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Developing a Summer Research Internship Program for Underrepresented Community College Engineering Students

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Conference

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Columbus, Ohio

Publication Date

June 24, 2017

Start Date

June 24, 2017

End Date

June 28, 2017

Conference Session

Research Experiences at Two-year Colleges

Tagged Division

Two Year College Division

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

17

DOI

10.18260/1-2--28134

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/28134

Download Count

650

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Paper Authors

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Amelito G Enriquez Canada College Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-1259-0680

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Amelito Enriquez is a professor of Engineering and Mathematics at Cañada College in Redwood City, CA. He received a BS in Geodetic Engineering from the University of the Philippines, his MS in Geodetic Science from the Ohio State University, and his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Irvine. His research interests include technology-enhanced instruction and increasing the representation of female, minority and other underrepresented groups in mathematics, science and engineering.

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Nicholas Patrick Langhoff Skyline College

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Nicholas Langhoff is an associate professor of engineering and computer science at Skyline College in San Bruno, California. He is also a co-investigator for multiple grant projects at Cañada College in Redwood City, California. He received his M.S. degree from San Francisco State University in embedded electrical engineering and computer systems. His educational research interests include technology-enhanced instruction, online education, metacognitive teaching and learning strategies, reading apprenticeship in STEM, and the development of novel instructional equipment and curricula for enhancing academic success in science and engineering.

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Wenshen Pong P.E. San Francisco State University

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Wenshen Pong received his Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He joined the School of Engineering at San Francisco State University in 1998. He teaches courses in Civil/Structural Engineering.

Dr. Pong is a registered Professional Engineer in California. He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Structural Engineers Association of California. He has published over fifty technical papers in the areas of Structural Control and Earthquake Engineering. Dr. Pong has been the Director of the School of Engineering at SFSU with 20 full-time faculty and over 25 part-time faculty since 2009.

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Hamid Mahmoodi San Francisco State University

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Hamid Mahmoodi received his Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, in 2005. He is currently a professor of electrical and computer engineering in the School of Engineering at San Francisco State University. His research interests include low-power, reliable, and high-performance circuit design for nano-electronic technologies. He has published more than one hundred technical papers in journals and conferences and holds five U.S. patents. He was a co-recipient of the 2008 SRC Inventor Recognition Award, the 2006 IEEE Circuits and Systems Society VLSI Transactions Best Paper Award, 2005 SRC Technical Excellence Award, and the Best Paper Award of the 2004 International Conference on Computer Design. He has served on technical program committees of Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, International Symposium on Low Power Electronics Design, and International Symposium on Quality Electronics Design.

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Xiaorong Zhang San Francisco State University

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Xiaorong Zhang received the B.S. degree in computer science from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, in 2006, the M.S. and the Ph.D. degrees in computer engineering from University of Rhode Island, Kingston, in 2009 and 2013 respectively. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering at San Francisco State University. Her research interests include embedded systems, wearable technologies, neural-machine interface, and cyber-physical systems.

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Cheng Chen San Francisco State University

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Dr. Cheng Chen is currently an associate professor in the school of engineering at San Francisco State University. His research interests include earthquake engineering, structural reliability and fire structural engineering.

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Kwok Siong Teh San Francisco State University

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Kwok Siong Teh received his B.S., M.S., Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and University of California at Berkeley in 1997, 2001, and 2004, respectively. He is currently the Associate Director of the School of Engineering and an associate professor of mechanical engineering at San Francisco State University. His primary research interests are in the fabrication and characterization of metal oxides, conductive polymer, and low dimensional carbon nanostructures for energy generation and storage.

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Zhaoshuo Jiang P.E. San Francisco State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-4931-1622

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Zhaoshuo Jiang graduated from the University of Connecticut with a Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering. Before joining San Francisco State University as an assistant professor, he worked as a structural engineering professional at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) LLP. As a licensed professional engineer in the states of Connecticut and California, Dr. Jiang has been involved in the design of a variety of low-rise and high-rise projects. His current research interests mainly focus on Smart Structures Technology, Structural Control and Health Monitoring and Innovative Engineering Education.

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Abstract

For the past several years institutions of higher education have devoted resources towards increasing the number and diversity of engineering graduates by addressing the retention problem in the first two years of college. One of the strategies being employed in improving undergraduate STEM education is providing students access to research experiences. There are many studies documenting the benefits of research opportunities for undergraduate students including increased student engagement in their education, enhanced research and laboratory skills, improved academic performance, increased student self-efficacy, and increased understanding and interest for their discipline. These studies also show that early and multiple exposures to undergraduate research experiences offer the greatest benefit. However, a recent extensive study of Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) programs shows that the vast majority of these research experiences are provided to junior and senior students. Developing successful research programs is particularly challenging in community colleges, most of which do not have on-going research programs.

This paper is a description of how a small engineering transfer program at a Hispanic-Serving community college in California developed a three-tier research internship program suitable for community college students at different stages of their academic careers. The first part of the program is a two-week program Introduction to Research held during the winter break for students in the beginning stages of their studies. The second part is a ten-week Summer Group Research program for sophomore students who have no previous research experience and have at least one more year of courses to complete at the community college before transfer. The Summer Individual Research program is a ten-week program for rising junior students who have completed all the required lower-division courses for transfer to a four-year university and are transferring in the fall semester following their participation in the program. The paper will highlight the development of partnerships with neighboring universities and research institutions, the results and lessons learned from the pilot implementation of the two summer internship programs, and future plans to improve the programs and maximize their impact in enhancing the academic success of community college engineering students and strengthening community college engineering transfer programs.

Enriquez, A. G., & Langhoff, N. P., & Pong, W., & Mahmoodi, H., & Zhang, X., & Chen, C., & Teh, K. S., & Jiang, Z. (2017, June), Developing a Summer Research Internship Program for Underrepresented Community College Engineering Students Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--28134

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: © 2017 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