Enhancing Critical Transitions in Undergraduate Civil Engineering Education

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With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 1 project aims to enhance critical transitions from lower- to upper-division undergraduate coursework for civil engineering majors. The project focuses on addressing low retention and graduation rates in civil engineering undergraduate degrees at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV), which is a designated HSI. UNLV is also a Native-American-Serving Institution and an Asian-American- and Pacific Islander-Serving Institution. The project will increase retention and graduation in civil engineering by: 1) increasing the sense of community among students and between students and faculty; 2) innovating the undergraduate curriculum through course creation and alignment of lower- and upper-division courses; and 3) assisting STEM faculty and graduate assistants to develop and implement culturally responsive teaching strategies. The project will develop evidence-based strategies to manage cultural aspects of engineering education that can be adapted by other institutions. By increasing retention rates and on-track graduation of civil engineering students, including students of diverse backgrounds, the project has the potential to contribute to increasing the diversity of the STEM workforce. Leveraging a robust collaboration of engineering and education researchers, the project will explore causative and correlative interactions of factors affecting undergraduate civil engineering education. To achieve the educational and research objectives, the project will perform three interconnected activities including, 1) Community Cohesion Building, 2) Transformative Curriculum Development, and 3) Culturally Responsive Faculty Development. The project will engage civil engineering students into cohort-based social activities to build learning communities. The project will engage faculty to align the curriculum of lower- and upper-division courses and to create an inclusive teaching environment. The project seeks to develop evidence-based knowledge on culturally responsive engineering pedagogy for the engineering and education research communities. To this end, it will employ a quantitative and culturally responsive evaluation plan to track progress, enhance resiliency in unforeseen circumstances, and guide future sustainable activities. The project will also include an Advisory Board of experts to provide feedback and guidance. It is expected that the research studies will: 1) identify optimal support structures to enable students to successfully complete the critical transition from lower- to upper-division course; 2) reveal the relational support among cohort groupings to increase retention in the freshman year and to improve learning achievement in upper-division coursework; 3) examine the synergistic effects of incorporating culturally responsive instruction and its impact on student learning. The project outcomes will be disseminated through journal articles, presentations, and a website. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims.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.