Conference: Weeding In Not Weeding Out in Engineering Education

该项目将支持各机构招聘，吸引和毕业具有更广泛的大学预科背景和经验的工程专业学生。随着美国经历全国出生率下降的周期，它必须找到让更多人口参与推进科学和技术工作的方法。该项目将支持基于证据的计划框架的发展，支持来自不同社区的工程专业的成功，并帮助他们对工程职业感到欢迎和兴奋。该框架由一组国家专家通过一系列知识建设会议制定，包括学生，会议和后续活动。该框架及其实施指南可供机构用于改变其招聘，录取和入职实践和方法。该项目将支持NSF BPE计划，通过培养不同工程专业学生群体的专业发展来建设美国工程人才队伍的能力。该项目将致力于帮助院校通过提高学生入职、第一年经验和学生成功方面的知识，吸引和留住更多不同的学生群体进入工程专业。随着美国经历全国出生率下降的周期，它必须找到让所有人口参与推进科学和技术工作的方法。该项目的目标将是确定和解决的障碍和有前途的做法，招聘，保留和毕业的不同群体的代表性不足的学生与各种大学预科的机会和准备。它将建立在四次全国集思广益会议所制定的概览、理由、目标和愿景的基础上。该方案将考虑：1）机构文化对扩大招生和为工程专业创造多种教育途径的阻力，2）适应和实施现有基于研究的战略的其他障碍（资金，人员，时间），3）机构类型之间的不同挑战，以及4）技术（人工智能等）的潜在使用。支持实施以研究为基础的具体战略。该计划将包括1）异步会前知识建设练习，以通知会议，包括由工程研究愿景联盟（ERVA）主办的倾听会议，吸引学生，2）为期两天的面对面会议在美国国家工程院（NAE）主办，以及3）会后虚拟工作组会议，以包括更多的主题专家来解决会议期间出现的问题。在这些努力中，将制定一个框架，为不同的学生受众组织最佳实践，同时考虑到多个学生身份的交叉性，不同的机构可以重新配置，以适应他们的使命，现有的计划，学生受众。该指导框架将促进集体研究实践和执行策略的发展，以解决工程专业学生成功，入职和第一年经验编程中最紧迫的挑战，这些挑战专门针对工程，机构类型和代表性不足的人口群体。此外，拟议会议的成果将有可能导致新战略和新技术的开发。拟议的框架、新战略和技术将共同为机构提供工具，以提高其支持不同工程专业学生社区实现成长和完成学业的能力。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标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will support institutions in recruiting, attracting, and graduating engineering students with a wider array of pre-college backgrounds and experiences. As the U.S. goes through a cycle of declining national birthrates, it must find ways to engage more of its population in advancing scientific and technological work. This project will support development of a framework of evidence-based programs that support success of engineering majors from diverse communities and help them feel welcome and excited about a career in engineering. The framework be developed by a group of national experts through a series of knowledge building sessions, to include students, a conference, and follow-on activities. The framework and its implementation guides can be used by institutions to change their recruiting, admitting, and onboarding practices and approaches. This project will support the NSF BPE program by building the capacity of the US engineering workforce through fostering professional development of diverse communities of engineering students.This project will work to help institutions attract and retain more diverse cohorts of students into engineering majors by advancing knowledge in student onboarding, first year experience, and student success. As the U.S. goes through a cycle of declining national birthrates, it must find ways to engage all of its population in advancing scientific and technological work. The goal of this project will be to identify and address the obstacles and promising practices to recruitment, retention, and graduation of diverse cohorts of underrepresented students with a variety of pre-college opportunities and preparation. It will build upon the development of an overview, rationale, objectives, and vision developed in four national brainstorming sessions. The program will consider: 1) institutional cultural resistance to widening admissions and creating multiple educational pathways for engineering majors, 2) other barriers (funding, staff, time) to adaptation and implementation of existing research-based strategies, 3) differing challenges across institution types, and 4) potential use of technologies (AI, etc.) to support implementation of specific research-based strategies. The program will comprise 1) asynchronous pre-conference knowledge building exercises to inform the conference, to include a listening session hosted by the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA) that engages students, 2) a two-day in-person conference hosted at National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and 3) post conference virtual working group meetings to include additional subject matter experts to address issues that surfaced during the conference. Across these efforts, a framework will be developed to organize best practices for various student audiences, taking into account intersectionalities across multiple student identities, that could be reconfigured by different institutions to fit their mission, existing programs, student audiences. This guiding framework will foster the development of collective research-based practices and execution strategies to address the most pressing challenges in engineering student success, onboarding, and first year experience programming specifically contextualized for engineering, institutional types, and underrepresented demographic groups. In addition, the outcomes from the proposed meeting will have the potential to result in the development of new strategies and technologies. The proposed framework, new strategies and technologies collectively will provide tools to institutions to increase their capacity to support diverse communities of engineering students to achieve growth and completion. The outcomes of this project will be summarized and posted on the NAE and ASEE websites.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.