Collection

2024 Rocky Mountain Section Conference

Authors

Loraine Glidewell; Marisa Mendoza-Maurer; Joseph L. Polman; Daniel Knight; Angela Bielefeldt

, a unique context in whichschools often have access to the outdoors and students are likely to be closely connected tonature (Shamah & MacTavish, 2009). The environmental focus may also help broadenparticipation in STEM (Bielefeldt & Rulifson, 2018). For example, in contrast to engineeringoverall that awarded 22.5% of bachelor’s degrees to females in 2019, the percentage was 52.1%in environmental engineering (ASEE, 2020). This is promising given that a key motivation forSCENIC is to support college pathways in engineering and science for rural students.Theoretical Framing and Relevant Prior WorkSCENIC is informed by existing sociocultural theories on identity development and learning andtheir application to engineering, as well as

Collection

2024 Rocky Mountain Section Conference

Authors

Katherine Robert

of neurodivergent students in post-secondary educa�on is limited. Further, there is litleliterature about the experiences of neurodivergent students in engineering educa�on par�cularly 2(Chrysochoou et al., 2022; Cueller et al., 2022; Robert, 2023; Taylor et al., 2019). This paper seeks toaddress this gap.Importantly, some sectors of the U.S. economy are recognizing the unique abili�es and atributes ofneurodivergent people as beneficial and desirable (Williams, 2023) par�cularly in the STEM sectors(Chrysochoou et al., 2022; Grandin, 2022; Taylor et al., 2019) but also na�onal security (Weinbaum et al.,2023). However, neurodivergent

Collection

2024 Rocky Mountain Section Conference

Authors

Erin Marie Furtak; Caitlin Anderson; Shannon Boutwell; Sam Haven; Melinda Lopez; Samantha Duwe; Janet Green; Adam Kellerman; Linda Parker; Lauren Blum

marginalized in science andengineering (National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, 2023). We also soughtto build the unit to culminate in an engineering-design performance assessment that wouldengage students in designing a CubeSat satellite. Phenomenon-based curricula are built around compelling, often local, phenomena thatstimulate students’ interest and drive their engagement in ongoing sequences of learning.Phenomena are accessible scenarios that create space for students to ask questions and leveragetheir everyday experiences to make sense of them. In the case of our unit design, we conductedwhat have been called ‘student interest surveys’ (Penuel et al., 2019) to learn abouts students’interest in phenomena related to space