, 9-11 weeks during the summer months [33], [34], [35]. Students have theopportunity to work directly alongside faculty and graduate student mentors, complete an oralpresentation or research paper, and sometimes pursue publication of their work [34], [36].Students who participate in REU programs are commonly asked to answer surveys that detailtheir perceptions of their skills and experiences [11], [34], [37], where students commonlyexpress having an increase in research skills, such as keeping lab notebooks and writing/readingresearch papers [31], laboratory skills [34], and collaboration [37]. In Nepal et al.'s study [11],students answered pre- and post-surveys about their experiences in mechanical, industrial, andsystems engineering REU
the Context of Prompts and PerceptionsAbstractStorytelling can be valuable for developing empathy and enhancing communication, allowingindividuals to make connections with themselves and others. In this work, we sought tounderstand the potential of story-driven learning, the process of developing stories to connectdefining moments of the past and consider future goals, within the context of engineering. Wedescribe a required, non-traditional undergraduate course that employs this pedagogical approachfor biomedical engineering students to encourage them to integrate, reframe, and make meaningof their diverse experiences. We then detail our study, where we sought to explore: 1) how uniquestory prompts may elicit different aspects of empathy, in