“We All Belong Here”: Building Science Identity Among First-year Engineering Students

Grant Recipients

Andrea Jonahs, English Language and Literature

Rania Al-Hammoud, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Description

This project offers a timely contribution to the “leaky pipeline” problem, a metaphor that captures the paucity of women and racialized people in STEM fields.  Current scholarship reveals a multifaceted picture of why these groups continue to be underrepresented in STEM, yet there remains scant research on what specifically instructors can do in the classroom to remedy the issue.  Addressing this gap, this cross-disciplinary project focuses on building “science identity” (Carlone & Johnson, 2007) through high-impact assessments in two concurrent first-year engineering courses.  Science identity helps us understand how resilience in STEM correlates with one’s sense of being a “science person” and belonging to their field, affective domains which are especially critical for underrepresented students (Carlone & Johnson, 2007; Trujillo & Tanner, 2014).  Our project invites first-year engineering students to see themselves as “engineering people,” affirming their belonging in their program, their campus, and as future engineers serving their communities.

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