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Full-Text Articles in Education
Bend And Not Break: Examining Hispanic Engineering Student's Academic Challenges During Covid-19, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia
Bend And Not Break: Examining Hispanic Engineering Student's Academic Challenges During Covid-19, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia
Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
Student success in higher education remains an area of interest, particularly for underrepresented minorities. Studies reveal that while Latino college enrollment has increased, retention rates continue to be an ongoing struggle. Several factors that attribute to such low rates include academic self-concept, family support, cognitive mapping, managing resources, background characteristics, and separation and maintenance of family ties. In the wake of COVID-19, most institutions responded by terminating in-person instruction, mandating to seek off-campus housing, and shifting to a fully remote context. As such, students were unable to utilize campus resources and engage in established educational campus practices. In this research …
Keeping Calm And Staying Balanced: Exploring The Academic Pressures Faced By Engineering Students To Attain High Grades And Their Impact On Mental Health, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia
Keeping Calm And Staying Balanced: Exploring The Academic Pressures Faced By Engineering Students To Attain High Grades And Their Impact On Mental Health, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia
Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
Studies reveal that grades have a short-term impact on students’ self-efficacy, motivation, and decision making. Earning high grades has become a focal point for engineering students to secure three types of opportunities: internships, post-graduation employment, and graduate school acceptance. Nonetheless, the desire to attain a competitive grade-point-average may lead to negative psychosocial effects such as increased mental exertion, physical exhaustion, anxiety, and overall lack of work-life balance. In this paper, the authors extend their prior study on the impact of grades in engineering education. The first study was conducted in the spring of 2019 at a tier one, small private …
Leveling The Playing Field: Enacting Equitable Pedagogy To Teach Rigid Body Dynamics, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia
Leveling The Playing Field: Enacting Equitable Pedagogy To Teach Rigid Body Dynamics, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia
Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
Research examining the quality of engineering programs across different instructions of learning has revealed that no two programs are alike. Each program has unique and distinctive features that influence the quality and rigor of education that students receive. Institutional culture, leadership, faculty preparedness, funding and many other factors influence program quality. Additionally, researchers have also noted that many institutional gaps and equity related issues are persistent and troublesome facets that further exacerbate the academic gaps in STEM education. It is within this context, that students attending top tier universities will likely have remarkedly vast academic experiences in terms of level …
Navigating The Virtual Landscape: Implementing A Pedagogical Framework In A Virtual Summer Engineering Course To Enhance Students' Academic Development, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia
Navigating The Virtual Landscape: Implementing A Pedagogical Framework In A Virtual Summer Engineering Course To Enhance Students' Academic Development, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia
Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
In this evidence-based practice paper, the recently established CIRE educational model was incorporated, and modified, to establish an alternative pedagogical framework for a virtual, fast-paced summer engineering course in a private university in Texas. Transitioning to fully online courses in the wake of COVID-19 required a rapid modification of traditional pedagogical methods to overcome challenges such as the lack of academic resources and established campus practices, while simultaneously ensuring the academic and social development of students. In this regard, a pedagogical framework known as the CIRE model – which is the acronym for Communication, Initiation, Reduction, and Extension – was …
Scaffolding Student Success: Developing A Culturally Responsive Approach To Support Underrepresented Minorities In Engineering Undergraduate Research, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia
Scaffolding Student Success: Developing A Culturally Responsive Approach To Support Underrepresented Minorities In Engineering Undergraduate Research, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia
Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
In this research study, a scaffolding technique is implemented in undergraduate research to cultivate and enhance engineering related aptitudes and stimulate additional experience that will allow underrepresented minority students to fully engage in communication and leadership roles post-graduation. Developing and supporting the growth of underrepresented minorities as leaders who make significant innovative contributions to the global and interconnected scientific society requires awareness of contextual issues that shape their educational experiences and a commitment to enact on a framework that blends technical, communication, and leadership skills in undergraduate engineering education. In the context of this four year study, a total of …
Privileging Learning Over Numbers: Developing An Alternative Student Assessment In Engineering, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia
Privileging Learning Over Numbers: Developing An Alternative Student Assessment In Engineering, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia
Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
In this research study, a new model to assess student performance and academic learning in engineering disciplines is proposed with the intention of shifting a grade driven mentality into a learning-oriented mindset. The rational for this model of assessment is to disrupt normalized assessment practices in higher education, reframe student thinking regarding learning and acquisition of knowledge, and encourage students to engage in coursework in meaningful ways. Unfortunately, grades in higher education have become a primary focal point for many students as a means to secure internship opportunities, undergraduate research, post-graduation employment, and graduate school acceptance into desired institutions. The …
Structuring Student Success: Incorporating A Genre-Based Pedagogical Method To Improve A Strength Of Materials Laboratory Manual, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia
Structuring Student Success: Incorporating A Genre-Based Pedagogical Method To Improve A Strength Of Materials Laboratory Manual, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia
Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
In this research study the authors incorporated a pedagogical technique to improve a strength of materials lab manual. The conceptualization and subsequent development of a student friendly lab manual resource emerged from students’ difficulty in understanding the following areas: introduction to experiment, procedures, calculations, and relevancy to class content. Based on a survey conducted before lab manual improvements and modifications, mechanical engineering students expressed high dissatisfaction with the written structure of the manual and felt they spent too much time understanding lab procedures, deciphering what equations to utilize to complete their analyzes, and completing the report. As such, the authors …
Finding Balance: Examining The Impact Of Grades On Engineering Students' Well-Being, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia
Finding Balance: Examining The Impact Of Grades On Engineering Students' Well-Being, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia
Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
The authors conducted a preliminary research study to understand the emotional and academic impact grades have on engineering undergraduate students. Grades in higher education have become a priority for students to secure internship opportunities, post-graduation employment, and graduate school acceptance. However, students’ desire to attain high grades in engineering disciplines may lead to negative effects such as additional anxiety and increased mental exertion, physical exhaustion, and overall lack of work-life balance. A survey was conducted with a cohort of 45 students to understand their perspective on grades before, during, and at the end of the semester, and their responses to …
Implementation Of Visual Supplements To Strengthen Pedagogical Practices And Enhance The Physical Understanding Of Fundamental Concepts In Engineering Mechanics, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia, Samuel Molina
Implementation Of Visual Supplements To Strengthen Pedagogical Practices And Enhance The Physical Understanding Of Fundamental Concepts In Engineering Mechanics, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia, Samuel Molina
Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
Mechanical Engineering is a discipline highly dependent on designing and implementing mechanical, thermal, or energy systems for the improvement of the human environment. Thus being a proficient Engineer involves having a strong mathematical background and a thorough physical understanding on how systems operate in order to apply analytical or numerical schemes during a design process. However, most of the students’ academic development is centered on deriving tedious equations and solving textbook problems, which are difficult to visualize and physically understand, and cloud their intuitive nature to comprehend a problem on its entirety. These conventional approaches and methods of disseminating content …
Developing And Testing An Electronic Homework System To Improve Student Engagement And Learning In Engineering Thermodynamics, Stephen Crown, Constantine Tarawneh, Jazmin Ley
Developing And Testing An Electronic Homework System To Improve Student Engagement And Learning In Engineering Thermodynamics, Stephen Crown, Constantine Tarawneh, Jazmin Ley
Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
An electronic homework delivery system was developed for an advanced undergraduate engineering thermodynamics course due to limitations in available electronic homework systems. A commercially available system was effectively used in the introductory course for simple problems. The complexity of problems in the advanced course made adoption of the same system problematic as students needed feedback in the problem solving process. A system was devised that delivers individual problems to each student, provides feedback throughout the process, and records results for assessment. The system has helped students become more active in homework assignments in both completing assignments and in doing original …
Development And Implementation Of An Introduction To Stem Course For Dual-Enrollment Programs, Horacio Vasquez, Arturo Fuentes, Javier Macossay-Torres, Martin W. Knecht, Robert Freeman
Development And Implementation Of An Introduction To Stem Course For Dual-Enrollment Programs, Horacio Vasquez, Arturo Fuentes, Javier Macossay-Torres, Martin W. Knecht, Robert Freeman
Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
A new Introduction to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) course was developed and taught for the first time during the summer in 2009 to dual enrollment college students at South Texas College (STC). The new Introduction to STEM course was developed in collaboration between STEM Faculty members at the University of Texas-Pan American (UTPA) and STC, with the objective of creating, supporting and strengthening STEM pathways for students in the Dual-Enrollment Engineering Academy (DEEA) and other dual-enrollment or similar programs. The course was offered to two groups of students, at two different campuses in the DEEA program at STC. …