This engineering education research initiation grant will help universities understand the effectiveness of outreach programs on engineering and faculty. Since outreach programs are common at many universities, there potential to utilize these programs for informal education of current engineering students. This project will research how to use these programs for both outreach and to support learning.
The broader significance and importance of this project will be to inform other university outreach programs how to be more efficient. The PI's plan to actively disseminate their findings to a broad community, thus potentially impacting recruitment and retention of a large number of students currently under-represented in engineering degree programs. This project overlaps with NSF's strategic goals of transforming the frontiers through preparation of an engineering workforce with new capabilities and expertise. Additionally NSF's goal of innovating for society is enabled by creating results and research that are useful for society by informing educational policy and practices.
Professor Riskin and her colleagues conducted an ethnographic study to evaluate the success rates of students who are Pell Grant-eligible in the UW College of Engineering. Interviews were conducted with nineteen students who have Pell Grants to determine what factors lead to success of low-income students in engineering. These students identify both individual and structural challenges to their success, as well as unique sources of inspiration and persistence, born from an underprivileged class standpoint, that engineering education currently fails to nurture or reward. Professor Riskin's team included an anthropologist/ethnographer, an evaluation expert, and someone with great expertise in Engineering Education. RIGEE Intellectual Merit The goal of this research is to determine what attributes allow Pell Grant-eligible students to succeed in engineering. Hopefully these attributes can be cultivated in other low-income students (and in the student body at large). RIGEE Broader Impacts Lessons learned from this research can help universities successfully retain low-income students in Engineering. It is important to continue to diversify the Engineering profession by including these students in the workforce because they bring a diverse perspective. Publication Coleen Carrigan, Jarman Hauser, Eve Riskin, Priti Mody-Pan, Jim Borgford-Parnell, Scott Winter, Dawn Wiggin, Scott Pinkham, and Sonya Cunningham, "Learning from Pell-Eligible Engineering Students’ Class Standpoint." In preparation for submission to the Journal of Engineering Education.
