Strengthening Pathways for the Domestic Graduate Engineering Workforce and Future Professoriate: Increasing Access to Engineering Master’s Programs

该项目将有助于对受过良好教育的科学家，数学家，工程师和技术人员的国家需要，通过支持保留到研究生院和随后的高成就，低收入的学生毕业，证明在宾夕法尼亚州立大学的经济需要。该项目将在6年的期限内吸引并资助45名攻读工程学科硕士学位的全日制学生获得奖学金。学生将获得为期2年的奖学金，并参加旨在影响学术和社会成功的课程。项目活动将包括有意的战略，以增加兴趣，应用程序，并在工程硕士课程招生。此外，还将为两年的学者学习计划提供保留活动，如指导（小组和个人）和专业发展方案。最后，该项目计划为54名教师建立包容性指导技能，这将在该项目持续时间之外产生影响。通过为低收入研究生这一“隐藏”人口提供财政支持，该项目有望提高学生的社会经济流动性。此外，拥有更多样化的高级学位的国内工程师队伍将扩大，他们将在STEM劳动力中担任更大的领导和导师职位。该项目还将通过在包容性导师做法中教育足够数量的教师，促进包容性文化，并在广泛定义的服务不足的研究生的招聘和入学方面取得持续成功。最后，获得工程硕士学位可能会培养一些学者对博士课程的兴趣，从而增加未来工程学院的潜在人才库，这是国家迫切需要的。这些潜在的新教师将成为未来其他低收入学生的榜样，这种整体方法具有很强的潜力，可以在其他机构复制，以增加国内工程教师的数量。该项目的智力价值是基于通过期望值，自我效能，角色认同理论。广泛的目标是促进工程硕士学生的专业进步，工程劳动力的增长和多样化，并通过发展一个具有包容性指导技能的教师社区，在宾夕法尼亚州立大学工程学院维持一个包容性的环境。在混合方法研究中使用多方面的数据收集，项目团队预计三角定性和定量数据将产生对硕士生社会化和成功完成课程的丰富理解。将传播研究生过渡和身份形成方面的最佳做法。这个项目有可能将我们所知道的关于代表性不足的少数民族学生的模范辅导扩展到低收入学生。该项目由NSF的科学，技术，工程和数学奖学金计划资助，旨在增加低收入学术天才学生的数量，这些学生表现出经济需求，并获得STEM领域的学位。它还旨在改善未来STEM工作者的教育，并产生关于低收入学生的学术成功，保留，转移，毕业和学术/职业道路的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention into graduate school and subsequent graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at The Pennsylvania State University. Over its 6-year duration, this project will attract and fund scholarships to 45 full-time students who are pursuing master’s degrees in engineering disciplines. Students will receive 2-year scholarships and participate in programming designed to impact academic and social success. Project activities will include intentional strategies to increase interest, applications, and enrollment in engineering master’s programs. In addition, retention activities such as mentoring (group and individual) and professional development programming will be offered for the two years of the scholars’ programs of study. Finally, the project plans to build skill in inclusive mentoring for 54 faculty members that will have impact beyond the duration of this project. By financially supporting the “hidden” population of low-income graduate students, the project expects to improve students’ socio-economic mobility. Furthermore, an expanded pool of domestic engineers with advanced degrees who are more diverse will be poised to take on greater leadership and mentorship positions within the STEM workforce. The project will also foster a culture of inclusion and sustained success in the recruitment and matriculation of underserved graduate students broadly defined, by educating a critical mass of faculty in inclusive mentorship practices. Finally, the achievement of a master’s degree in engineering will likely foster interest in doctoral programs for some of the scholars, thus increasing the potential pool of future engineering faculty, which is an urgent national need. These potential new faculty will serve as role models for other low-income students in the future, and this overall approach has strong potential to be replicated at other institutions to increase the numbers of domestic faculty in engineering.The intellectual merit of the project is based on examining high-achieving low-income master’s student socialization and successful program completion through the lens of Expectancy Value, Self-Efficacy, and Role Identity theories. The broad goals are to facilitate the professional advancement of engineering master’s students, grow and diversify the engineering workforce, and sustain an inclusive environment in the Pennsylvania State University College of Engineering by developing a community of faculty skilled in inclusive mentoring. Using multifaceted data collection within a mixed methods study, the project team expects that triangulated qualitative and quantitative data will yield a rich understanding of master’s student socialization and successful program completion. Best practices in graduate student transitions and identity formation will be disseminated. This project has the potential to extend what we know about exemplary mentoring of underrepresented minority students to low-income students. This project is funded by NSF’s Scholarships Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which seeks to increase the number of low-income academically-talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields. It also aims to improve the education of future STEM workers, and to generate knowledge about academic success, retention, transfer, graduation, and academic/career pathways of low-income students.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.