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2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 143: EAGER: Broadening Participation of First-generation College Students in Engineering – Backgrounds, Experiences and Strategies for Success

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

First-generation college students have entered the spotlight of educational research and reform. This shift in perspective has been covered in popular media, for example, in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s series entitled “Engine of Inequality,” which analyzes the challenges facing first-generation college students. However, engineering programs have been slower in responding to this new emphasis on first-generation college students, perhaps assuming that the lack of success of underrepresented groups is a result of deficiencies in the students’ background and preparation. Our research challenges this assumption by explicitly investigating the connections between first-generation engineering students’ success and their experiences within higher education, using a large-scale quantitative survey. Whereas the deficiency perspective focuses on what these students lack and how they need to change themselves in order to adapt to engineering undergraduate curricula, this study seeks to understand how first-generation college student’s funds of knowledge (i.e., family and cultural knowledge developed by growing up in poor and/or working households) can be leveraged in their engineering work and the factors that contribute to their success in engineering.

This poster will present: 1) an overview of the funds of knowledge constructs used in the survey, 2) the preliminary results from a pilot survey, and 3) an overview of all the survey questions, including engineering identity, agency, belongingness, institutional support, grit, sources of recognition, and certainty of career path.

Using ethnographic data of first-generation college students in engineering, from prior work, seven themes were created to capture aspects of students’ funds of knowledge. The themes were classified as follows: community networks, lived experiences, tinkering knowledge from home, tinkering knowledge from work, perspective taking, reading people, and translation among people. To date, the funds of knowledge themes have been validated, at the first level, using exploratory factor analysis with a broad range of engineering students from first-years to fourth-year of higher at two institutions, one in the Midwest and one in the mountain region. Convenience sampling was used to test and validate the funds of knowledge survey constructs. We are currently in our second data collection process. The large-scale survey will be administered to upperclassman and alumni at five participating institutions across the United States, i.e., in a large public polytechnic, small selective private polytechnic, large land grant, large sub-urban public, and large public universities.

Authors
  1. Dr. Jessica Mary Smith Orcid 16x16http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9700-4096 Colorado School of Mines [biography]

    Jessica M. Smith is Associate Professor in the Engineering, Design & Society Division at the Colorado School of Mines and Director of Humanitarian Engineering Graduate Programs. Her research and teaching bring anthropological perspectives to bear on quest

  2. Dr. Dina Verdin Orcid 16x16http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-6048-1104 Arizona State University, Polytechnic Campus [biography]

    Dina Verdín, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Engineering at the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. She graduated from San José State University with a BS in Industrial Systems Engineering and from Purdue University with an MS in Industrial Engineering and PhD in Engineering Education. Her research program promotes equity and inclusion in engineering by confronting the pervasive barriers facing minoritized students. Her work addresses the challenges Latinx, first-generation college students, and women in engineering face by focusing on two research strands: access and persistence. Dr. Verdín seeks to create culturally responsive opportunities that broaden engineering access while simultaneously dismantling the systemic obstacles that hinder minoritized students’ identity development and persistence. With this work, Dr. Verdín is committed to transforming engineering education and ensuring that all minoritized students can thrive. She currently has three active grants with the National Science Foundation aimed at supporting the mission of her research program. She has won several awards, including the 2022-2023 Outstanding Research Publication Award by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Division I, the 2022 ASEE ERM Apprentice Faculty Grant, and the 2018 ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Best Diversity Paper Award.

  3. Dr. Juan C. Lucena Colorado School of Mines [biography]

    Juan Lucena is Professor and Director of Humanitarian Engineering Undergraduate Programs at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM). Juan obtained a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from Virginia Tech and a MS in STS and BS in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering fro

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