Building Legacy in Engineering

University Of Colorado At Boulder, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

This project will serve the national interest by creating a model for effective educational transformation that develops practical and replicable processes across institutional boundaries leading to inclusive institutional transformation. These processes will teach the importance of cultural empathy and effectively prepare undergraduate engineering students to build knowledge and 21st -century skills (teamwork, problem-solving, critical thinking, and communication). Undergraduate students from the University of Colorado at Boulder and Tuskegee University will form a collaborative cohort to tackle each year's educational objective dealing with aspects of food insecurity and food scarcity. The project will focus on co-facilitation and co-learning across institutions through an outside of the classroom undergraduate project set on land co-located near one of the collaborating universities. The central hypothesis is that an inter-institution approach to educational transformation, one centered on democratizing the practice of innovation across institutional boundaries, will effectively prepare next-generation innovators and engineers to address systemic and institutional biases within STEM by challenging educational norms in higher education. A total of one hundred students will be focused on a common goal of a learning living lab that will be sustained for future generations (legacy building). This inter-institutional project is built on a theoretical framework, "Participatory Action Learning and Action Research (PALAR) for Community Engagement," which has four recurring stages: plan-act-observe-reflect. The PALAR-based model will involve an undergraduate focused community engagement project geared towards effective, collaborative, innovative, and self-developed engagement by faculty and students from different academic units and institutions. The research team will complete the objectives and activities leading to deliverables for building an educational model focused on innovation across institutions to achieve this goal. These deliverables will fill a gap for addressing barriers to educational transformation, including integrating learning around real situations across institutions. Key dissemination elements will include: a replicable educational model, an inter-institution informal curriculum, scholarly publications, and workshops. Two key objectives frame the work. The first is to understand what kind of research, knowledge, and action is needed to achieve practical community engagement and improvement for social justice and positive, transformative, and sustainable change by tackling historical and institutional forms of racial inequity. The second is to produce evidence and further understand organizational context factors that improve or constrain knowledge sharing across institutions. Data sources will include observations, stakeholder interviews, focus group discussions, surveys, and documents (reflective diary/journals). The research team will use this qualitative data to understand the collaborating institutions' enablers and obstacles to develop the joint undergraduate educational model for community benefit. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.