Research Initiation: The Influences of Engineering and Science Identities among Faculty in the Mentoring of Graduate Students

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

Each person has a complex identity shaped by a wide range of factors. Additionally, the roles individuals hold, like that of research engineers who also serve as research scientists and engineers, contribute to their identity in differing amounts for different individuals. While previous research has shown the significance of a mentor's identity in mentor-mentee relationships, no specific studies have focused on the contributions of engineering and research identities to these relationships among research engineers. This research project aims to explore different aspects of identity in Engineering Research Mentors (ERMs), who in this study refer to engineering faculty at research universities. The project aims to understand how these aspects of identity influence the mentoring approaches adopted by ERMs. The ultimate goal is to enhance mentoring practices in academic engineering research settings, addressing issues such as PhD students failing to complete their degrees. Fully integrated in this project is the research initiation objective to train the Principal Investigator (PI) in mixed-methods research and support their first funded project in engineering education research. This will not only enable the PI to succeed in future studies but also lay the foundation for those studies that have already been conceptualized. The research goal of this project will be to understand how engineering research mentors approach mentor-mentee relationships differently based on the degree to which they identify as engineers and/or research scientists. The overall research question asked in this proposal is: How do the strengths of Engineering Identity (EI) and Research Science Identity (RSI) operationalize in Engineering Research Mentors’ relationships with mentees? To answer this question, we will quantify EI and RSI in engineering research mentors through a survey with explicit questions and an implicit association test, followed by in-depth qualitative interviews, with the following specific aims: 1) Obtain measurements of EI and RSI in ERMs and explore contributory factors, 2) Determine to what extent an ERM’s explicit and implicit measures of identity agree, and 3) Understand the operationalization of these identities in the ERM’s mentoring relationships. Through these aims, the study will seek to answer the following four research questions: RQ1: What is the distribution of explicit EI and explicit RSI of ERMs? RQ2: What is the distribution of implicit EI–RSI identity bias of ERMs? RQ3: What is the agreement between explicit and implicit measurements of EI–RSI identity bias? RQ4: How do identity and identity bias operationalize in ERMs’ mentor-mentee relationships? This work is original in that: data obtained from these steps will be the first ever measurements of EI and RSI in the understudied group of ERMs; this work will obtain the first implicit measurements of EI and RSI in any group of engineers; and these measurements will both guide qualitative interviews and provide meaningful context to the findings. Deeper understanding of how an ERM’s own professional identities affect her/his mentoring will create opportunities for improved mentorship and refined mentorship-training programs. Interventions to improve mentoring through program design and mentor development will benefit student recruitment, retention, and success, all of which will support efforts to broaden participation in engineering. 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.