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Bridging the Gap between Industry and Academia, and Developing Students’ Engineering Identity

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Chemical Engineering Division (ChED) Technical Session 6: First-Year & Sophomore Year Curriculum

Tagged Division

Chemical Engineering Division (ChED)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

10

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43032

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/43032

Download Count

220

Paper Authors

biography

Betul Bilgin The University of Illinois, Chicago

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Betul Bilgin is Clinical Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering (CHE) at the University of Illinois
at Chicago (UIC) . Her research focuses on engineering identity development and industry-academia relationships.

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Hasiya Najmin Isa

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Emily Seriruk

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Cody Wade Mischel

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Abstract

With the evolution and expansion of the chemical industry, the gap between academia and industry is broadened. The skills that the workforce expected from practicing engineers are not taught in the typical chemical engineering undergraduate core curriculum. Students become less engaged and less motivated by not seeing the applications of course content in their courses. Therefore, they struggle to identify with the field and develop skills necessary for the workplace. This NSF PFE: RIEF project aims to bridge the gap by implementing industry-relevant up-to-date problems into a sophomore chemical engineering course.

The project’s main goal is to understand how the implementation impacts students’ engineering identity and self-efficacy development. We employed a design-based research approach (DBR) with one baseline and two full enactment cycles. In each cycle, students are surveyed, and focus groups are interviewed before and after implementation.

In this paper, we will present the details of data collection, analysis, and findings from the results from all three semesters. The challenges and gains of adopting the approach and how to transfer to other programs will be further discussed.

Bilgin, B., & Isa, H. N., & Seriruk, E., & Mischel, C. W. (2023, June), Bridging the Gap between Industry and Academia, and Developing Students’ Engineering Identity Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43032

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