The Impact of Inclusive Excellence Programs on the Development of Engineering Identity among First-Year Underrepresented Students

Daniel Knight; Jacquelyn F. Sullivan; Daria A Kotys-Schwartz; Beth A Myers; Beverly Louie; Jeffrey T. Luftig; Malinda S Zarske; Jordan Michelle Hornback

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Conference: 2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Atlanta, Georgia
Publication Date: June 23, 2013
Start Date: June 23, 2013
End Date: June 26, 2013
ISSN: 2153-5965
Conference Session: Engineering Identity 1
Tagged Division: Educational Research and Methods
Page Count: 17
Page Numbers: 23.1207.1 - 23.1207.17
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--22592
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/22592
Download Count: 676

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Paper Authors

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Daniel Knight University of Colorado, Boulder

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Daniel W. Knight is the engineering assessment specialist at the Integrated Teaching and Learning Program and Laboratory. He holds a BA in psychology from Louisiana State University, and an MS degree in industrial/organizational psychology and PhD degree in counseling psychology, both from the University of Tennessee. Prior to joining the University of Colorado at Boulder, he gained extensive experience in assessment and teamwork in an engineering education context through the development and evaluation of a team facilitation training course for engineering undergraduate students. Dr. Knight’s research interests are in the areas of retention, program evaluation and teamwork practices in engineering education. His current duties include the assessment and evaluation of the ITL Program’s hands-on undergraduate courses and K-12 engineering outreach initiatives.

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Jacquelyn F. Sullivan University of Colorado, Boulder

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Jacquelyn F. Sullivan is founding co-director of the Integrated Teaching and Learning Program, and associate dean for inclusive excellence at the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science. She received her PhD in environmental health physics and toxicology from Purdue University and held leadership positions in the energy and software industries for 13 years. She founded and leads CU’s extensive K-12 engineering initiative and the BOLD Center, and spearheaded the Engineering GoldShirt Program. She led the founding of the ASEE K-12 Division in 2004, was awarded ASEE’s 2005 Lifetime Achievement Award, and was conferred as an ASEE fellow member in 2011. She was awarded NAE’s 2008 Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education.

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Daria A Kotys-Schwartz University of Colorado, Boulder

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Daria Kotys-Schwartz is the Design Center Colorado Director of Undergraduate Programs and an Instructor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. She received B.S. and M.S degrees in mechanical engineering  from The Ohio State University and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Kotys-Schwartz has focused her research in engineering student learning, retention, and identity development within the context of engineering design. She is currently investigating the impact of a four-year hands-on design curriculum in engineering, a holistic approach to student retention, the effects of service learning in engineering education, and informal learning in engineering.

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Beth A Myers University of Colorado Boulder

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BETH A MYERS is currently a PhD candidate at the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. She holds a B.A. in biochemistry and M.E. in Engineering Management. She has worked for the University of Colorado in various capacities for 13 years, including as a program manager for a small medical research center and most recently as Director of Access and Recruiting for the College of Engineering and Applied Science. Her interests are in quantitative and qualitative research and data analysis. She has been involved with the BOLD Center and the Engineering GoldShirt Program implementation since inception.

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Beverly Louie University of Colorado, Boulder

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BEVERLY LOUIE is the director for teaching and learning initiatives in the Broadening Opportunities through Leadership and Diversity (BOLD) Center in CU’s College of Engineering and Applied Science. She holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemical engineering from CU, and a D.Phil. in mechanical engineering from the University of Oxford, England. Dr. Louie’s research interests are in the areas of engineering student retention and performance, teaching effectiveness and collaborative learning.

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Jeffrey T. Luftig Engineering Management Program, CEAS, University of Colorado - Boulder

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Jeffrey T. Luftig, PhD

Lockheed Martin Professor of Management &
Program Director - Engineering Management Program

Jeffrey.Luftig@Colorado.edu | 303-492-1591 | ECOT 415

Dr. Luftig joined the Engineering Management Program in August, 2005 as the W. Edwards Deming Professor of Management after teaching at CU-Boulder for seven years in the Leeds School of Business and the Department of Applied Mathematics in the College of Engineering. Prior to working at CU, Dr. Luftig was Founder and President of his own consulting firm specializing in the Quality Sciences, Applied Research, and Business Performance Improvement. His firm annually employed 35 – 40 full-time professional and administrative staff members, and served a number of Fortune 100 and 500 firms in North America, South America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. Dr. Luftig was also a principal in the Weldaloy Corporation, a firm specializing in non-ferrous alloy castings and specialty machined parts.

Dr. Luftig’s experience in higher education includes an assistant professorship at SUNY at Oswego; an associate professorship at the University of Northern Iowa where he also served as director of graduate studies; and multiple positions at Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan, where he started as a professor and department head, and ultimately became the associate dean of the College of Technology while he held the Ford – EED endowed chair in research, development, and training in statistical methods. It was in this capacity that Dr. Luftig worked with Dr. W. Edwards Deming in the transformation of Ford Motor Company, initiated when Don Peterson brought Dr. Deming into Ford in the early 1980′s. Dr. Luftig has also won many awards including: Graduate Professor of the Year at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business, Procter & Gamble Teaching Excellence Award, Frascona Teaching Excellence Award, SOAR Teaching Award.

The author of more than 70 publications, including three books and a number of journal articles, Dr. Luftig received his BS from the SUNY College at Buffalo; a MEd from Bowling Green State University in Ohio; and a PhD from the University of Minnesota.

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Malinda S Zarske University of Colorado, Boulder

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Malinda S. Zarske is the Director of K-12 Engineering Education at the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science. A former high school and middle school science and math teacher, she has advanced degrees in teaching secondary science from the Johns Hopkins University and in civil engineering from CU-Boulder. She is also a First-Year Engineering Projects Instructor, Faculty Advisor for SWE, and on the development team for the TeachEngineering digital library. Her primary research interests are on student identity, recruitment, and retention in K-12 and undergraduate engineering.

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Jordan Michelle Hornback

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Abstract

The Impact of Inclusive Excellence Programs on First Year Engineering Identity Development in Underrepresented PopulationsJustifications for increasing diversity in engineering have been reinforced by national leaders andfunding agencies, and the topic has permeated STEM discourse and engineering educationagendas for decades. Yet, even with pervasive college-based initiatives aimed at broadeningparticipation, the national results remain stagnant. The national average for underrepresentedminority BS engineering graduates has remained flat, hovering at 10% for the last 15 years whilethe national average for women engineering BS graduates peaked at ~21% in 2002.Clearly, there remains a need to identify models that bolster diversity. The present study isfocused on a model of inclusive excellence embedded in four integrated programs for first-yearstudents in a large western state university. The inclusive excellence model investigated isfocused on identifying engineering access pathways for students, collaboration through learningcommunities and academic excellence to foster retention.For this study, there is a consideration of the impact of the inclusive excellence model on identitydevelopment for underrepresented first year students. Professional identity is a form of socialidentity that develops over time, and includes shared attitudes, values and skills characteristic tomembers of that profession. Identity is a feeling of fitting within the group—in this context,engineering—and is known to influence persistence in engineering.Identity development is investigated over time in four programs that incorporate the inclusiveexcellence model – two smaller and shorter summer bridge programs targeting underrepresentedpopulations, a large first-year engineering design course, and a large introduction to engineeringcourse designed to help students understand the different career tracks in engineering. Thecomparison across these various programs and courses will enable a determination of factorsleading to identity development related to community or team-building, fostering engineeringskills and knowledge, and understanding career paths.For each program, identity is measured via the Group Identification Survey, a product of theAcademic Pathways Study. This instrument was chosen based on its history as a publishedsurvey with evidence of validity. This survey on professional engineering identity includes foursubscales measuring centrality of engineering identity, private regard related to internal feelingsabout engineering identity, public regard related to perceived public perceptions of engineeringand group identification related to feelings of belonging to an engineering community. Thesurvey is administered before and after the two bridge programs and pre- and post-course for thetwo first-semester courses. To determine possible correlates of identity, students are alsoadministered additional survey items, influenced in part by the APPLE engineering survey. Fourunderrepresented populations – minorities, women, low socio-economic, and first generationstudents – are investigated against identity development results from the majority population.The number of first year students in the study includes 623 participants across the four programs.Results were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance procedures to determinedifferences pre to post and between demographic groups and programs.Results indicate that students enter the diversity serving summer bridge programs with highlevels of private regard and moderate levels of centrality and maintain these levels throughoutthe bridge. Group identification scores significantly increased during the bridge indicating thedevelopment of feelings of belonging to a specific group, a positive result due to the linkbetween social identification and retention. Of concern, scores on the public regard subscalesignificantly decreased indicating a more negative evaluation of the public’s perception ofidentity post-bridge, an outcome that diverges from the motivation of many underrepresentedstudents to use engineering to improve society. Identity development and its correlates in thelarger classes, results specific to underrepresented categories, and an analysis of the results usingnon-parametric statistics will be discussed in the paper.

Citation
Format

Knight, D., & Sullivan, J. F., & Kotys-Schwartz, D. A., & Myers, B. A., & Louie, B., & Luftig, J. T., & Zarske, M. S., & Hornback, J. M. (2013, June), The Impact of Inclusive Excellence Programs on the Development of Engineering Identity among First-Year Underrepresented Students Paper presented at 2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia. 10.18260/1-2--22592

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -            The Impact of Inclusive Excellence Programs on First Year     Engineering Identity Development in Underrepresented PopulationsJustifications for increasing diversity in engineering have been reinforced by national leaders andfunding agencies, and the topic has permeated STEM discourse and engineering educationagendas for decades. Yet, even with pervasive college-based initiatives aimed at broadeningparticipation, the national results remain stagnant. The national average for underrepresentedminority BS engineering graduates has remained flat, hovering at 10% for the last 15 years whilethe national average for women engineering BS graduates peaked at ~21% in 2002.Clearly, there remains a need to identify models that bolster diversity. The present study isfocused on a model of inclusive excellence embedded in four integrated programs for first-yearstudents in a large western state university. The inclusive excellence model investigated isfocused on identifying engineering access pathways for students, collaboration through learningcommunities and academic excellence to foster retention.For this study, there is a consideration of the impact of the inclusive excellence model on identitydevelopment for underrepresented first year students. Professional identity is a form of socialidentity that develops over time, and includes shared attitudes, values and skills characteristic tomembers of that profession. Identity is a feeling of fitting within the group—in this context,engineering—and is known to influence persistence in engineering.Identity development is investigated over time in four programs that incorporate the inclusiveexcellence model – two smaller and shorter summer bridge programs targeting underrepresentedpopulations, a large first-year engineering design course, and a large introduction to engineeringcourse designed to help students understand the different career tracks in engineering. Thecomparison across these various programs and courses will enable a determination of factorsleading to identity development related to community or team-building, fostering engineeringskills and knowledge, and understanding career paths.For each program, identity is measured via the Group Identification Survey, a product of theAcademic Pathways Study. This instrument was chosen based on its history as a publishedsurvey with evidence of validity. This survey on professional engineering identity includes foursubscales measuring centrality of engineering identity, private regard related to internal feelingsabout engineering identity, public regard related to perceived public perceptions of engineeringand group identification related to feelings of belonging to an engineering community. Thesurvey is administered before and after the two bridge programs and pre- and post-course for thetwo first-semester courses. To determine possible correlates of identity, students are alsoadministered additional survey items, influenced in part by the APPLE engineering survey. Fourunderrepresented populations – minorities, women, low socio-economic, and first generationstudents – are investigated against identity development results from the majority population.The number of first year students in the study includes 623 participants across the four programs.Results were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance procedures to determinedifferences pre to post and between demographic groups and programs.Results indicate that students enter the diversity serving summer bridge programs with highlevels of private regard and moderate levels of centrality and maintain these levels throughoutthe bridge. Group identification scores significantly increased during the bridge indicating thedevelopment of feelings of belonging to a specific group, a positive result due to the linkbetween social identification and retention. Of concern, scores on the public regard subscalesignificantly decreased indicating a more negative evaluation of the public’s perception ofidentity post-bridge, an outcome that diverges from the motivation of many underrepresentedstudents to use engineering to improve society. Identity development and its correlates in thelarger classes, results specific to underrepresented categories, and an analysis of the results usingnon-parametric statistics will be discussed in the paper.
AU  - Daniel Knight
AU  - Jacquelyn F. Sullivan
AU  - Daria A Kotys-Schwartz
AU  - Beth A Myers
AU  - Beverly Louie
AU  - Jeffrey T. Luftig
AU  - Malinda S Zarske
AU  - Jordan Michelle Hornback
CY  - Atlanta, Georgia
DA  - 2013/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - The Impact of Inclusive Excellence Programs on the Development of Engineering Identity among First-Year Underrepresented Students
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/22592
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--22592
ER  -