CAREER:Investigating Co-Curricular Participation of Students Underrepresented in Engineering

这个学院早期职业发展（Career）项目奖的目标是调查工程专业学生如何决定参加或不参加课外活动，这些学生如何看待各种课外活动对他们的坚持、学习和进入劳动力市场（或职业）的影响，以及哪些干预措施鼓励课外参与。该项目与美国国家科学基金会（NSF）的两项战略绩效目标保持一致：准备和吸引一支有动力参与前沿研究的多元化STEM劳动力（T-2），并建立国家公民通过科学和工程应对社会挑战的能力（I-2）。该项目使用现有的nsf资助的仪器来开发、测试和分发一种新的测量仪器；收集和分析有关课外参与、坚持不懈和学习成果的定量和定性数据，这些数据可以用来指导机构政策和项目，并设计有效的创新，以留住不同的工程专业学生，使他们成为劳动力；将研究成果应用于设计、试点测试和评估一种创新的、以证据为基础的干预措施，旨在提高学生的坚持性和学习能力，并为有关保留的机构政策和实践提供信息；并与机构项目和国家专业组织合作，扩大和扩大干预和传播项目成果。该项目促进了对工程专业学生道路的理解，包括那些传统上在工程领域代表性不足的学生；方法上有助于工程专业学生的非正式学习；塑造与这些人群相关的未来研究和发展；并为研究团体、政策制定者和机构领导人提供信息。对学生经验的研究对于改变工程教育至关重要，这将导致更广泛的代表性不足的群体参与工程。

The objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award is to investigate how engineering students decide to participate or not participate in co-curricular activities and how these students perceive the impact of various types of co-curricular activities on their persistence, learning and entry into the workforce (or career) and what interventions encourage co-curricular involvement. This project is aligned with two of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) strategic performance goals: prepare and engage a diverse STEM workforce motivated to participate at the frontiers (T-2) and build the capacity of the nation's citizenry for addressing societal challenges through science and engineering (I-2). This project uses existing NSF-funded instruments to develop, test and distribute a new survey instrument; collect and analyze quantitative and qualitative data on co-curricular involvement, persistence and learning outcomes that can be leveraged to guide institutional policies and programs and to design effective innovations to retain diverse students in engineering that progress to the workforce; apply research findings to design, pilot test and evaluate an innovative, evidence-based intervention constructed to enhance student persistence and learning and to inform institutional policies and practices on retention; and collaborate with institutional programs and national professional organizations to expand and scale up the intervention and disseminate results of the project. This project advances the understanding of engineering students' pathways to include those traditionally underrepresented in engineering; methodologically contributes to informal learning of engineering students; shapes future research and development related to these populations; and informs research communities, policymakers, and institution leaders. Research on the student experience is essential to transforming engineering education, which will result in broader participation of underrepresented groups in engineering.