Community Cultures: Broadening Participation By Understanding How Rural Communities Support Engineering as College Major Choice

Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University, Blacksburg VA

Investigators

Abstract

A robust and diverse engineering workforce is essential to national security and economic competitiveness, and current rates of higher education enrollment in engineering are not sufficient to support the need. Thus, broadening participation in engineering from underrepresented groups is a critical priority. To meet this need, this project focuses on economically disadvantaged rural students, particularly women and other underrepresented groups. Traditional models of career choice stressing interest as a primary career choice driver break down in rural contexts, where instead community values, local economic drivers, and strong family networks often play a critical role. As a result, this project shifts the focus from individual students to the communities themselves to understand how key stakeholders and organizations support the career choices of rural youth. With this knowledge, the investigators will engage target rural communities in participatory design workshops so that they might leverage their unique community assets to support more of their youth, particularly underrepresented groups, to pursue engineering careers. The project begins with focus group and individual interviews with undergraduate engineering students from selected rural high schools that are known for producing high numbers of engineering majors. These data lay the foundation for interviews with key members of students' home communities and observations of salient programs or events to provide a rich understanding of the beliefs, experiences, and values of each community. Data analysis includes both within-case and cross case analysis. Further, the results of the multi-case study will be used to guide participatory design workshops with rural schools and communities in the region that do not typically produce engineering majors. These workshops will foster dialogue that explores factors that support or hinder transfer of practices to low-producing schools and identifies policies and strategies that would enhance each community's ability to better support engineering as a potential career choice. The study uses the southwestern region of Virginia, in the Appalachian Mountains, as its primary focus, but research on career choice among rural students generally points to the potential transferability of the findings and methods. This project advances knowledge about engineering career choice and rural education by capturing the perspectives of community members who often play key roles in students' career and academic decisions, particularly in rural communities.