Work-in-Progress: Survey Development to Examine Connections Between Engineering Identity and Engineering Student Support

Leslie Hopkinson; Lynette Michaluk; Lizzie Santiago

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Conference: 2025 ASEE North Central Section (NCS) Annual Conference
Location: Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia
Publication Date: March 28, 2025
Start Date: March 28, 2025
End Date: March 29, 2025
Page Count: 4
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/54701

Paper Authors

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Leslie Hopkinson West Virginia University

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Dr. Leslie Hopkinson is an Associate Professor in the Wadsworth Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, specializing in water resources. She received her B.S. in Biological and Agricultural Engineering at Louisiana State University and her Ph.D. in Biological Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech. Her research is related to hydrology, reclamation, ecological engineering, and engineering education.

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Lynette Michaluk West Virginia University

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PI, is a social sciences researcher at the West Virginia University Center for Excellence in STEM Education. Her research interests include broadening access to and participation in STEM. She is Co-PI of the National Science Foundation KY-WV Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation and Research Scientist for Secure and Upgrade Computer Science in Classrooms through an Ecosystem with Scalability & Sustainability. She is evaluator for RII Track 2 FEC: Enabling Factory to Factory (F2F) Networking for Future Manufacturing, and Department of Education Title III Strengthening Potomac State College, as well as several National Aeronautics and Space Administration STEM education initiatives.

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Lizzie Santiago West Virginia University

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Lizzie Y. Santiago, Ph.D., is a Teaching Associate Professor for the Fundamentals of Engineering Program in the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources. She holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and has postdoctoral training in ne

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Abstract

The retention of students to the second year is an important benchmark for persistence in an engineering program. Interventions to improve academic deficiencies have been shown to increase student persistence beyond the first year, particularly for rural and other groups underrepresented in engineering. As such, student support services providing curricular and co-curricular support are often focused on meeting first-year retention goals. For departments with a common first-year engineering program, there is a notable decrease in student support services as they move into their specific engineering major. For example, student study spaces change, peer groups divide among majors, there may be lower availability of tutoring services, and the faculty that they have come to know and interact with also changes. While inconclusive, previous research suggests that there is a decrease in overall engineering identity in the second year of an engineering program; increases of engineering identity are reported beyond the second year with the greatest overall engineering identity reported in the fourth year. This dip in overall engineering identity corresponds to a change in curricular and co-curricular support (i.e., student support services) as students move from a general engineering program to the requirements of their specific major. We hypothesize that overall student support decreases during the transition as students move from a general first-year engineering program into their chosen engineering major, and that this transition may influence engineering identity. This work-in-progress paper will describe the development of a survey to examine the connections between engineering identity and engineering student support services. The questionnaire was based on Godwin and Kirn’s (2020) instrument for evaluating engineering role identity and the STEM Student Perspectives of Support Instrument (STEM-SPSI) developed by Lee et al. (2022). The final version contains three main sections, including student perceptions of engineering identity, student perspectives of student support services, and demographic data. The instrument will be distributed to undergraduate civil and environmental engineering students.

Citation
Format

Hopkinson, L., & Michaluk, L., & Santiago, L. (2025, March), Work-in-Progress: Survey Development to Examine Connections Between Engineering Identity and Engineering Student Support Paper presented at 2025 ASEE North Central Section (NCS) Annual Conference, Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia. https://peer.asee.org/54701

TY - CPAPER
AB - The retention of students to the second year is an important benchmark for persistence in an engineering program. Interventions to improve academic deficiencies have been shown to increase student persistence beyond the first year, particularly for rural and other groups underrepresented in engineering. As such, student support services providing curricular and co-curricular support are often focused on meeting first-year retention goals. For departments with a common first-year engineering program, there is a notable decrease in student support services as they move into their specific engineering major. For example, student study spaces change, peer groups divide among majors, there may be lower availability of tutoring services, and the faculty that they have come to know and interact with also changes. While inconclusive, previous research suggests that there is a decrease in overall engineering identity in the second year of an engineering program; increases of engineering identity are reported beyond the second year with the greatest overall engineering identity reported in the fourth year. This dip in overall engineering identity corresponds to a change in curricular and co-curricular support (i.e., student support services) as students move from a general engineering program to the requirements of their specific major. We hypothesize that overall student support decreases during the transition as students move from a general first-year engineering program into their chosen engineering major, and that this transition may influence engineering identity. This work-in-progress paper will describe the development of a survey to examine the connections between engineering identity and engineering student support services. The questionnaire was based on Godwin and Kirn’s (2020) instrument for evaluating engineering role identity and the STEM Student Perspectives of Support Instrument (STEM-SPSI) developed by Lee et al. (2022). The final version contains three main sections, including student perceptions of engineering identity, student perspectives of student support services, and demographic data. The instrument will be distributed to undergraduate civil and environmental engineering students.
AU - Leslie Hopkinson
AU - Lynette Michaluk
AU - Lizzie Santiago
CY - Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia
DA - 2025/03/28
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Work-in-Progress: Survey Development to Examine Connections Between Engineering Identity and Engineering Student Support
UR - https://peer.asee.org/54701
ER -