Undergraduate admissions serves as a gatekeeper in higher education and often includes measures of secondary school academic performance, including standardized exams (e.g., SAT, ACT, AP, IB) and grade point average, which have weak to modest correlations with undergraduate academic performance. Additionally, these measures have been critiqued as biased and prioritize students from privileged backgrounds. More recently, non-cognitive and affective (NCA) factors—psychosocial constructs spanning behaviors, feelings, and emotions—of accepted students have emerged as stronger predictors of future academic performance compared to conventional admissions data. NCA factors also provide a multifaceted understanding of students that can direct actions for addressing representation and inclusion issues in engineering. In this paper, we conducted a$k-\text{means}$clustering of admissions metrics and NCA factors (i.e., belonging, identity, the Big Five) to understand if there are patterns among these variables within a large sample of engineering undergraduate students from two national surveys$(\boldsymbol{n} =\mathbf{6,050})$. Second, we evaluated the differences between students of varying backgrounds (i.e., gender, race/ethnicity, first-generation status) on these metrics and by cluster. Finally, we assessed the influence of the type of institution (e.g., public or private, doctoral degree granting, tuition guarantee, etc.) by cluster. Understanding how commonly-used admissions metrics relate to NCA attributes may reveal whether such a relationship is appropriate to consider in a holistic admissions review process that facilitates the matriculation of a more diverse engineering study body. Our results indicate that readily-available admissions data signifies the need for tailored support for matriculated students in order to support persistence of the incoming students through to an engineering degree.

Experiential learning opportunities (study abroad, service learning, and research experiences) support and enable the continuing evolution of undergraduate engineering programming from a focus on the ‘curriculum’ to the ‘experience.’ Orchestrating large-scale research programs for undergraduates presents significant challenges related to programming, the research itself, engineering professional formation, and assessment of all three. This paper reports on two continuous years' implementation of a large-scale undergraduate summer research program focused on technical research in energetic materials supported by the US Department of Defense via the Army Research Laboratory (ARL). The design and execution of the program were non-trivial and contained challenges and affordances. Evidence-based practice was used to justify program improvements. The paper describes four important design considerations: (i) the appropriate balance between technical research experience and programmatic activities focused on engineering professional formation, (ii) the creation of a “human talent pathway” from undergraduate students to potential graduate students to potential energetic materials scientists and engineers employed by the ARL, (iii) the development of interest in relevant careers and (iv) the promotion of graduate school. Using evidence-based practice, thematic analysis, and continuous improvement frameworks, we assessed each element of the overall program through quantitative and qualitative surveys of student researchers and their mentors across two implementations. Our measurements indicate tension between the technical and professional goals of the program. The second iteration of the program shifted the balance towards technical research. It decreased the role of formal professional development activities while re-committing to the workforce elements of the experience. We conclude that streamlined programs with low-frequency, high-impact events complementing the research allow students to retain the most meaning and knowledge. We provide examples of lessons learned through our continuous improvement process, including the importance of student and mentor feedback and flexibility in program content and delivery. Finally, we present recommendations for the pedagogical design of future undergraduate research programs, including accommodating cohorts with diverse educational backgrounds.

This research-to-practice full paper investigates the alignment of a specific pedagogical innovation, the Freeform pedagogical system, with the student culture(s) of the mechanical engineering department of a small private college (SPC) in the upper Midwest of the United States, we ask the research question: What are the defining characteristics of the student culture or (sub)cultures in the engineering department where the Freeform system is being propagated? Based upon interviews with on-campus stakeholders (students, faculty, and staff), we constructed a 64-item survey to characterize the culture of their engineering department. We analyzed student responses using the cultural consensus theory model (CCT), a quantitative method that looks for patterns of responses to cultural statements. Grouped together, these patterns of responses indicate the values of the sub-cultures present within a participant group. Our results indicate that the best fitting model contains two student subcultures: student subculture 1 (SC1) (n = 15) and student subculture 2 (SC2) (n = 60). These two subcultures exhibit differences across a handful of items that focus on the student experience and in particular the sense of connectedness or belonging among students. Members of SC1 seem to be disconnected from both their peers and their instructors, work primarily alone, and seem to struggle to obtain access to academic assistance. SC1 members also feel overworked with (what they perceive to be) low-value-added activities, and they do not perceive alignment between how instructors teach and how they prefer to learn. In contrast, members of SC2 seem to be aligned with the institutional mission, which focuses on faculty-student relationships and learning in the community

This article represents a Work in Progress. COVID-19 pandemic has affected the way we conduct our lives across different segments of society. Higher education's organizational activities were rearranged as instructors and students were forced to switch from in-person to online and hybrid class activities. We examine how COVID-19 reshaped teaching at an engineering school in a large, public research university in the U.S. Midwest. In our earlier studies (during the pre-COVID-19 era) we found that faculty culture prioritized research over teaching. We also discovered that students avoided interactions with their instructors for several reasons, including the perception that their professors were too busy. Still, a professor's role at a research university involves teaching one to two courses per semester. With the advent of COVID-19, one of the many emerging crises in higher education was that instructors were largely unprepared to teach online and were left scrambling to adjust. Our most current research revealed that instructors had to develop proficiency quickly in various technologies to enable them to pre-record lectures, offer help sessions remotely, and design and administer exams. The learning curve was steep and led to a significant increase in instructor preparation time. This rearrangement of activities seems to have influenced professors' attitudes since they placed higher emphasis on quality of teaching, devoted more time to interacting with students outside class sessions and were more flexible in terms of students’ academic challenges.

The goal of this pre-conference workshop is to provide guidance on engineering education funding opportunities at the National Science Foundation (NSF). This will be accomplished through a series of engaging activities including (i) interactive and dynamic mini-presentations by NSF program directors; (ii) a lively mock proposal review session in which participants work in small groups on a real NSF proposal previously emailed to registrants; (iii) an interactive question and answer session in which participants have the opportunity to cross-examine a panel of current NSF grantees and (iv) candid conversations with NSF program directors. The workshop will describe various funding opportunities including those that promote international collaborations and engineering education for a sustainable future. Guidance will be provided on how to write persuasive and competitive proposals. Participants will experience rich peer interactions and also have the opportunity to connect directly with NSF program directors.

This article represents a Full Paper. Students are often the beneficiaries of staff-led and managed programs where they acquire and hone professional development skills outside the classroom. Given the ongoing transformation toward a "whole new engineer" [1], we decided to focus on university staff and their involvement in improving student outcomes. The three teams profiled in this article were part of a larger set of 12 grassroots teams at a large, public U.S. university. We examine these three successful teams, all staff-led, two with six members and one with eight members. We were interested in how team members conceptualized their individual roles and their professional networks in helping their teams accomplish their goals. The data, illustrated through their statements and drawings, enable us to capture and explain their insider perspectives on these collaborations, the strategies they employed to overcome issues, the value they placed on divergent team-member views, and the factors they believed to be essential for success.

In this work in progress research paper, we investigated whether non-cognitive and affective (NCA) factors that predict academic success through GPA may relate to other forms of success such as student retention in engineering programs. Studies show that most students leave engineering within the first two years, making national retention rates in engineering less than 50%. Furthermore, the students who leave engineering are often academically talented, indicating a need to examine other success measures beyond GPA such as non-cognitive and affective (NCA) factors. Using data from a single institution (n = 540), we explore the NCA differences between students who remained in engineering after their first year and those who are no longer enrolled in engineering, or even in college at all. Results show that only one demographic and five NCA measures are statistically significant predictors of continued enrollment. Overall, a better understanding of student success as measured by retention using NCA profiles might assist researchers and practitioners with developing interventions and supportive environments that promote students' academic success and thriving in engineering.

This research-to-practice full paper describes the deliberate and arduous process we recently went through to develop a national survey to study the non-cognitive traits of undergraduate engineering and computing students. The goal of this survey is to characterize student profiles in order to develop and examine particular interventions to guide students toward success in engineering and computing majors. This survey measures non-cognitive attributes including personality, sense of belonging, engineering or computing identity, study skills, well-being, and a variety of other constructs that are not routinely measured in engineering populations nor integrated into admission decisions, advising processes, or academic curricula. Prior research indicates that these non-cognitive attributes are important for students' academic success and retention. However, no studies have examined a comprehensive set of non-cognitive traits holistically to understand how they influence student success. This collaborative project, funded by three linked NSF grants, merges the interests of researchers at three campuses in understanding and supporting students with varied non-cognitive profiles. As part of this research, we negotiated the content of a national survey, suitable for use on our own campuses as well as with other national partners, to probe more than a dozen constructs collectively describing student non-cognitive attributes. The construction of the survey itself was non-trivial, and involved significant negotiations among the researchers including initial collection of instruments with validity evidence to serve as a basis for discussion; an in-person kick-off meeting; multiple follow-up teleconferences; multiple rounds of inclusion/exclusion decisions based upon mutually-agreed upon guiding principles; pilot survey testing; pilot data evaluations such as exploratory factor analysis; and final decisions about instruments/items to include in the final version, all while considering survey length, distribution channels, and key IRB concerns. This paper details the 10-month effort to construct a survey that meets the research needs and intellectual curiosity of partners at three diverse campuses. In this process, we had to balance the different institutional contexts of the funded partner sites while also maintaining flexibility for national distribution. The deliberate processes we used may serve as a template for future survey creation, starting from constructs of interest, to selection of specific instruments (or sub-scales thereof), and factor analysis to consider further down-selection of individual items to include in the final survey. The outcomes of this paper may serve the engineering education community by highlighting previously undocumented processes in collaborative survey construction that introduce intellectual complexity or time delays into the development timeline.

This full paper in the research-to-practice category describes a departmental structure for change organized and executed as part of a REvolutionizing engineering and computer science Departments (RED) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The recent engineering education literature provides many conceptual frameworks for thinking about change in academic organizations, but comparatively few case studies of how departmental cultural change is operationalized both inside and beyond the classroom. Our approach to change was to organize “grassroots teams” of students, faculty, and staff to tackle problems and challenges of recognized importance to the department. This paper details a number of key features of these grassroots teams, including: membership, training, leadership, problem scoping, facilitation, goal setting, formative and summative evaluations, and the outcomes of the teams work. The grassroots teams were organized according to several operating principles: (1) optimal team size is 6-8 people, and optimal project duration is around one semester; (2) to the extent possible, each team should have students, faculty, and staff representation; (3) teams generally follow our change model to complete their work; (4) all teams should strive for equity of voice, meaning that student and staff voices are equal to faculty voices; (5) the changes to be made did not require permission (i.e., approval from a curriculum committee or other formal entity; or the team members implicitly already had permission for change as a result of their job role); and (6) the teams should focus on student outcomes we care about. Our results refined our understanding of how change happens (or in some cases, does not happen) in our organization, with fascinating implications for ongoing and future efforts. The existence of these teams, and their mission around progressive change in the department, operated in tension with the prevailing attitudes about change in the department (“we tried that before, and it didn't work”). Not every change effort was successful. The feedback from participants was nearly unanimous. They appreciated the structured and well-scoped nature of the projects. They especially welcomed the process we developed to facilitate change, which was very different from the usual committee structures in which they were used to working. And they felt excited to see that change was possible. Our specific grassroots team implementation will undoubtedly not work in all academic environments. Local context matters and some changes to our approach will be appropriate in each different setting. However, we believe the approach outlined in this paper provides a flexible platform on which to build grassroots teams in other units of our university or at other institutions.

This Research Category Full Paper explores the relationship between the demographic characteristics of students and their participation in an online forum. Online discussion forums have become widely used in undergraduate classrooms. They extend the learning space beyond the classroom and provide asynchronous opportunities for peer-to-peer collaborations. Past studies have suggested that online posting behavior plays a role in students' learning outcomes; however, the study of the demographic characteristics of students who do or do not participate in online discussions is limited. We address this research question here. We chose our demographic variables based on prior studies of students' general online behaviors, and therefore we compare gender, race/ethnicity and international status, as well as declared majors, with engagement in the online forum. The discussion forum provided a platform for the students to ask or answer their peers' questions about the course material and homework assignments. The setting for this study was a sophomore-level dynamics and vibrations class that incorporated active, blended, and collaborative learning strategies. We tracked an individual's posting behavior throughout a semester. Study participants were grouped by whether they posted to the discussion forum at least once, and the Chi-squared test of independence was used to determine the statistical significance of demographic differences across the participation groups. The data show that female students were significantly more likely to be involved in online discussions than their male counterparts. Also, White and Asian American students were overrepresented, and international and Hispanic students were underrepresented in the engaged group. Interestingly, students who were required to take this specific course as a graduation requirement do not show more engagement than those who took this class for general engineering credits. This work extends our knowledge of who uses online collaboration tools, and in the future, we will analyze the content of the engagement (posts and comments) and explore the influence of forum participation on the students' grades.

In this work-in-progress research category paper, we explore diversity and inclusion in undergraduate engineering programs by examining racial/ethnic and gender differences in undergraduate engineering students' growth and fixed mindsets. We use multiple regression analyses on survey data to examine the main and interaction effects of race/ethnicity and gender on growth and fixed mindset to answer our overarching research questions: “How do fixed and growth mindset differ by race/ethnicity and gender for undergraduate engineering students?” and “To what extent do undergraduate engineering students' race/ethnicity and gender interact for growth or fixed mindset?” Our results indicate that there are significant racial/ethnic group differences but no gender differences on growth and fixed mindset. Also, we found that gender did not moderate the relationship between race/ethnicity and mindset. Thus, while the men and women in our sample appear to share similar mindsets, most of the participants of different racial/ethnic backgrounds did not share similar mindsets.

This paper presents a case study at a large Midwestern university where agile project management influenced the outcome of change initiatives in an Engineering School (ES). Agile project management encompasses several skills including leadership, communication, organization, conflict management, and the ability to navigate ambiguity. While this skill set is common in many industries, it is very uncommon in higher education. By infusing this diverse way of thinking into transformational efforts aimed at enhancing the student experience, we have disrupted the traditional academic hierarchy, seen greater momentum and greater initial success, and created a new model for “getting things done” in academic organizations.As part of the REvolutionizing engineering and computer science Departments (RED) grant, we aim to improve the culture in the ES. To accomplish this, we have formed grassroots teams consisting of faculty, staff, and students that launch experiments aimed at improving students' professional skills development & departmental culture. This effort has consisted of ~50 participants across 12 teams for three semesters. We did not initially foresee the level of oversight & management needed to run such an effort or the bureaucratic barriers to operationalizing the grassroots teams and experiments. In response to this environment, agile project management was introduced half-way through the first set of experiments. Through observations, surveys, interviews, and outcomes of the experiments themselves, we have characterized the impact of adding agile project management to this program.Our early results indicate that progress can be expedited by an agile project management skill set, and more specifically, the number of experiments launched through grassroots efforts has increased by a factor of 7 semester-over-semester after adding agile project management. Additionally, 92% of participants reported being satisfied with the experience with an average rating of 4 out of 5. Lastly, the value that project managers add was a key theme cited in end-of-semester surveys and interviews. Our early success metrics suggest that this critical industry skill set, generally lacking in academic settings, can make a significant difference in the success of departmental initiatives. We believe that propagating agile project management more broadly in academia can positively influence productivity and expedite the rate of change by re-thinking traditional academic methods of “getting things done”.

This work-in-progress research paper uses multiple regression of both cognitive and non-cognitive factors to model current GPA of engineering and computer science students. High school GPA and ACT/SAT scores are among the most common scores used as admission criteria, which result in a relatively homogeneous engineering population. Prior research, however, shows that these scores do not account for the variance in GPA once these students start undergraduate studies. In this work, we explore how students' cognitive (e.g., study skills, test performance, regulatory behaviors, etc.) and non-cognitive factors (e.g., identity, motivation, personality, etc.) predict student success in their engineering pathways. The data for this initial study comes from a pilot survey, deployed in the summer of 2017, of 490 engineering and computing students from two large, public institutions, one on the West Coast, the other in the Midwest. We used multiple linear regression to control for demographic variables while examining the predictive value of particular cognitive and non-cognitive factors for student academic achievement (i.e., GPA) in university. Our analysis shows, not surprisingly, that standardized test scores only explain a small portion of the variance of undergraduate GPA. Including non-cognitive and affective factors into a regression model produced a marked increase in the explained variance. Our work is novel in examining a constellation of possible factors that predict undergraduate student GPA, by combining both cognitive and non-cognitive factors as predictors. This analysis begins to unpack particular factors that have potential to predict GPA of engineering and computer science students.

Structural analysis is a foundational statics concept for students majoring in mechanical engineering, civil engineering, and engineering technology, among others. However, the mathematical emphasis of a typical statics courses lies in algebraic calculations, matrices, vectors, and sometimes deemphasizes student understanding of the behavior of the overall structure as a system, focusing instead on its individual elements. This study investigates students' conceptual understanding of forces acting and reacting in a truss structure as well as their corresponding representations in the form of Free Body Diagrams (FBDs). Our findings suggest that students primarily demonstrated partially coherent answers suggesting that they may hold some misconceptions about truss behavior. The most prevalent error was that students failed to account for the mutual (equal and opposite) forces between connected bodies that were separated for analysis. Based on our findings we propose the design of a learning experience that combines principles of embodied learning with the affordances of visuohaptic simulations to address students' misconceptions.

We explored the affordances of using visuo-haptic simulations to improve conceptual understanding and representational competence of the concept of friction. Visuohaptic simulations are computer-based simulations that encode mathematical and physical models of certain phenomena and provide visual and tactile feedback. Users can see the simulation and feel the friction with their hand by using a special device connected to a computer. We hypothesized that visual and haptic feedback together can help students to improve learning of friction. We recruited 24 engineering technology students with a previous experience in at least one physics course, and we examined their reasoning and understanding about statics concepts before and after engaging with visuo-haptic simulations. Our instructional approach included four steps: 1) lecture about friction, 2) pretest, 3) laboratory session, and 4) posttest. The laboratory session consisted of a pre-training session, guided learning materials based on a constructivist framework, and use of the friction visuo-haptic simulation. We report students' prior conceptions of statics concepts, ways in which they interacted and reasoned with each of the different pedagogical tools, and compared reasoning processes, explanations and learning gains. Our results suggest that the visuo-haptic simulation helped students refine their explanations and increased the coherence between their verbal explanation and mathematical representation.

In recent years, there has been a call for Engineering Education to adopt innovative pedagogical techniques. One such innovation is Purdue University's Freeform environment for teaching undergraduate engineering courses. Freeform aims to enhance student learning with an Active, Blended, and Collaborative (ABC) learning environment. The majority of research into the Freeform environment thus far has focused on student outcomes and the tools Freeform uses rather than instructional practice [1-3]. However, with the growth of Freeform and other ABC environments, the lack of actionable feedback available to instructors about their role and practices is becoming increasingly apparent. Therefore, with the goal of building on the characterization of Freeform and ABC pedagogies in general, this paper presents a one-semester longitudinal analysis of two instructors and comparisons of their actions in this environment. The study concludes that these two instructors retain individuality in their pedagogical choices and adapt their instruction to the material presented while staying within the Freeform ABC ethos throughout the semester.

As engineering disciplines evolve, universities are challenged to continually incorporate new material into the undergraduate curriculum. Traditionally, the two primary methods of incorporating new material are to either change the curriculum of a specific class or hire a new instructor to teach a new class. In our paper, we introduce a new model for introducing skills and tools necessary for undergraduates to succeed in industry/academia via the Student Taught Classes program (STC). Overall, the STC program has been widely successful and far reaching. The popularity of the program can be attributed to the rigorous application process, flexible class structure, and broad impact that each of the seven classes taught have had over the past three semesters. When instituted in the right way, Student Taught Classes have the ability to add a new dimension to any undergraduate engineering curriculum.