Conference Session

Undergraduate Research and a Force and Moment Lab

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Michelle Audrey Pang, Sandia National Laboratories; Carolyn Conner Seepersad, University of Texas, Austin; Sheldon Landsberger, University of Texas, Austin, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

touse on a practical and tangible project, and witness first-hand how to apply math and science tosolving an open-ended problem. Additionally, completion of the program and participation inresearch is intended to bolster applications for graduate school and competitive internships/careertracks as well as increase confidence and interest in the field of engineering [3,4,22] and personalidentification with engineering [6]. Professional identity has been studied in STEM fields as ameans of understanding the motivations, interests, and expectations of collegiate students [34]. A secondary focus is to improve retention rates and recruitment of students, especially thosewho are traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields. Prior research shows

Conference Session

Teams, Teaching, Leadership, and Technical Communications in Mechanical Engineering

Collection

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Traci M. Nathans-Kelly, Cornell University; Rick Evans, Cornell University

Tagged Divisions

Mechanical Engineering

, oral, visual, electronic) and outcomes(including ABET alignments) as collected by our two years of student survey data. Theincredible success of Year1’s quantitative findings are outlined in full. For example, in responseto our communicative self-efficacy survey, the scores across all communicative modalitiesincreased substantially (changing from low-medium to mid-high range) for all the studentstaking the pilot. In addition, on 17 of the 23 items on the survey, 80% of the pilot students scoredin the high range. We believe that it safe to claim that the pilot has had a profound and verypositive impact on students’ reported communicative self-efficacy in MAE engineering contexts.IntroductionCommunication is ubiquitous in the lives of