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

美国工程师一直缺乏来自代表性不足的群体的人才，包括女性、种族和少数民族以及残疾人，这使得美国应对21世纪工程挑战和引领全球科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）创新的能力变得更加复杂。我们国家的退伍军人和服役人员深刻地反映了这些群体，并代表了一个强大而多样化的社区，这些社区由训练有素、技术熟练的居民组成，他们通过自己的军事关系，拥有大量获得教育相关财政支持的机会。尽管他们在加强和多样化工程劳动力方面具有强大而切实的潜力，但在高等教育研究中，特别是工程教育研究中，与军方有联系的学生仍然被忽视和研究不足。该项目重点关注美国退伍军人和服役人员作为工程师的发展，将支持美国国家科学基金会（NSF）工程师专业形成计划，并为NSF扩大工程参与，促进女性和女性退伍军人重新进入STEM劳动力市场的努力做出贡献，并为退伍军人进入STEM相关行业提供替代途径。该项目将通过产生关于退伍军人学生和服役人员如何体验工程教育的新知识，以及通过生产创新和包容性的项目、基于网络的资源和旨在提高与军队有关的学生在工程教育中的参与度和持久性的培训，来推进国家科学基金会的项目目标。本CAREER项目的目标是：1)描述退伍军人学生和服务人员（SVSM）的社区文化财富特征，并对影响他们参与和坚持工程的教育结构进行批评；2)构建SVSM身份模型；3)开展资产运动，培养对退伍军人学生和服务人员社区文化财富的广泛认识，将基于资产的反叙事注入退伍军人赤字和偏差的主流教育话语中。消除结构性不平等，这种不平等阻碍了与军方有联系的工程专业学生的参与、坚持和专业形成。该项目将提供一个理论上丰富的、情境化的、纵向的定性研究计划，在五年的项目期间向不同的、与军方有联系的本科生讲述、分享和检查他们的经历。该项目将在五所公立大学和社区学院招收与军方有关的工程专业本科生，其中两所是新兴的西班牙裔服务机构（hsi）。本研究以关系本体论为基础，将处于时间、地点和社会环境中的经验叙事视为研究现象和研究方法，以两个研究问题为指导：1)SVSM如何参与和坚持本科工程教育？2) SVSM在本科工程教育中如何产生工程身份？该项目将解决关于基于资产的框架的研究文献中的关键空白，并为工程中的SVSM提供针对性的专业身份发展支持。项目成果具有变革性，因为它们将1)通过对与军队有关的学生的社区文化财富的深入描述，增加和完善新兴的退伍军人批判理论，并提供反叙述，纠正当前关于退伍军人赤字和教育偏差的话语，2)通过提出退伍军人学生和服务人员工程身份发展的模型，增加对工程师专业形成的当前理论理解，3)在五个合作机构的关键支持社区和全国在线上倡导与军方有联系的学生。通过广泛传播经过测试的教育资源，将产生持续的项目影响，包括可访问的与军方有关的学生同伴盟友和专业指导计划、敏感性和意识培训以及面向工程管理人员、教职员工的在线资源。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.