The National Science Foundation (NSF) awards millions annually to transform and continuously improve STEM education and engineering education in the United States. In order to position the engineering education community towards funding success, this session is designed to help investigators who are new to NSF and new to funded engineering education projects. Following common guidelines towards effective education research projects (from foundational research to design and development research to efficacy research to scale-up research), session attendees will learn about the critical elements that lead to successful engineering education projects and learn about a variety of NSF Programs that support engineering education transformation initiatives, from course-level innovations to curricular transformations to institutional transformations.

This research-to-practice full paper describes an investigation connecting a student-centered learning environment, grounded on mastery-based learning, to the cultivation of character (e.g. resilience, humility, courage, honesty, etc.). The evidence in support of student-centered pedagogies in the engineering classroom is overwhelming and many engineering programs have been promoting such pedagogies to not only improve learning but also to create more welcoming and inclusive classroom cultures. When combining student-centered pedagogies with motivation theories - like achievement goal orientation - the outcomes are even greater. In fact, engineering education research has demonstrated how student-centered pedagogies combined with motivational theories support not only learning and competencies, but also student engagement, motivation, identity development, belonging, and retention. Mastery-based learning is one student-centered pedagogical approach grounded on achievement goal theory and that supports many of these positive student aspects. In this paper, we will discuss not only the unique mastery-based learning model applied in a flipped classroom collaborative learning format used in a sophomore-level thermal-fluids engineering course, but also present evidence on how this pedagogical approach supports the cultivation of character. Virtue ethics lays the foundation for cultivating character. We discovered that promoting mastery approaches to learning empowered the learners to take ownership of their learning and to also cultivate character strengths like resilience, humility, courage and other virtues. Asking students about their learning gains within a mastery-based learning classroom environment, we have gained new perspective around the additional benefits of student-centered pedagogies grounded on motivation and cultivation of character. In this paper, we discuss classroom structures, learning structures, reward structures, etc. Assessment results showcase student responses to the learning environment and character cultivation. The implications for engineering and STEM educators are many. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first publication to show links between student centered learning environments, such as mastery-based learning, and character cultivation.

Unlike other professions that require post-baccalaureate education, engineering education must offer graduates not only technical depth but also professional acumen like ethics, communication, and team effectiveness during the undergraduate program. While engineering ethics has traditionally focused on two major ethical theories - deontology and consequentialism - which emphasize compliance-based rules and responsibilities, virtue ethics is a third and less prominent lens of ethics that offers a more humanistic approach to dilemmas facing engineers in everyday practice. Virtue ethics, which is often associated with character education and character development, can guide engineers with professional growth in areas of teamwork, collaboration, leadership, communication, and most certainly ethical reasoning. Virtue ethics offers a lens upon which to understand dispositions so that we can think and act responsibly. Virtues like integrity, courage, service, purpose, humility, justice, empathy, resilience, curiosity, and practical wisdom are essential to the practice of engineering. Virtuous engineers are responsible engineers who use their judgement to balance conflicting demands. This session serves the purpose of engaging the engineering and computing educators to understand virtue ethics and the importance of character education with a primary focus on moral and civic virtues (honesty, courage, justice, self-control, compassion, generosity, empathy) in alignment with intellectual and performance virtues (critical thinking, resilience, teamwork, curiosity, creativity). Pedagogical approaches will be discussed during this session and participants will have the opportunity to identify everyday situations where virtue ethics can be applied to support character and leadership development for their students.

When preparing engineering students for professional practice, the importance of their engagement in global, social, and ethical dimensions of engineering cannot be overemphasized. The importance of ethics is well discussed in engineering education literature, but much less is known about how to effectively prepare graduates for the complex global, social, and ethical challenges of engineering practice. Studies have found that common challenges to engineering ethics education include lack of student interest, resistance from faculty, and a lack of consensus regarding topics and pedagogical methods to include in already saturated curricula.We believe a character-focused approach to engineering ethics education could address these challenges by providing language and tools that are easily accessible to students and faculty for engaging ethical challenges in engineering and addressing students' development as individuals and future professionals. This paper investigates recent pedagogical efforts to implement character education in undergraduate engineering education through a scoping literature review. The resulting synthesis of 30 publications reveals a variety of pedagogical approaches, the majority of which are student centered and already commonly used by engineering educators. Our findings indicate that character education is indeed a viable and accessible approach to engineering ethics education. Learning assessment was largely limited across observed interventions, so future studies are needed to examine student and faculty engagement as well as impact on students’ ethical decision-making processes.

This Innovative Practice Full Paper explores how implementing best practices from organizational science can strengthen strategic change initiatives in engineering education. Transforming organizational culture has been a priority in engineering education for nearly four decades, but systemic change has not come easily, and long-standing goals remain elusive. Stagnant graduation and industry participation rates for women and underrepresented minorities have implications for establishing cultures of inclusion. Further, continued difficulty closing the research-to-practice gap in the engineering classroom points to faculty cultures that are resistant to, or unprepared for, change. Are such cultures immutable, or could our current interventional methods be improved? How much do we really know about planning and managing change, and could best practices from organizational science help catalyze the transformations we seek? To investigate this possibility, the state of change in engineering education is briefly reviewed and compared to two influential sets of universal best practices for managing organizational change. These practices are incorporated into six principles of good practice intended for use in engineering education contexts.

The complexity of engineering practice requires engineers to make decisions for the betterment of society and public welfare. What role should character education play in engineering education? How might we better prepare engineers to tackle the complexity of real-world practice with virtues like integrity, humility, courage, purpose, empathy, practical wisdom, curiosity, creativity, justice, resilience, authenticity, etc.? In this special session, we invite engineers and engineering educators to rethink how we might educate the whole engineer holistically leveraging what we know about character education. The goals for the session will enable participants to: (1) Gain a common understanding of character education. (2) Reflect on the role that character education should play in engineering education. (3) Brainstorm ways upon which one might integrate character education in one's engineering course. (4) Develop some shared visioning for collective impact as engineering educators.

Ethics education is a requirement in undergraduate engineering education, but evidence suggests that there is a limited improvement, and perhaps even diminishment, in moral commitments and capacities in engineering students during college. In the present paper, we gauge the current state of ethics education and identify opportunities for improvement given current trends in teaching ethics in engineering. We find that engineering ethics education has a number of suboptimal characteristics. First, engineering ethics does not show clear links to varying ethical theories that might inform ethical reasoning and decision making. Second, engineering ethics education places a heavy emphasis on compliance or rule-following, which provides fewer opportunities for internalizing moral values and virtues. Third, ethics lessons often emphasize case studies of rare or extreme circumstances, like the NASA space shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986, reinforcing the perception that morality is an infrequent professional concern. In the interest of improving ethics education, we introduce character education as a valuable approach to undergraduate engineering ethics education, one grounded in philosophical and psychological work on developing virtuous dispositions as well as personal, professional, and societal flourishing. We describe what character education in engineering might look like and sketch how it could help the profession and its stakeholders achieve both personal and professional outcomes.

Engineers have been and continue to be challenged by the complexity of delivering solutions that meet the ever-changing societal needs. This volatility and complexity calls for engineers to embody agility and versatility in their personal and professional practice. Just as an exemplar Renaissance engineer, Leonardo da Vinci, demonstrated skill as an inventor, artist, architect, scientist, musician, writer, historian, and engineer, so must the engineers of modern time demonstrate such curiosity and adaptability. This special session will explore the value of an engaged liberal arts education in undergraduate engineering education. The goals of the session are to collaboratively (1) reflect on the current state of liberal arts engineering education, (2) define the benefits of an engaged liberal arts engineering education, and (2) envision exemplar curricular experiences that leverage the uniqueness of a liberal arts engineering education.

To correctly engage in the instrument development process takes time. According to Benson's model of construct validation (1) there are at least three lengthy stages (substantive, structural, external) to construct validation when developing a new measure. This study examines how instrument structure impacts the validation process and what it can tell us about instrument revision. In this study we will take a closer look at the development of the Engineering Student Identity Scale (ESIS). After engaging in the in-depth substantive stage of instrument development, the instrument developers began the process of examining whether the anticipated factor structure of the measure fit the observed data. Results from a series of CFA analyses indicated that none of the hypothesized models fit the observed data. While instrument revision at any stage of development is important and likely to lead to a better measure, it is important to gather as much information as possible from each stage to guide revisions. In an effort to better understand how the items on the ESIS instrument function together, a cross-disciplinary team of psychology and engineering experts conducted a series of CFAs and an EFA to examine the factor structure present in the observed data. Initial results support a six-factor structure. Implications for the next round of instrument development are discussed.

The National Science Foundation CAREER Program offers prestigious awards annually to support junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research and the integration of education and research. This three-hour workshop will support faculty who are interested in exploring an engineering education research NSF CAREER proposal.

Problem-solving is generally regarded as the most important cognitive activity in everyday and professional practice. Problems in real-world practice have been described as messy, complex, and ill-structured, whereas many engineering classroom problems have been described as well-structured with single correct solutions. How do we prepare our students for real-world problem solving? In this collaborative and participant-centered workshop, faculty will be introduced to a novel and adaptive Problem-Based Learning (PBL) model developed and implemented in JMU's Engineering program over the past eight years and supported by NSF awards. Participants will be provided with PBL theory, PBL examples, a PBL classification framework, assessment tools, and a PBL template for use across courses and curricula.

Despite efforts to diversify the undergraduate engineering student body, recruitment and retention issues still persist. We attempt to address this problem by conducting research to better understand engineering students through the lens of identity theory. Implications of this effort are twofold: (1) to contribute to our understanding of engineering students' identities as well as what factors (experiences and settings) foster the formation and transformation of these identities during the undergraduate experience, and (2) to gain insight into improving recruitment and retention of engineering students, particularly underrepresented students. However, in order to empirically explore the role of identity, we must first have a psychometrically sound measure of engineering student identity. In developing the Engineering Student Identity Survey (E-SIS), our research team administered the survey to four cohorts of engineering students to investigate whether the E-SIS could differentiate, in predictable ways, the salience of engineering identity across cohorts. The measured constructs were derived from extensive theoretical underpinnings in social identity theory (i.e. interest, unified self-concept, sense of belonging, self-enhancement, participation, distinctiveness, social support, in-group cooperation, citizenship behavior, visibility of affiliation). Results indicate that the E-SIS is able to discriminate between first-, second-, and third/fourth-year students, to varying degrees, on all of the ten subscales used in the analyses. Potential applications and improvements are evident based on these results.

The goal of this session is to increase the participants' knowledge of current funding opportunities at the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support projects with potential significant impacts on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. In particular, the discussion will focus on new and current funding opportunities in the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) in the Directorate of Education and Human Resources (EHR) and the Division of Engineering Education & Centers (EEC) in the Directorate of Engineering. During the session, we will provide examples of project activities that support STEM education research opportunities. The session will use a highly interactive format (i.e., team-based activities and discussion) to engage the participants, to clarify misconceptions, and to potentially initiate and share new ideas pertinent to engineering education research and innovations in classroom implementations. This session facilitates idea sharing and interaction amongst peers.

In the current study, researchers developed a 12-item instrument (Engineering Student Motivational Beliefs Scale; ESMBS) to assess engineering students' perceived expectancies, values, and costs of being an engineering major and pursuing an engineering career. The purpose of the paper is to present the ESMBS development process, including preliminary psychometric information. Researchers used Benson's model of construct validation, encompassing three phases, to guide the development and preliminary validation of ESMBS. The substantive phase included a thorough review of the literature to theoretically and empirically define the expectancy, value, and cost constructs within the context of undergraduate engineering. The structural phase consisted of psychometric investigations of the scale to examine internal consistencies. Finally, during the external phase, the relationship between the ESMBS constructs and student engagement was examined. The results from this preliminary instrument development study were mixed, showing the need for further examination of the measure.

As we engage in an increasingly complex and quickly progressing world, the development of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students will be increasingly important to the continuation of the United States' competitiveness. However, the overall number of STEM students earning a degree will not be able to meet the increasing demand for practicing professionals especially within historically underrepresented groups such as women and minorities. One way to tackle this problem is to increase the retention of STEM students by studying the processes that influence persistence to completion of a STEM degree. Retention is critically important to the field of engineering as over 10% of all engineering majors will switch to other STEM degrees and even more will not persist within STEM fields at all. The focus of this paper is to utilize Expectancy-Value Theory to determine how freshman engineering students (both those who persisted within the major and those who switched out of the major) perceive engineering. Research was conducted at a predominately undergraduate liberal arts institution with a medium sized engineering program. Interview data was examined for 11 entering freshman who stayed with the engineering program (persisters) and 10 entering freshman who switched to different majors (switchers).

The rigors of engineering education present each student with a unique set of academic and psychological challenges. Established interventional strategies are typically focused on enhancing academic - rather than psychological - preparedness, potentially leaving many students vulnerable to various demotivating factors. Participants in this special session will collaborate to develop a nucleus of ideas to inform the future development of psychological preparedness strategies - interventions specifically designed to facilitate productive processes such as self-efficacy, self-discipline, resilience, and motivation.

In this paper, we present a comprehensive and innovative assessment plan and continuous improvement process used by one of the newest engineering programs in the United States. The program was developed from the ground up to have a strong culture of assessment in preparation for ABET. In developing the assessment plan and continuous improvement process, one design requirement was that the assessment plan involve all faculty in the program in order to establish a strong assessment culture. The assessment plan includes both direct and indirect assessment measures, as well as quantitative and qualitative evaluations of student outcome attainments. The assessment plan targets not only program-level continuous improvement, but also course-level continuous improvement. Course-level continuous improvement involves Course Evaluations and Course Assessment and Continuous Improvement (CACI) Reports, which are prepared by the faculty and serve to document direct assessments of course outcomes and student outcomes. Program-level continuous improvement involves evaluation of the collection of CACI Reports that feed into the Student Outcome Summary Reports (SOSR), which are annually prepared by the Assessment Committee members. Methods developed as part of our assessment plan are generalizable and included in the paper.

This paper reports the findings from surveying a diverse group of undergraduate engineering students (N~100) who participated in summer industry experiences. The goal was to capture and understand (a) the nature of industry experiences and (b) students' learning outcome gains (cognitive and affective) during these industry experiences. Ultimately, we aim to understand how students learn in real-world problem solving contexts in order to transfer such learning and such experiences into the engineering classroom. In undergraduate curriculum, well-structured problems with known solutions acquired through preferred solution methods are encountered more frequently than ill-structured problems. The linear process of problem solving teaches students a procedure to be memorized, practiced, and habituated, a process that emphasizes getting answers over making meaning. Real-world problem solving, though, commonly encountered in industry experiences suffused with complex and ill-structured problems, foster cognitive development of essential, problem-based, and globally competitive problem solving skills. Although industry experiences offer many benefits and enable engineering students to begin the practice of solving real-world complex problems, there is limited research on students' learning outcomes and skill gains as a result of participating in such experiences. Further, there is a lack of understanding of characteristics of the problems or projects that students work on. Our research serves to address these limitations.

Developmental instruction in four sustainability contexts (environmental, social, economic, technical) in an engineering design curriculum offers a strong foundation and framework upon which to build an engineering program that teaches students the necessary methodologies for designing for sustainability. Instruction in sustainability contexts described in the current paper employs a developmental approach using Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, which is a way to classify instructional activities or questions as they progress in cognitive difficulty. Our objective in this paper and presentation is to detail an instructional methodology (and results of a case study and focused group assessment) that integrates sustainability instruction in four contexts into the fifth and sixth classes in our six-course design curriculum using a developmental approach.

Learning Through Service (LTS) is a pedagogical method that encompasses curricular and extracurricular service learning in engineering. Though the numerous benefits of LTS are apparent to those who engage in it, the barriers are also plentiful, as evident by the reluctance of many instructors to engage in LTS. As a joint effort to create a community of LTS scholars, a summit held in Fall 2011 brought together faculty members actively engaged in LTS activities in a wide variety of capacities and from a wide variety of disciplines. In addition to the many workshops conducted as part of the summit, three semi-structured focus groups were held during which open dialogue ensued regarding the best practices and challenges in the execution of LTS. The current study presents thematic findings that emerged from these focus groups.

Developmental instruction in four sustainability contexts (environmental, social, economic, technical) in an engineering design curriculum offers a strong foundation and framework upon which to build an engineering program that teaches students the necessary methodologies for designing for sustainability. Instruction in sustainability contexts described in the current paper employs a developmental approach using Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, which is a way to classify instructional activities or questions as they progress in cognitive difficulty. Our objective in this paper and presentation is to detail an instructional methodology (and results of a case study and focus group assessment) that integrates sustainability instruction in four contexts into the third and fourth classes in our six-course design curriculum using a developmental approach.