An Engineer Like Me: How Perceived Similarity and Peer Effects Influence Student Major Choice

这一改善本科生STEM教育(IUSE)项目将调查影响女性和少数民族学生在工程专业代表性不足的因素。普渡大学工程学院的数据将被用于分析，这提供了一个检查大量工程专业学生的机会。该项目有以下目标：(1)调查来自每个专业的学生和教职员工群体的同龄人和榜样如何影响学生的专业选择；(2)调查学生在选择专业的过程中收到的信息和信息如何影响他们进入哪个领域；以及(3)确定专业选择如何以及为什么会随着时间的推移而改变。该分析将结合经济学和教育学的方法，对课堂环境和活动如何影响学生的专业选择提供综合的混合方法分析。这项拟议的研究旨在解释为什么不同工程学科的多样性存在很大差异，这是由于学生的课堂经历、学生同伴和教职员工的人口构成，以及学生通过课堂活动和干预收到的关于不同学科的价值观和职业前景的信息。这项计划的成功完成，将大大加强工程学科的招聘工作。在当今的经济环境下，工程教育的重要性和作用越来越受到重视。随着国家对更多、更多样化的工程劳动力的呼吁，更好地了解包括课堂环境和同龄人、学科代表的信息以及部门级人口构成在内的多种因素如何相互交织，影响学生的学业和职业轨迹，这是及时和关键的。这个项目有潜力促进几个领域的知识，特别是经济学和工程教育。这个项目的一个重要贡献将是对学生可获得的消息和信息的额外关注。本研究项目的解释性调查方法采用归纳和演绎两种策略，以广泛的访谈参与者为基础。调查结果将产生新的见解，对制定战略以招募更多妇女和代表性不足的少数群体进入不同的工程学科具有重要意义。如果信息传递被证明是院校影响专业选择的重要途径，这种干预将具有很大的可扩展性，并可能对女性和少数族裔学生在其他STEM领域的代表性产生重大影响。该项目包括努力将这项工作的结果传达给更广泛的工程教育界。

This Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) project will investigate the factors that influence the under-representation of female and minority students in engineering. Data from the College of Engineering at Purdue University will be used for the analyses, which provides an opportunity to examine a large population of engineering students. The project has the following objectives: (1) to investigate how students' peers and role models, both from the student and faculty populations within each major, can affect students choice of major, (2) to investigate how the messaging and information students receive in the course of choosing their major can affect which field they will enter, and (3) to establish how and why major choices change over time. The analysis will combine methods from economics and education to provide comprehensive mixed-methods analysis of how classroom environments and activities can influence student major choice. The proposed research is aimed at explaining why substantial variations in diversity exist across engineering disciplines as a function of student classroom experiences the demographic composition of students peers and faculty, but also the messages that students receive regarding the values and career prospects of the different disciplines through classroom activities and interventions. The successful completion of the project will significantly complement ongoing efforts to increase recruitment efforts across engineering disciplines.The importance and the role of engineering education in today's economic environment have been receiving growing attention. With the nation's call for a larger and more diverse engineering labor force, it is timely and critical to better understand how multiple factors including classroom environments and peers, messaging from discipline representatives, and departmental-level demographic composition intersect to influence students' academic and career trajectories. This project has the potential to advance knowledge in several fields, notably economics and engineering education. An important contribution of this project will be the additional focus on messaging and information available to students. This research project's interpretive inquiry approach using both inductive and deductive strategies is based on a broad range of interview participants. Findings will generate new insights that have important implications for the development of strategies to recruit more women and underrepresented minorities into the different engineering disciplines. If messaging is shown to be an important avenue by which institutions can affect major choice, this type of intervention will be very scalable and could have significant impacts on the representation of female and minority students within other STEM fields. The project includes efforts to communicate the results of this work to the broader engineering education community.