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

美国工程师来自代表性不足的群体，包括妇女，种族和少数民族以及残疾人，这使得美国应对21世纪工程挑战和领导全球科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）创新的能力变得复杂。我们国家的退伍军人和服务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，由训练有素和熟练的居民组成，他们通过他们的军事联系，拥有与教育有关的财政支持的大量机会。尽管他们的强大和有形的潜力，加强和多样化的工程劳动力，军事连接的学生仍然被忽视，并在高等教育研究，一般，工程教育研究，特别是不足。该项目专注于美国退伍军人和服务人员作为工程师的发展，将支持美国国家科学基金会（NSF）工程师专业培训计划，并有助于NSF努力扩大工程参与，促进女性和女性退伍军人重新进入STEM劳动力队伍，并为退伍军人提供替代途径进入STEM相关行业。该项目将通过产生关于学生退伍军人和服务成员如何体验工程教育的新知识，并通过生产创新和包容性的计划，基于网络的资源和培训，旨在提高军事连接的学生在工程教育中的参与和持久性，来推进NSF计划的目标。该职业项目的目标是1）描述退伍军人和军人学生（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）进行资产活动以培养对SVSM社区文化财富的广泛认识，将基于资产的反叙述注入到关于退伍军人的赤字和偏差的主导教育话语中，并消除抑制军事相关学生在工程方面的参与，持久性和专业形成的结构性不平等。该项目将使一个理论上丰富的，情境化的，纵向的定性研究计划，告诉，分享，并检查在五年的项目期间与不同的，军事连接的本科生的经验叙述。该项目将吸引五所公立大学和社区学院的工程专业的军事相关本科生，其中两所是新兴的西班牙裔服务机构（HSI）。使用关系本体论和观看叙事的经验，位于时间，地点和社会环境的研究现象和研究方法，该项目将指导两个研究问题：1）SVSM如何参与和坚持在本科工程教育？2)SVSM如何在本科工程教育期间产生工程身份？该项目将解决关键的差距，在研究文献中关于基于资产的框架和有针对性的专业身份发展支持SVSM在工程。项目成果是变革性的，因为它们将1）通过深入了解与军事有关的学生的社区文化财富，增加和完善新兴的退伍军人批判理论，并提供反叙述，纠正退伍军人赤字和教育偏差的当前话语，（二）通过提出一个学生退伍军人和服务成员工程的模型，增加了目前对工程师职业形成的理论理解身份发展，以及3）在五个伙伴机构和全国在线的关键支持社区中倡导与军队有联系的学生。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，包括可访问的军事联系学生同行联盟和专业导师计划以及敏感性和意识培训以及工程管理员的在线资源，该奖项反映了NSF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进行评估，被认为值得支持的搜索.

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.