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Identifying Barriers to Recruiting Low-Income Students into Engineering Master’s Programs

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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

Graduate Studies Division (GSD) Technical Session 1: Recruitment and Support in Engineering Graduate Programs

Tagged Division

Graduate Studies Division (GSD)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

6

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43421

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/43421

Download Count

241

Paper Authors

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Catherine G. P. Berdanier Pennsylvania State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-3271-4836

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Tonya L. Peeples Pennsylvania State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-0721-9622

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Professor Tonya Peeples joined the Penn State College of Engineering in August of 2018, as the Inaugural Associate Dean for Equity and Inclusion and Professor of Chemical Engineering. Prior to joining Penn State she worked at the University of Iowa and i

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Catherine L. Cohan Pennsylvania State University

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Catherine Cohan, Ph.D. has been a research psychologist for over 20 years. Her areas of expertise include engineering education, retention of underrepresented students, measurement, and assessment. She is currently an Assistant Research Professor and coordinates the Sustainable Bridges NSF IUSE project (Peter Butler, PI). Previously, she was the project coordinator the the Toys'n MORE NSF STEP project (Renata Engel, PI).

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Julio Urbina Pennsylvania State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-6281-4905

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JULIO V. URBINA, Ph.D. is a Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at The Pennsylvania State University. His educational research interests include: effective teaching techniques for enhancing engineering education.

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Cynthia Howard-Reed Pennsylvania State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-9449-2795

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Cindy Howard Reed is the Assistant Director for Student Research and Graduate Equity and an Assistant Teaching Professor in the College of Engineering at Penn State. She has a MS in Environmental Health Engineering and PhD in Civil Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present lessons learned from a recently established NSF S-STEM program focused on creating pathways to master’s degrees for low-income engineering students. This population is particularly interesting, because students from income backgrounds who have earned bachelor’s degrees may be eager to enter the engineering workforce. However, in many engineering disciplines, individuals have more earning potential and career trajectory options with a master’s degree. In this paper, we identify several categories of barriers and lessons learned to launching an S-STEM focused on graduate students at a large R1 public institution that may be useful to other such programs. These include discussions on recruitment of this specialized population of students into graduate school, especially those from other institutions, can be difficult because i) there are structural and legal barriers to accessing financial information about students to identify low-income students and ii) smaller institutions may not have the student support resources to effectively prepare undergraduate students for future research-based advanced degrees in engineering at large universities. By formalizing the issues facing student-centric graduate education and providing some context for how our program is overcoming these barriers, more stakeholders can be aware of barriers that impede broadening participation in graduate-level engineering education to accelerate progress in similar initiatives.

Berdanier, C. G. P., & Peeples, T. L., & Cohan, C. L., & Urbina, J., & Howard-Reed, C. (2023, June), Identifying Barriers to Recruiting Low-Income Students into Engineering Master’s Programs Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43421

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