Asee peer logo

Board 141: Professional Engineering Pathways Study: The Value of a Community of Practice to Stimulate Use of Research Findings that Inform Practice

Download Paper |

Conference

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Salt Lake City, Utah

Publication Date

June 23, 2018

Start Date

June 23, 2018

End Date

July 27, 2018

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Tagged Topic

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Page Count

7

DOI

10.18260/1-2--29942

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/29942

Download Count

490

Request a correction

Paper Authors

biography

Ruth A. Streveler Purdue University, West Lafayette (College of Engineering)

visit author page

Ruth A. Streveler is a Professor in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. Dr. Streveler has been the Principal Investigator or co-Principal Investigator of ten grants funded by the US National Science Foundation. She has published articles in the Journal of Engineering Education and the International Journal of Engineering Education and has contributed to the Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research. She has presented workshops to over 500 engineering faculty on four continents. Dr. Streveler’s primary research interests are investigating students’ understanding of difficult concepts in engineering science and helping engineering faculty conduct rigorous research in engineering education. In 2015, Dr. Streveler was inducted as an ASEE Fellow.

visit author page

biography

Gary Lichtenstein Arizona State University, Polytechnic campus

visit author page

Gary Lichtenstein, Ed.D., is assistant research scientist at the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering and founder and principal of Quality Evaluation Designs, a firm specializing in research and evaluation for K-12 schools, universities, and government and non-profit organizations nationwide. He researchers STEM pathways and retention of K-12 students, undergraduates, and early career professionals, as well as entrepreneurial mindset.

visit author page

author page

Lisa Olcese Olcese

biography

Samantha Ruth Brunhaver Arizona State University, Polytechnic campus

visit author page

Samantha Brunhaver is an Assistant Professor of Engineering in the Fulton Schools of Engineering Polytechnic School. Dr. Brunhaver recently joined Arizona State after completing her M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. She also has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Northeastern University. Dr. Brunhaver's research examines the career decision-making and professional identity formation of engineering students, alumni, and practicing engineers. She also conducts studies of new engineering pedagogy that help to improve student engagement and understanding.

visit author page

biography

Cheryl Carrico P.E. Virginia Tech Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-6327-842X

visit author page

Cheryl Carrico is a part-time faculty Research Scientist for Virginia Tech and owner of Cheryl Carrico Consulting, LLC. Her current research focus relates to STEM career pathways (K-12 through early career) and conceptual understanding of core engineering principles. She is currently a Member-at-Large for the Pre-college Division of ASEE. Dr. Carrico's consulting company specializes in research evaluations and industry consulting. Dr. Carrico received her B.S. in chemical engineering from Virginia Tech, Masters of Engineering from North Carolina State University, MBA from King University, and PhD in Engineering Education from Virginia Tech. Dr. Carrico is a certified project management professional (PMP) and licensed professional engineer (P.E.).

visit author page

biography

Helen L. Chen Stanford University

visit author page

Helen L. Chen is a research scientist in the Designing Education Lab in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Director of ePortfolio Initiatives in the Office of the Registrar at Stanford University. She is also a member of the research team in the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter). Chen earned her undergraduate degree from UCLA and her Ph.D. in Communication with a minor in Psychology from Stanford University in 1998. Her current research interests include: 1) engineering and entrepreneurship education; 2) the pedagogy of ePortfolios and reflective practice in higher education; and 3) reimagining the traditional academic transcript.

visit author page

biography

Holly M. Matusovich Virginia Tech

visit author page

Dr. Matusovich is an Associate Professor in Virginia Tech’s Department of Engineering Education. She has her doctorate in Engineering Education and her strengths include qualitative and mixed methods research study design and implementation. She is/was PI/Co-PI on 10 funded research projects including a CAREER grant. She has won several Virginia Tech awards including a Dean’s Award for Outstanding New Faculty. Her research expertise includes using motivation and related frameworks to study student engagement in learning, recruitment and retention in engineering programs and careers, faculty teaching practices and intersections of motivation and learning strategies.

visit author page

biography

Sheri Sheppard Stanford University

visit author page

Sheri D. Sheppard, Ph.D., P.E., is professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. Besides teaching both undergraduate and graduate design and education related classes at Stanford University, she conducts research on engineering education and work-practices, and applied finite element analysis. From 1999-2008 she served as a Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, leading the Foundation’s engineering study (as reported in Educating Engineers: Designing for the Future of the Field). In addition, in 2011 Dr. Sheppard was named as co-PI of a national NSF innovation center (Epicenter), and leads an NSF program at Stanford on summer research experiences for high school teachers. Her industry experiences includes engineering positions at Detroit's "Big Three:" Ford Motor Company, General Motors Corporation, and Chrysler Corporation.

At Stanford she has served a chair of the faculty senate, and recently served as Associate Vice Provost for Graduate Education.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

The Professional Engineering Pathways Study (PEPS) is funded by the Division of Engineering Education and Centers (EEC) of the National Science Foundation. The purpose of PEPS is to build knowledge about engineering early career preparedness and decision-making. We have used a mixed-method approach to learn how engineering students at six partner institutions gather information about careers and then what approaches students use to make decisions about employment opportunities.

As the research phase of PEPS wraps up (we are now in a no cost extension 4th year of a 3-year project) we turn our attention to encouraging our results to be used to inform practice. Research projects often find this phase to be extremely challenging and we hope our lessons learned may offer a useful model to others.

In PEPS, we have taken a Community of Practice (CoP) approach to propagate the use of our research results among career professionals who can then immediately use the results to create or fine-tune their programs or to inform other areas of their practice to be more responsive to student needs. In this poster and paper, we will: (1) briefly define the phrase 'Community of Practice' or CoP (2) discuss how we operationalized CoP in our project, (3) outline the actions taken to form and then foster a CoP in PEPS, (4) discuss the value of the CoP to the participants, and (5) discuss implications for use of the CoP approach by other projects.

Streveler, R. A., & Lichtenstein, G., & Olcese, L., & Brunhaver, S. R., & Carrico, C., & Chen, H. L., & Matusovich, H. M., & Sheppard, S. (2018, June), Board 141: Professional Engineering Pathways Study: The Value of a Community of Practice to Stimulate Use of Research Findings that Inform Practice Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--29942

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2018 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015