EAGER (HBCU-DCL): Broadening Participation in Neural Engineering, Bioengineering, and Systems Engineering Research

这个NSF EAGER奖解决了国家科学院在工程方面的14个重大挑战中的两个，并与教育科学研究所、美国教育部和国家科学基金会的教育研究与发展共同指南报告保持一致。作为一项探索性研究项目，该项目旨在建立初步联系（例如，改善睡眠质量和/或持续时间）与感兴趣的结果（例如，增加代表性不足的少数民族和女性大学生主修STEM领域，特别是生物/生物医学/神经工程领域的“杰出”领域，或进入STEM职业）。本项目建立在现有教育研究和理论的基础上，通过研究调解或调节学习成果之间关系的因素或条件，并在代表性不足的大学生群体中提出一种独特的干预措施，以提高对生物/生物医学/神经工程职业的兴趣，为未来的实践、设计和发展提供信息，以增加代表性不足的STEM专业学生的数量。现有的研究表明，多变的睡眠时间表、渴着睡觉、环境噪音以及入睡时的焦虑都会导致睡眠质量下降。这一尸体的研究也证明了大学生的睡眠卫生知识与睡眠习惯有关，而睡眠习惯与整体睡眠质量密切相关。参与睡眠教育项目与儿童和青少年睡眠和学习成绩的显著改善有关。本项目采用混合方法，实验研究设计，测试睡眠干预的能力，以提高非STEM专业学生对STEM领域的兴趣，并根据睡眠质量和/或持续时间参与STEM课程。此外，该项目将测试睡眠干预的能力，以提高非STEM专业的非洲裔美国人和女性对STEM领域/职业的兴趣。最后，该项目包括一个教育计划，将工程纳入生物学和行为神经科学本科研究和教育，以显著提高兴趣，加强代表性不足的群体对生物工程研究生课程和生物工程劳动力参与的学术吸引力。

This NSF EAGER award addresses two of the National Academies' fourteen grand challenges in engineering and aligns with the Common Guidelines for Education Research and Development report from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, and National Science Foundation. As an exploratory research project, the project seeks to establish initial connections (e.g., improvement of sleep quality and/or duration) to the outcome of interest (e.g., increase in number of underrepresented minority and women college students majoring in STEM fields, particularly noted "brilliance" fields of bio-/biomedical/neural engineering, or entering STEM careers. This project builds on existing educational research and theory by examining factors or conditions that mediate or moderate the relationship between learning outcomes and presents a unique intervention in underrepresented college student populations for increasing interest in bio-/biomedical/neural engineering careers to inform future practice, design, and development in increasing the number of underrepresented students majoring in STEM fields. Extant research has shown that variable sleep schedules, going to bed thirsty, environmental noise, and worrying while falling asleep contribute to poor sleep quality. This corpse of research has also demonstrated that college students' knowledge of sleep hygiene is related to sleep practices, which is closely associated with overall sleep quality. Participation in sleep education programs has been associated with significant improvements in children's and young adult sleep and academic performance. Using a mixed method, experimental research design, this project tests the ability of a sleep intervention to increase non-STEM majors' interest in STEM fields and their engagement in a STEM course based on sleep quality and/or duration. Further, this project will test the ability of a sleep intervention to increase interest in STEM fields/careers among African-Americans and women, who are current non-STEM majors. Finally, this project includes an educational plan, incorporating engineering into biology and behavioral neuroscience undergraduate research and education in an effort to significantly advance the interests and strengthen the academic attractiveness of underrepresented groups to bioengineering graduate programs and bioengineering workforce engagement.