Research Initiation: Understanding the relationships between participation in co-curricular activities, student characteristics, and the professional formation of engineers.

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

There is a common perception in higher education that engineering-centered co-curricular activities are beneficial in building confidence, improving academic performance, and developing social and professional networks among engineering students. While there are many published studies that link participation in various types of extra-curricular activities, such as social clubs and volunteerism, on academic and social development, little is written about the effect of participation in more engineering-based organizations. This project seeks to study: (1) why students participate in co-curricular engineering activities, such as engineering honors and professional societies and design teams, (2) whether such participation confers benefits to the participants and helps them develop into professional engineers, and (3) how we might leverage those benefits to attract and retain students who are underrepresented in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, including women, African American, Hispanic, and first generation students. Findings from this project will lay the groundwork for future efforts that will include the design of engineering-based activities that benefit a diverse student body based on concrete data and evidence rather than on intuition. It is widely presumed that as long as programs such as engineering honors and professional societies, and design teams are rationally designed, they are beneficial in building social capital, enforcing self-efficacy, and establishing a solid engineering identity. However, there is very little in the literature specifically in engineering education to support such claims. This project seeks to answer three major research questions: 1. What are the characteristics of the students who currently participate in engineering-centered co-curricular activities? 2. What are the outcomes of participation on academic performance and persistence, and on psychosocial factors such as motivation, social capital, and engineering identity? 3. How can these benefits be transferred to students who are underrepresented in who that are underrepresented in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, including women, African American, Hispanic, and first generation students? The professional development portion of this project will be accomplished by leveraging the expertise of scholars who have a combination of technical content knowledge, practical experience in student organizations, a grounding in theoretical frameworks, and quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis expertise. A direct outcome of this research will be the thoughtful and efficacious design of programs that attract and retain more students into science and engineering disciplines, especially those coming from underrepresented and underserved populations. In addition, this work will pilot an engineering education research development plan and thus build capacity for engineering faculty to conduct engineering education research and scholarship.