CAREER: Support our Troops: Re-storying student veteran and service member deficit in engineering through professional formation and community engagement

来自女性、种族和少数民族以及残疾人等代表性不足群体的美国工程师持续稀缺，这使得美国应对21世纪工程挑战和领导全球科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)创新的能力变得更加复杂。我国退伍军人和服役人员深刻地反映了这些群体，并代表了一个由训练有素、技能娴熟的居民组成的强大和多样化的社区，这些居民通过他们的军事关系，拥有与教育有关的财政支持的大量机会。尽管与军事有关的学生在加强和多样化工程学劳动力方面具有强大而切实的潜力，但在高等教育研究，特别是工程教育研究中，他们仍然被忽视和研究不足。该项目侧重于将美国退伍军人和服役人员培养成工程师，将支持美国国家科学基金会(NSF)的职业工程师形成计划，并为NSF扩大工程参与的努力做出贡献，促进女性和女退伍军人重新进入STEM劳动力大军，并为退伍军人提供进入STEM相关行业的替代途径。该项目将通过产生有关退伍军人和服役人员如何体验工程教育的新知识，以及通过制作旨在提高与军队有联系的学生在工程教育中的参与度和持久性的创新和包容性计划、基于网络的资源和培训，来推进NSF计划的目标。这个职业项目的目标是1)描述退伍军人学生(SVSM)的社区文化财富，并批评影响他们参与和坚持工程的教育结构，2)构建SVSM身份模型，以及3)开展一项资产运动，培养对SVSM社区文化财富的广泛认识，将基于资产的反叙事注入关于退伍军人的主要教育话语中，并消除阻碍与军队有联系的学生参与、坚持和专业形成的结构性不平等。该项目将使理论上丰富的、情境化的和纵向的定性研究计划能够在五年的项目期内与不同的、与军队有联系的本科生讲述、分享和检查经验的叙述。该项目将吸引与军方有联系的本科生参加五所公立大学和社区学院的工程项目，其中两所是新兴的拉美裔服务机构(HSI)。本课题以关系本体论为基础，以时间、地点和社会环境中的经验叙事为研究现象和研究方法，以两个研究问题为指导：1)中职学生如何参与和坚持本科工科教育？2)中职学生如何在工科本科教育中产生工程认同？这个项目将解决研究文献中关于基于资产的框架和在工程中为SVSM提供有针对性的职业身份发展支持的严重空白。项目成果具有变革性，因为它们将1)通过深入描述与军队有关联的学生的社区文化财富，增加和完善新兴的退伍军人批评理论，并提供纠正当前关于退伍军人缺陷和教育偏差的论述的对策；2)通过提出学生退伍军人和服役人员工程身份发展模型，增加对工程师专业形成的现有理论理解；以及3)在五个合作机构和全国在线的关键支持社区中，倡导与军事有关联的学生。持续的项目影响将通过广泛传播经过测试的教育资源来实现，包括可访问的与军方有联系的学生同龄人和专业指导计划，以及针对工程管理人员、教职员工的敏感性和意识培训和在线资源。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The persistent scarcity of U.S. engineers from underrepresented groups, including women, racial and ethnic minorities, and persons with disabilities, complicates the nation’s ability to tackle 21st-century engineering challenges and lead innovation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) globally. Our nation’s military veterans and service members deeply reflect these groups and represent a robust and diverse community of highly trained and skilled residents who, through their military affiliation, possess substantial opportunities for education-related financial support. Despite their strong and tangible potential for strengthening and diversifying the engineering workforce, military-connected students remain overlooked and understudied in higher education research, generally, and engineering education research, specifically. Focused on the development of U.S. military veterans and service members as engineers, this project will support the National Science Foundation (NSF) Professional Formation of Engineers program and contribute to NSF’s efforts to broaden participation in engineering, promote re-entry of women and women veterans into the STEM workforce, and provide alternative pathways for veterans into STEM-related industries. This project will advance NSF program goals by generating new knowledge about how student veterans and service members experience engineering education and by producing innovative and inclusive programs, web-based resources, and trainings aimed at improving the participation and persistence of military-connected students in engineering education. The objectives of this CAREER project are to 1) characterize the community cultural wealth of student veterans and service members (SVSM) and critique the educational structures impacting their participation and persistence in engineering, 2) construct a SVSM identity model, and 3) conduct an asset campaign to cultivate broad awareness of SVSM community cultural wealth, infuse asset-based counter narratives into dominant educational discourses of deficit and deviance about military veterans, and dismantle structural inequities that inhibit the participation, persistence, and professional formation of military-connected students in engineering. The project will enable a theoretically rich, contextualized, and longitudinal qualitative research plan to tell, share, and examine narratives of experience with diverse, military-connected undergraduates over a five-year project period. The project will engage military-connected undergraduates enrolled in engineering programs across five public universities and community colleges, two of which are emerging Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). Using a relational ontology and viewing narratives of experience that are situated in time, place, and social milieus as research phenomenon and research method, the project will be guided by two research questions: 1) How do SVSM participate and persist in undergraduate engineering education? 2) How do SVSM produce engineering identities during their undergraduate engineering education? This project will address critical gaps in the research literature about asset-based frameworks and targeted professional identity development supports for SVSM in engineering. Project outcomes are transformative in that they will 1) add to and refine an emerging Veteran Critical Theory through in-depth accounts of the community cultural wealth of military-connected students and provide counternarratives that redress current discourses of veteran deficit and deviance in education, 2) add to current theoretical understandings of the professional formation of engineers by proposing a model of student veteran and service member engineering identity development, and 3) advocate for military-connected students across key support communities at five partner institutions and nationally online. Sustained project impact will occur through the broad dissemination of tested educational resources, including accessible military-connected student peer ally and professional mentorship programs and sensitivity- and awareness-trainings and online resources for engineering administrators, faculty and staff.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.