元化的STEM劳动力，他们有动力参与前沿（T-2），并通过科学和工程（I-2）建立国家公民应对社会挑战的能力。该项目利用现有的NSF资助的工具，开发，测试和分发一个新的调查工具;收集和分析有关课外参与，持久性和学习成果的定量和定性数据，这些数据可以用来指导机构政策和方案，并设计有效的创新，以留住工程学中的不同学生，使其成为劳动力;应用研究结果设计、试点测试和评估一种创新的、以证据为基础的干预措施，以提高学生的坚持和学习能力，并为关于保留学生的机构政策和做法提供信息;并与机构方案和国家专业组织合作，扩大和扩大干预措施，传播项目成果。该项目促进了对工程专业学生途径的理解，包括那些传统上在工程领域代表性不足的学生;方法上有助于工程专业学生的非正式学习;塑造与这些人群相关的未来研究和开发;并为研究社区，政策制定者和机构领导人提供信息。对学生体验的研究对于改造工程教育至关重要，这将导致代表性不足的群体更广泛地参与工程。

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.