A survey of student motivations for enrolling in engineering and technology undergraduate programs

Despite many efforts to attract and retain students in STEM programs in U.S. universities, it has proven to be a significant challenge. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has added to the struggles of students and educational institutions. At the same time, there is significant interest among funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation and philanthropic organizations to encourage enrollment in minority populations. This requires that we need to better understand the student population. Many national surveys and data sources including the Integrated Postsecondary Education System (IPEDS) provide a macro-level view across the entire country. This is insufficient for producing classroom-level changes. We need detailed information at the micro-level such as student surveys across multiple institutions to probe student motivations and ensure that their expectations are met and nurtured. We present the results of conducting a survey among 32 STEMs students enrolled in an introductory engineering course at Fairleigh Dickinson University. This is the first semester after the pandemic that courses were taught in person. We found significant differences along gender and racial lines. For the male students, 38% chose their STEM major due to parental or social influence, whereas for females it was 12.5%. For whites, parental/social influence accounted for 28% of STEM choices, whereas for African Americans, it was 0%. Across all students, 50% chose a STEM major due to an early interest in the field, or due to self-realization that they were good at STEM-related activities such as problem-solving. Our results indicate the importance of hands-on STEM exposure to students at the K-12 level and the role of mentors. Due to the recency of the data collected, we expect our findings to be valuable to the STEM education community. © 2022 IEEE.

STEM Program for Female Students during COVID-19 Pandemic

Despite helping to solve problems in society and the environment and enabling financial independence, a disproportionately low number of women enter engineering careers. Contributing factors may include a lack of female role models and activities that would increase the interest and confidence in STEM pathways during the developing years. Our university has initiated activities to provide exposure to role models and STEM activities to young females. This year Ron Burton Training Village (RBTV) started a new STEM program for female students grades 6-11 which would span over 6 years. The students would attend a different experience every weekend and conclude the yearly experience with a capstone project. Our university partnered with RBTV for one weekend workshop experience. The program was intended to be an in-person event but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this program was conducted synchronously through Zoom virtual meetings. Our university is well known for “hands-on” learning, and we decided to keep the experience hands-on even if it had to be virtual. Students participated in STEM-related hands-on projects, connecting them to real life applications and boosting students' interests in different STEM disciplines. The program represents part of our university's ongoing efforts to interest young women in STEM. The core of the half-day workshop was three 45-minute STEM modules: Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The students rotated between the different workshops. The three modules are presented in this paper. Civil Engineering project was Soil Testing, Electrical Engineering project was Food Battery, and Computer Science project was Smart Picker. 38 female students participated in this new STEM program. A survey was conducted at the end of the event to evaluate the content of the program. Students were excited about our program, learning, and experiencing different fields of engineering. We received very positive feedback from the students. The students really enjoyed the hands-on experience. Students reflected that they would like to participate in more STEM related activities in the future. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.

What Informal Learning Programs Teach Us About Adaptation to Contactless and Remote Learning Environments

The COVID-19 pandemic forced a paradigm shift in how educators incorporate STEM educational activities into remote online informal experiential learning environments for high school students. While some primary and secondary institutions were "technically equipped" to seamlessly transition to an online lecture format using video conferencing platforms such as Zoom and WebEx, others were not. Instead, many instructors were not armed with the pedagogical educational infrastructure, training, and assessment tools to elucidate how concepts were presented, absorbed, and retained by students. Experiential learning programs for high school students have been uniquely impacted by this mercurial set of circumstances, where eager students and parents seek venues for engaging in meaningful learning experiences. This work-in-progress explores and compares the experiential programmatic changes in a STEM program for high school students pre- and post- COVID, with the aim of beginning the conversation and exploration of how to deliver "hands-on learning" in a contactless and remote learning environment.

A NOVEL TRILOGY OF E-STEM PROGRAMS

In recent years, pre-college educational programs have been introduced to increase the interest and supply of skillful people to work in STEM fields. While the emphasis has previously been primarily focused on the content of project-based learning programs, another factor that needs to be accounted for is the accessibility of the said programs. Unprecedented issues such as the sudden closure of educational facilities, as was experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, should not hinder the learning opportunities that the students are after. Therefore, the shift from hosting conventional STEM programs to online platforms has become a crucial element in the expansion of STEM education. Delivering engineering-based projects through online STEM programs to school students includes wide expansion of the participating audience – which is not confined by the capacity limit of in-person programs – as well as ease of access. This has value not only on the individual level but also at the social level. Three successful e-STEM (electronic STEM) programs are presented in this paper that are designed to support and enhance students’ learning of engineering concepts while also increasing students’ understanding of real-life applications. This has a close connection to the desire to increase online education in developing countries over recent years. The first program is called Innovate, Design and Engineer an App (IDEA). In this program, the students explore the fundamentals of programming and mobile app development. This provides the students with the foundation of coding, algorithms, and refining their ideas to produce a working mobile phone app that is created to meet a specified challenge. The second program is called Creative Fusion and Innovation (CFI). In this program, the students learned the basics of creating, editing, and analyzing their 3D designs;recognize the importance of creating 3D models in engineering;and understand how 3D printing works as they create their own 3D models. The third program is called Virtual Robotics Games (VRG). In this program, the students learn the fundamentals of designing, building, programming, and testing robots in a virtual environment. Through this program, the students learn the basics of robot design in addition to coding and simulation, which are all necessary tools for aspiring engineers. These programs aim to provide STEM education access to build communities specifically in engineering, which is in high demand. Throughout these programs, the students are able to learn important computer skills and the concepts of the engineering design process. The programs also equip them with the required knowledge and problem-solving skills to tackle challenges. At the end of each program, the students will have created successful designs as solutions to the real-life problems that they were tasked with. In this paper, the details behind the planning, formation and production, and implementation of the three online programs are presented. Copyright © 2021 by ASME

Engineering Libraries and Student Organizations: Working Together to Enhance Outreach to Underrepresented Groups

Recruiting and retaining a diverse student population is extremely important for any post-secondary STEM program. Students from traditionally underrepresented groups come from a wide array of backgrounds. They can bring new ideas and new perspectives to existing knowledge. Libraries can play an important role in helping engineering programs welcome these future engineers to the university as well as provide an environment that nurtures their growth as researchers and practitioners. This paper documents the initial outreach done by a new Engineering Librarian, with the full assistance of library staff and student employees, designed to let underrepresented students know of our resources and services and to enlist their help in making those services better. Although the COVID-19 pandemic created challenges during the first year of this new outreach program, the library was able to successfully contact many student organizations who were willing to work with it. These contacts led to two successful exhibits showcasing the achievements of recent minority engineering graduates from the university. The first was a collaboration between the Engineering Library and the student chapter of the National Society for Black Engineers while the second was a joint exhibit created with the help of the student chapter of the Society for Women in Engineering. These first steps have convinced the Engineering Library that such collaborative work can be effective and will be the foundation for further outreach events, both virtual and, hopefully one day soon, in person. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021

Student Impressions of Elements of a S-STEM Program

A state university received an NSF S-STEM grant to provide scholarship funds and enhanced wraparound programmatic activities for engineering and computer science students. Some of the enhanced activities available to the scholarship recipients are faculty mentoring, meetings of the cohort students, the ability to attend professional workshops and participate in STEM outreach activities, and the opportunity to attend and participate in the Emerging Researchers National (ERN) conference in Washington, D.C. Some of these activities are similar to what other schools have in their S-STEM programs. While the effectiveness of the different program activities is often studied at institutions, it is often less clear how students view the usefulness of various program activities. In this paper, we describe in more detail the scholarship program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and provide explanations of the different programmatic activities available to the students in the program. We will then provide the results of a survey of the students in the program, where they were asked to provide their impressions of the program activities. The results of the survey can be beneficial to other schools developing S-STEM programs, as it sheds light on how receptive students may be to possible common program elements. The paper will also contain some discussion on the importance of the group activities in a virtual environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we will provide some suggestions based on our experiences on how to improve the program activities to make them more beneficial to the students. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021

The Community of Bilingual English-Spanish Speakers Exploring Issues in Science and Health: Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Language diversity is increasing in the United States. This growth has implications for language preference, cost, quality, and client outcomes in health services settings. However, language diversity among medical and allied health professionals is lacking. Education pipeline programs are a mechanism to prepare bi- and multi-lingual diverse students to enter health careers. The Community of Bilingual English-Spanish Speakers Exploring Issues in Science and Health (CBESS) is one such program. Through peer mentorship from Leadership Trainees (LT), and a multicomponent 17-month education curriculum, CBESS was designed to increase interest in STEM careers among English-Spanish bilingual high school youth. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted high school students' education and forced programs to innovate. CBESS was no exception. The most significant modifications were to a) expectations of SRs for a successful Summer Virtual Research Program (SVRP), b) LT roles, and c) scope and delivery of summer science content. A preliminary evaluation was conducted from data collected through pre-post surveys, process data, and focus groups. Among the outcomes were a significant increase in science knowledge among SVRP youth participants as well as no significant differences between cohort 1 and 2 suggesting that changes did not impede program goals. LTs highlighted skills needed and role of mentors. Adaptations were successful and will continue with the 2021 cohort.