Dika, S. L., & Pando, M. A., & Tempest, B. (2014, June), Pre-College Interactions, Early Expectations, and Perceived Barriers:  Are There Differences for Underrepresented Engineering Students?  Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana. 10.18260/1-2--22926

\bibitem{asee_peer_22926}
  Dika, S. L., \& Pando, M. A., \& Tempest, B. (2014, June), \emph{Pre-College Interactions, Early Expectations, and Perceived Barriers:  Are There Differences for Underrepresented Engineering Students?}
  Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana.
  10.18260/1-2--22926

Sandra Loree Dika, Miguel A. Pando, and Brett Tempest.  "Pre-College Interactions, Early Expectations, and Perceived Barriers:  Are There Differences for Underrepresented Engineering Students?".  2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2014, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2014.  https://peer.asee.org/22926 Internet.  05 Feb, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_22926}
  Sandra Loree Dika, Miguel A. Pando, and Brett Tempest.
  "Pre-College Interactions, Early Expectations, and Perceived Barriers:  Are There Differences for Underrepresented Engineering Students?".
  \emph{2014 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2014, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2014.
  https://peer.asee.org/22926 Internet.  05 Feb, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_22926
author = "Sandra Loree Dika, Miguel A. Pando, and Brett Tempest"
title = "Pre-College Interactions, Early Expectations, and Perceived Barriers:  Are There Differences for Underrepresented Engineering Students?"
booktitle = "2014 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2014"
month = "June"
address = "Indianapolis, Indiana"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/22926}
number = {10.18260/1-2--22926}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -         Pre-College Interactions, Early Expectations, and Perceived Barriers:         Are There Differences for Underrepresented Engineering Students?One of the most significant challenges facing engineering education is the chronic problem ofinclusion and retention of underrepresented minority (URM) groups, including women, certainracial and ethnic groups (African American, Latino, Native American) and students whoseparents did not complete college (first generation college). This paper will present preliminaryresults from a project whose aim is study how formal and informal interactions with engineeringagents may influence attitudes and intentions of URM students for enrollment and persistence,incorporating retention, social cognitive, and social capital theories. The research question to beaddressed in the paper is how engineering students’ engineering-related interactions prior tocollege, perceived barriers during engineering studies, and early expectations of interactions withfaculty may differ based on student membership in an underrepresented group.The study utilizes a mixed methods design, incorporating both questionnaire and focus groupdata. The questionnaire items were developed by the researchers utilizing existing instruments onperceived barriers to education and engineering-related interactions and were included as part ofan annual questionnaire administered to the engineering freshman seminar at the institutionunder study. Seven items on likelihood to experience certain barriers (e.g., negative facultyattitudes, coursework difficulties) are rated from 1=strongly agree to 5=strongly disagree. Forseven items on engineering-related interactions (e.g., visiting an engineering workplace),students indicate all of the adults with whom they interacted from five possible options (e.g.,parent, teacher). About 47% of entering students responded to the questionnaire (n=255), andare generally representative of the population in terms of race/ethnicity and gender.Focus groups are ongoing with small groups of entering African American and Latinoengineering students. The focus group questions prompt discussion on what types ofencouragement and support students received from family and educators during middle and highschool to study engineering; expectations about interactions with professors prior to beginningclasses; actual interactions with professors in and outside of the classroom; and perceptionsabout factors that affect how students and professors interact. One focus group was completed inOctober 2013, and it is anticipated that an additional one or two focus groups will be completedby December 2013. The interviews will be transcribed for analysis of themes related to the majorresearch question.The paper will present statistical analyses of the differences in number of engineering-relatedinteractions prior to college and perceived barriers to engineering study, based on gender (malevs. female), generation in college (first generation vs. not first generation), and race/ethnicity(white vs. other race/ethnicity) using t-test comparisons. Themes from the focus group interviewsrelated to early expectations of interactions with professors and factors that affect how studentsand professors interact among first year African American and Latino engineering students willbe identified and illustrated through appropriate quotes from the focus group transcripts.The results of the larger study will serve to help improve engineering orientation and first-yearseminar experiences for URM and non-URM students, and to understand what types of pre-college interactions may be linked to engineering enrollment. 
AU  - Sandra Loree Dika
AU  - Miguel A. Pando
AU  - Brett Tempest
CY  - Indianapolis, Indiana
DA  - 2014/06/15
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Pre-College Interactions, Early Expectations, and Perceived Barriers:  Are There Differences for Underrepresented Engineering Students?
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/22926
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--22926
ER  -