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Remote Undergraduate Research to Increase Participation and Engagement in Community College Engineering Classes: Bridging the Research Opportunity Gap Between Community College and University Students

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Conference

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual Conference

Publication Date

July 26, 2021

Start Date

July 26, 2021

End Date

July 19, 2022

Conference Session

The Challenges that Two-year College Students Face when Transferring to a Four-year College for Engineering and Engineering Technology Program

Tagged Division

Two-Year College

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

11

DOI

10.18260/1-2--37660

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/37660

Download Count

251

Paper Authors

biography

Sophia Isabela Barber Pasadena City College

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Sophia Barber is a second year Molecular and Cell Biology major at Pasadena City College with a 4.0 GPA. She currently works at Pasadena City College tutoring Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, is the External Vice President of the Pi Club, the Vice President, Event Coordinator, and ICC Representative for the Caduceus Club, is an active member of the Alpha Gamma Sigma Honors Society, is a Student Research Mentor, is a Dean’s Honors student, and also serves her community by sitting on the Academic Commission Committee, the Student Services Committee, and the ICC Funding Committee. Additionally, in her free time, Sophia decided to teach herself Python and is now leading the research project Studying Statistics in Python. In the future, she hopes to become a physician-scientist studying preventative measures for Alzheimer’s disease and treatments for Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease.

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Sophia Isabella Ibargüen Pasadena City College

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Sophia Ibarguen is a first-generation college student of immigrant parents, who is majoring in Biology and minoring in Biomedical Research. She is a Dean's Honors student, Student Research Mentor, a hospital volunteer, Internal Vice President of the Pasadena City College Pi Club, an Academic Commission Committee Member, and an active member of PCC's Alpha Gamma Sigma Honors Society. In the fall of 2021, Sophia will continue pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of California, Los Angeles. In the future, she hopes to become a physician-scientist studying tumor immune microenviornments.

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Chloe Sharp Pasadena City College

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Chloe Sharp is a Junior in High School at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science. She is the graphic design leader for Mississippi Youth Against Sexual Violence, an active member of the Mississippi High Schoolers for Biden campaign, a performer in the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science Drama Club, a member of the Mississippi State Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council, and a volunteer for the Elizabeth Gwin Special Needs Session at Camp Tik-A-Witha. In the future, she hopes to attend a university where she will major in Environmental Engineering and minor in either Spanish or Theatre.

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Aaron Reedy DataClassroom

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Dr. Aaron Reedy is an evolutionary biologist, entrepreneur, and former high school science teacher. Reedy studies the evolutionary dynamics of sex differences in aging. He recently founded DataClassroom to produce the DataClassroom web app to facilitate the teaching of quantitative skills in science education.

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Tanya Faltens Purdue University, Main Campus Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-4035-1908

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Tanya Faltens is the Educational Content Creation Manager for the Network for Computational Nanotechnology (NCN) which created and manages the open access nanoHUB.org cyber-platform. Her technical background is in Materials Science and Engineering (Ph.D. UCLA 2002), and she has several years’ experience in hands-on informal science education, including working at the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley. While a faculty member at Cal Poly Pomona, she introduced nanoHUB simulation tools into the undergraduate curriculum in materials science and engineering and electrical engineering courses, mentored student capstone research projects and taught their first year engineering course, which employs a student development philosophy.

Much of her work has focused on introducing STEM concepts to broad audiences and encouraging students, including women and others in groups traditionally under-represented in STEM, to consider graduate school in STEM fields. She currently manages the NCN Undergraduate Research Experience (URE) program, which introduces undergraduates from 2-year and 4-year colleges to computational nanotechnology research projects each summer.

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Yu-Chung Chang-Hou Pasadena City College

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Yu-Chung Chang-Hou obtained her Ph.D. in mathematics from UCLA in 1991. During her postdoc at New York University and at Caltech, she co-developed a very effective level-set method for computing multi-phase flows, which has generated a lot of excitements in the computational fluid dynamics community. Besides teaching mathematics at Pasadena City College, she has devoted herself to developing effective teaching and learning strategies.   Encouraging students to showcase their STEM learning with real life applications, she has initiated and led the annual Pi Day Student Conferences at Pasadena City College since 2013. She also joined the Undergraduate Research program at PCC to enhance student learning outcomes with active learning in STEM fields and bridge the gap between the undergraduate research opportunities provided to community college and university students.

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Jared Ashcroft Pasadena City College

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Jared Ashcroft graduated with a BS in Chemistry from Long Beach State in California and subsequently attended Rice University, where he worked for Dr. Lon J. Wilson, developing carbon based nano-bio immunoconjugates for use in medical applications. After earning his doctorate in Chemistry from Rice, he moved to Berkeley California to work in Dr. Carolyn Larabell’s National Center for X-ray Tomography at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Currently, he is a Professor of Chemistry at Pasadena City College and runs an undergraduate research program attempting to infuse active learning in conjunction with remotely accessible microscopes into K-12 and university science curriculum. He is actively involved in bring micro nanotechnology technician programs to Community College campuses being a part of the Remotely Accessible Instruments in Nanotechnology (RAIN) Network and the Nanotechnology Professional Development Partnership (NPDP) Program. Dr. Ashcroft is currently the Principal Investigator for the National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education Micro Nano Technology Education Center.

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Abstract

A collaborative effort between the Micro Nano Technology Student Scholars Research Program at Pasadena City College and the Network for Computational Nanotechnology at Purdue University created an undergraduate research program that invited students in STEM fields to partake in a unique remote undergraduate research experience. In this remote environment, interaction among students and faculty was conducted completely through online tools such as email, text messaging, and Zoom meetings. This model requires minimal funding and eliminates geographical barriers, allowing students throughout the United States to participate in undergraduate research opportunities without a need to relocate.

In the 2020-21 academic year, this innovative research opportunity focused on creating distance education STEM modules on statistical analysis and graphing, two pivotal skills needed for success in engineering and science courses that are often neglected in STEM laboratory curricula at this level. Remote research, coupled with outreach and mentoring of high school students, has never before been conducted by community college students on the national scale and is a step forward in working to promote engineering and other STEM fields collectively, while also bridging the gap between the undergraduate research opportunities provided to community college and university students. Data will be shared on the effectiveness of and increased student engagement created through the remote undergraduate research experience.

Barber, S. I., & Ibargüen, S. I., & Sharp, C., & Reedy, A., & Faltens, T., & Chang-Hou, Y., & Ashcroft, J. (2021, July), Remote Undergraduate Research to Increase Participation and Engagement in Community College Engineering Classes: Bridging the Research Opportunity Gap Between Community College and University Students Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--37660

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