This special session will provide an opportunity for educators to learn about critical consciousness and how to embed topics intended to promote the development of critical consciousness in the engineering design curriculum. The authors will present a critical consciousness teaching framework, which incorporates the engineering design process with critical consciousness topics through intergroup dialogue and discussion of engineering innovations. Session participants will engage in interactive activities to understand the framework, ideate how it may be adapted at their own institutions, and review case studies of challenges and affordances of using the teaching framework.

This Work in Progress paper presents the impact of a mid-year engineering design course in an Electrical and Computer Engineering curriculum on students' critical consciousness and engineering identity. This work addresses two gaps in scholarship and practice, namely, the incorporation of mid-year design into a traditional curriculum where design is only taught formally in the capstone year. Second, the embeddedness of contextual perspectives in design to incorporate a systems-level understanding of design about social, political, cultural, and economic constructs. The contribution to educational practice includes understanding how such a course can sustain or develop student identification with engineering about critical consciousness. Results from this work show that students' critical consciousness gains in the course are not only tied to the learning objectives, but also to the design aspects of the course where the students performed engineering skills and were recognized by peers in the course as engineers.

Engaging undergraduates in research has been shown to improve retention, increase students' sense of computer science identity, and increase their chances of continuing to graduate school. Yet research experiences at most universities are ad hoc, and many undergraduates-particularly those from groups underrepresented in computing-do not have the opportunity to participate. The Early Research Scholars Program (ERSP) is a structured, academic-year group-based undergraduate research program designed to help universities vastly increase participation in research for early computing undergraduates. ERSP launched at UC San Diego in 2014 where it now annually engages over 50 second-year undergraduates, 59% of whom are women, and 22% of whom are from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. The program's portable design has enabled its expansion to 7 other colleges and universities. This workshop will train participants in launching ERSP (or any part of it) at their university to increase and diversify the undergraduates participating in research. Workshop leaders are the ERSP directors at four universities. They will address how to launch and run the program in different contexts. They will provide an interactive, hands-on experience of running the program covering the following topics: developing and teaching a research methods class, student application and selection to ensure a diverse and supportive cohort, and creating a dual-mentoring structure to engage and retain early undergraduates without overburdening faculty. Workshop participants will be invited to join the ERSP virtual community to get support launching their own version of ERSP.

The Early Research Scholars Program (ERSP) was launched in 2014 at UC San Diego as a way to provide the benefits of research experiences to a large and diverse group of students early in their undergraduate computing career. ERSP is a structured program in which second-year undergraduate computing majors participate in a group-based, dual-mentored research apprenticeship over a full academic year. In its first four years ERSP engaged 139 students with a high proportion of women (68%) and racially minoritized students (19%), and participation in ERSP correlated with increased class grades. In 2018 we partnered with three additional universities to launch their own version of ERSP. Implementations at our partner sites have seen similar diversity and initial success, and have taught us how to implement the program in different contexts (e.g. quarters vs. semesters, different credit structures). This paper describes the structure of ERSP and how it can be adapted to different contexts to construct a scalable and inclusive research experience for early-career undergraduates in computing and related fields.

This work-in-progress research paper explores the way in which low-socioeconomic status (SES), first-year undergraduate engineering students develop their engineering identity. Identification with the field of engineering, or engineering identity development, is an ongoing process for students. While scholars have used retrospective studies to understand the developmental aspect of this process, a longitudinal study that follows students' engineering identity development could provide an advantageous viewpoint. In this study, we investigate the engineering identity profiles of incoming low-SES, high-achieving engineering students. We interviewed 13 students using a protocol focused on understanding the students' engineering identity profiles before entering engineering school. An integrated model of engineering identity development was used to frame the research and guide the analysis. Our preliminary results show existing pre-college identity-related patterns across students as well as initial ways of identifying with their major and engineering as a field. This work has contributions to research in the areas of engineering identity development as well as broadening understanding of engineering students who are both low-income and high-achieving. Our work has practical implications for academic and professional support programs for low-income engineering students and programs that aim to support engineering identity development.

This work-in-progress exploratory study presents the perceptions and expressions of Latinx (a gender-neutral term for individuals from Latin American origins) engineers when learning about hidden curriculum (HC). HC represents the lessons learned in educational or working settings that are not necessarily communicated formally. HC is typically used to help administrators and educators to uncover the unseen or unrecognizable issues of a given environment, in an effort to identify inclusive and diverse strategies for success of their students and employees. Developing critical consciousness, or the process of gaining knowledge about the systems and institutionalized structures, developing a sense of agency, and taking action against the forces that perpetuate those structures is important when challenging the HC. In collaboration with the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), the research team served as both instructors and researchers in a professional development (PD) session to teach a group of 45 Latinx engineering faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students from across the United States about how to uncover HC and strategies needed to translate these concepts in their instruction and other responsibilities as engineering educators. As a follow-up, a subset of attendees from the original PD, completed a mixed-method survey about HC. Using the frameworks of HC, engineering identity, and critical literacy, the research group analyzed the written qualitative responses. Results suggested that Latinx faculty had a slight change in their awareness about HC but mainly did not transcend to levels where critical consciousness could be achieved. Also, faculty expressed a disconnect between the culture of engineering at their institutions and their overall sense of belonging and empowerment needed to enact meaningful change.

The purpose of this Work in Progress paper is to investigate on within-group differences in the way that Latinx students identified as engineers for students who were, at the time of the study, members of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE). Researchers have shown that there is a link between identification with engineering for college students and persistence in the field. As such, the study of engineering identity is timely and critical. Previous work in this area has shown that there are dimensions of engineering identity development that are key to Latinx students' success. These dimensions include: professional and leadership, community wellbeing, engineering familia, and role modeling. Using a culturally-situated survey of engineering identity, we surveyed undergraduate students who identify as Latinx. The results show the ways in which the Latinx undergraduate population surveyed is non-monolithic and the statistically significant within-group differences that exist within this student population.

Literacies are central to the social and cultural practices that are intertwined with identities, who gets to participate in engineering, and the knowledge that is valued in the discipline. However, identifying these literacies is not a straightforward process for engineering faculty. The purpose of this workshop is to help engineering faculty identify equity-oriented literacies that challenge hidden curriculum frameworks in engineering and influence engineering identity formation.

Engineering education scholars have pointed to the need of cultural change in engineering education. To address this need, we propose this special session about the use of one strategy that bridges research and practice and has been underutilized in engineering education - culturally responsive practices. We aim to engage the audience in discussion about culturally responsive practices via collaborate case studies. The objectives of this session are to provide a space to reflect on what culturally responsive practices can be used in K-16 engineering education, to learn more and understand better the students, and to challenge deficit models in engineering classrooms.

Measures of engineering identity have been designed for an aggregate group of engineering students leaving the ways that students of color develop their engineering identities unexplored. This work in progress paper presents a culturally situated survey of engineering identity for Latina/o undergraduates. The survey was built using data from 20 interviews and observations with engineering Latina/o students. This study took an asset-based approach through the use of the Community Cultural Wealth framework. The survey was administered to 75 students. Using the survey responses of 33 engineering identity items, exploratory factor analysis was performed to examine the structural validity of the survey.

The low-cost intrinsic motivation (IM) course conversion project aims to promote the adoption of education innovations, lowering the costs of these innovations by promoting students' intrinsic motivation to learn and to invest in their own education. We have piloted and scaled the IM course conversion of a large enrollment, sophomore-level engineering course. As part of a broader evaluation, we interviewed 31 students to better understand how the IM course conversion affected students' motivations to learn. During these interviews, students described their experiences in the course as a story from the beginning to the end of the semester. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed with an open coding scheme focused on motivational and affective statements. Preliminary analysis indicates that strategic choices, positive team dynamics, and productive failures in the learning process all contribute to promoting students' intrinsic motivation to learn in both pilot and full scale IM course conversions.

This qualitative study aims to understand the experiences of undergraduate women of color in engineering; specifically how their gender, race, and ethnicity shape their construct of an engineering identity. For many of the students, engineering identity was only understood along with gender and race/ethnic identities.

The mentoring relationship is an important and crucial aspect in the academic and professional development of both mentor and protégé. Although the characteristics of positive mentoring relationships have been identified, there is little prior research in assessing the relationship between undergraduate researchers and their graduate student mentors. We present a document analysis of the reflective journals and mentoring philosophy statements of four graduate student mentors of undergraduate researchers in a summer research program. The preliminary results show that mentors and students can have mismatched expectations, and that as the mentoring relationship evolves, the roles of the mentor and student also evolve. We also present a mentoring model grounded in the data.

Our general education course in digital information technology draws many students from academic disciplines outside science and mathematics. These students often struggle with the relevance of the course topics. To promote student motivation, we are modifying the course to better engage the students in the course topics via a method we term diversity harnessing. Diversity harnessing refers to the diversity in the students' personal interests and chosen academic disciplines. From the students' interests, we intend to gather applications and ideas and to quickly integrate this diverse student-driven subject matter back into the lectures, homework assignments, and examinations. Through diversity harnessing, we expect to find that students are more engaged in the course and that they apply the course content more effectively to their lives and careers beyond the end of the semester. We are assessing the effectiveness of diversity harnessing using both individual interviews and a standard course engagement questionnaire.