Conference: Weeding In Not Weeding Out in Engineering Education

该项目将支持院校招收、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项目框架的发展，以支持来自不同社区的工程专业学生的成功，并帮助他们对在工程领域的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，其中包括学生、一次会议和后续活动。该框架及其实施指南可被各机构用来改变其招聘、录取和入职的做法和方法。该项目将支持NSF BPE计划，通过促进不同工程专业学生群体的专业发展来建设美国工程劳动力的能力。该项目将通过提高学生入学、一年级经验和学生成功的知识，帮助机构吸引和留住更多不同的学生进入工程专业。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在招收、留住和毕业具有各种预科机会和准备的不同代表性不足学生群体方面的障碍和有希望的做法。它将建立在四次全国集思广益会议上制定的概述、基本原理、目标和愿景的基础上。该计划将考虑：1)扩大招生范围和为工程专业创造多种教育途径的制度文化阻力；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)不同类型机构面临的不同挑战；以及4)潜在的技术使用(人工智能等)。支持以研究为基础的具体战略的实施。该计划将包括1)为会议提供信息的非同步会前知识建设练习，包括由工程研究展望联盟(ERVA)主办的吸引学生参与的听证会，2)在美国国家工程院(NAE)主办的为期两天的面对面会议，以及3)会议后虚拟工作组会议，包括其他主题专家，以解决会议期间出现的问题。通过这些努力，将制定一个框架，为不同的学生受众组织最佳实践，同时考虑到跨多个学生身份的交叉性，不同的机构可以重新配置这些做法，以适应他们的使命、现有的课程和学生受众。这一指导框架将促进以研究为基础的集体实践和执行战略的发展，以解决工科学生成功、入学和第一年经验规划方面最紧迫的挑战，特别是针对工程学、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制定新的战略和技术。拟议的框架、新的战略和技术将共同为各机构提供工具，以提高它们的能力，以支持不同的工科学生群体实现增长和完成学业。该项目的结果将被总结并发布在NAE和ASEE网站上。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并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。

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.