Work in Progress: Investigation of Student-Faculty Micro-Interactions on Students’ Sense of Belonging through Organized Student-Faculty Lunches

Tiffany Chan; Tate L Chatfield; Xianglong Wang

Download Paper | Permalink

Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: Student Division Technical Session 1: Student Experiences and Support
Tagged Division: Student Division (STDT)
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/48500

Request a correction

Paper Authors

biography

Tiffany Chan University of California, Davis

visit author page

Tiffany Chan is a 3rd-year undergraduate student in biomedical engineering at UC Davis and the recipient of the 2024 ASEE-PSW Section Undergraduate Student Award. She actively contributes to the cube3 Lab, where her interests lie in community building and inclusive practices. Tiffany is involved in various DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) research initiatives within the lab, including organizing student-faculty lunches and participating in the gender equity first-year seminar program. Additionally, she serves as the chair of the undergraduate subcommittee for the department's Health, Equity, and Wellness committee and holds the position of Make-a-thon chair in the BMES student chapter at UC Davis.

visit author page

biography

Tate L Chatfield University of California, Davis

visit author page

Tate Chatfield is a fourth-year biomedical engineering undergraduate student at UC Davis. She is a former research assistant in the cube3 lab with interests in improving mental health and increasing access to resources for the undergraduate community.
She is the current president of Tau Beta Pi – CA Lambda chapter, and student leader for Mariachi Los Mesteños. She is currently researching small animal PET/MR scanning in collaboration with labs affiliated with the UC Davis Medical Center Department of Radiology. She is keen on advancing the field of multimodal medical imaging in the pursuit of exploring MR based therapeutic biomarkers in neuro-oncologic disease.

visit author page

biography

Xianglong Wang University of California, Davis orcid.org/0000-0001-5359-8411

visit author page

Dr. Xianglong Wang is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Davis. He is the principal investigator of the cube3 lab. The cube3 lab actively performs research in community building and gender equity in engineering, as well as problem-based learning in core biomedical engineering courses. Before joining UC Davis, he was a career-track Assistant Professor at Washington State University (WSU). Dr. Wang is the recipient of the 2024 ASEE-PSW Section Outstanding Early Career Teaching Award, 2023 UC Davis Biomedical Engineering Excellence in Teaching Award, and 2022 WSU Reid Miller Teaching Excellence Award. Dr. Wang received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering and Scientific Computing from the University of Michigan.

visit author page

Download Paper | Permalink

Abstract

This WIP research investigates the effect of informal student-faculty micro-interactions on students’ sense of belonging using a population of undergraduate biomedical engineers (BMEs). Informal student-faculty interactions have been shown to benefit students' learning outcomes. However, current research lacks investigation on the types of the informal interactions that benefit students the most. Prior surveys have revealed that students who did not belong to a student organization are more likely to feel uncomfortable in their major, which is a problem we also observed. We introduced organized student-faculty lunches to provide a gathering place to benefit these students through controlled informal student-faculty interaction. We assessed the outcomes of these lunches under previously reported frameworks for student-faculty interactions. Twenty-three (23) non-graduating BME undergraduate students from April to December 2023, in groups of 3-5, participated in department-sponsored lunches with faculty members based on shared interests. Confirmed students completed an anonymous pre-intervention survey of 10 questions, with 8 Likert-scale questions based on the framework (1: strongly disagree, 5: strongly agree) and 2 free response questions to understand the students’ motivation for attending the lunch. Students also voluntarily provided their demographic information in the pre-survey. Immediately after the lunch, students took a post-survey with the identical Likert-scale questions and two additional free-form questions for feedback. The Likert-scale questions were reissued as a second post-survey one month later. Paired t-tests were performed on results from pre- vs. post-survey and pre- vs. one-month post-survey. Holm-Bonferroni corrections for multiple comparisons were performed to analyze potential improvements in the Likert-scale questions. Our IRB approved the project as an exempt study. We received 20 and 14 valid responses (87.0% and 60.9% response rate) for the immediate and one-month post-surveys. Students reported significant improvement in multiple aspects of our survey, including Q1 (knowledge of events, p<0.001), Q2 (participation and satisfaction of events, p=0.007), Q3 (sense of belonging, p=0.004), Q7 (clarity of career goals, p<0.001), and Q8 (knowledge of DEI, p=0.021). The one-month post-survey results featured fewer students yet achieved statistical significance that lasted through the one-month post-survey in Q2, Q3, Q7, and Q8 with similar significance levels. One notable difference is that Q6 (intention to graduate from major) showed significance in students wanting to complete their degree in BME in the pair of pre- vs. the immediate post-survey (p=0.019). In general, the improvements in the one-month post-survey followed the same trend as the immediate post-survey with minimal regressions. The data suggests a positive and lasting correlation between students’ sense of belonging and informal student-faculty micro-interactions through the organized lunches. Our approach is highly translatable with minimal cost and commitment of human resources. We plan to investigate the potential equity of the effects across underserved populations with more subjects.

Citation
Format

Chan, T., & Chatfield, T. L., & Wang, X. (2024, June), Work in Progress: Investigation of Student-Faculty Micro-Interactions on Students’ Sense of Belonging through Organized Student-Faculty Lunches Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/48500

TY - CPAPER
AB - This WIP research investigates the effect of informal student-faculty micro-interactions on students’ sense of belonging using a population of undergraduate biomedical engineers (BMEs). Informal student-faculty interactions have been shown to benefit students&#39; learning outcomes. However, current research lacks investigation on the types of the informal interactions that benefit students the most. Prior surveys have revealed that students who did not belong to a student organization are more likely to feel uncomfortable in their major, which is a problem we also observed. We introduced organized student-faculty lunches to provide a gathering place to benefit these students through controlled informal student-faculty interaction. We assessed the outcomes of these lunches under previously reported frameworks for student-faculty interactions.
Twenty-three (23) non-graduating BME undergraduate students from April to December 2023, in groups of 3-5, participated in department-sponsored lunches with faculty members based on shared interests. Confirmed students completed an anonymous pre-intervention survey of 10 questions, with 8 Likert-scale questions based on the framework (1: strongly disagree, 5: strongly agree) and 2 free response questions to understand the students’ motivation for attending the lunch. Students also voluntarily provided their demographic information in the pre-survey. Immediately after the lunch, students took a post-survey with the identical Likert-scale questions and two additional free-form questions for feedback. The Likert-scale questions were reissued as a second post-survey one month later. Paired t-tests were performed on results from pre- vs. post-survey and pre- vs. one-month post-survey. Holm-Bonferroni corrections for multiple comparisons were performed to analyze potential improvements in the Likert-scale questions. Our IRB approved the project as an exempt study.
We received 20 and 14 valid responses (87.0% and 60.9% response rate) for the immediate and one-month post-surveys. Students reported significant improvement in multiple aspects of our survey, including Q1 (knowledge of events, p&amp;lt;0.001), Q2 (participation and satisfaction of events, p=0.007), Q3 (sense of belonging, p=0.004), Q7 (clarity of career goals, p&amp;lt;0.001), and Q8 (knowledge of DEI, p=0.021). The one-month post-survey results featured fewer students yet achieved statistical significance that lasted through the one-month post-survey in Q2, Q3, Q7, and Q8 with similar significance levels. One notable difference is that Q6 (intention to graduate from major) showed significance in students wanting to complete their degree in BME in the pair of pre- vs. the immediate post-survey (p=0.019). In general, the improvements in the one-month post-survey followed the same trend as the immediate post-survey with minimal regressions.
The data suggests a positive and lasting correlation between students’ sense of belonging and informal student-faculty micro-interactions through the organized lunches. Our approach is highly translatable with minimal cost and commitment of human resources. We plan to investigate the potential equity of the effects across underserved populations with more subjects.

AU - Tiffany Chan
AU - Tate L Chatfield
AU - Xianglong Wang
CY - Portland, Oregon
DA - 2024/06/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Work in Progress: Investigation of Student-Faculty Micro-Interactions on Students’ Sense of Belonging through Organized Student-Faculty Lunches
UR - https://peer.asee.org/48500
ER -