Collaborative Research: Understanding the Role of High Schools in Diversifying and Promoting Undergraduate Engineering Degree Attainment

在过去十年中，在美国院校获得工程学位的女性、非裔美国人/黑人、西班牙裔/拉丁裔和美洲原住民学生的比例一直相对停滞不前。然而，美国对更大、更多样化的科技劳动力的需求在持续增长。增加攻读工程学位的学生的数量和多样性是帮助满足国家劳动力需求的重要战略。本研究项目的目的是考察学生从高中到大学的学习途径，以确定预测大学工程学位获得的高中水平因素。检查高中的作用尤其重要，因为大学前的学术准备是大学学业成功的关键因素，因为许多学生倾向于在申请大学之前决定攻读工程学位。这项研究的结果有可能大大提高我们对学生的大学准备、专业选择和毕业获得工程学位的可能性的理解。关键的利益相关者可以应用这项研究的结果来为战略提供信息，并重新调整教育干预的重点，以增加女性和少数民族学生对工程的参与。本研究项目采用制度视角来识别在学生学业工程成就纵向模式中发挥作用的高中结构因素，重点关注性别和种族/民族之间的差异。要检查的高中结构因素包括：数学和科学课程的可用性以及工程启发课程，靠近有工程课程的大学，学生群体的人口构成和特征，以及获得有关高等教育出勤和成功可能性的信息（例如，学生上大学的比率）。研究小组将应用计量经济学方法，包括回归和工具变量方法，来分析密苏里州高等教育部的行政微观数据扩展面板，这些数据将与美国人口普查和国家教育统计中心提供的共同核心数据合并。来自工程教育、公共政策和经济学的多学科研究团队将整合他们的内容知识、多种理论视角和方法方法，对多样性、学生机会和工程成就进行跨界检查，以推进研究文献并促进政策设计，面向广泛的学术和应用受众。因此，该项目将为学区、高等教育机构和政府机构的利益相关者和政策制定者提供证据，以帮助消除障碍、确定资源目标并建立伙伴关系，从而可能导致工程教育途径中更大规模、系统性的转变。

The proportions of women, African American/Black, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American students earning degrees in engineering at U.S. institutions have remained relatively stagnant in the last ten years. Yet, the United States' need for a larger and more diverse scientific and technological labor force continues to grow. Increasing the number and diversity of students pursuing engineering degrees is an important strategy to help meet the nation's workforce demands. The objective of this research project is to examine students' pathways from high school through college to determine high school level factors that predict college engineering degree attainment. Examining the role of high schools is especially critical because pre-college academic preparation is a key contributor to college academic success, and because many students tend to decide to pursue an engineering degree before applying to colleges. The results of this research have the potential to significantly advance our understanding of students' college preparation, major choice, and likelihood of graduating with an engineering degree. Key stakeholders can apply findings from this research to inform strategies and refocus educational interventions to increase female and minority students' participation in engineering. This research project applies an institutional perspective to identify high school structural factors that play a role in the longitudinal patterns of academic engineering achievement among students, with a focus on variation across gender and race/ethnicity. The high school structural factors to be examined include: the availability of math and science courses and an engineering-inspired curriculum, proximity to colleges with engineering programs, demographic composition and characteristics of the student body, and access to information about postsecondary education attendance and likelihood of success (e.g., student college-going rates). The research team will apply econometric methods, including regression and instrumental variables approaches, to analyze an extended panel of administrative micro data from the Missouri Department of Higher Education, which will be merged with data from the United States Census and the Common Core of Data provided by the National Center of Education Statistics. The multidisciplinary research team from engineering education, public policy, and economics will integrate their content knowledge, multiple theoretical perspectives, and methodological approaches to generate a boundary-spanning examination of diversity, student access, and engineering achievement to advance the research literature and promote policy design for a wide range of academic and applied audiences. Thus, the project will generate evidence that stakeholders and policymakers in school districts, higher education institutions, and government agencies can apply to help remove obstacles, target resources, and create partnerships that can potentially lead to larger scale, systemic transformations in the pathways to engineering education.