Engineering Education Commons^™

"I Don't Belong With All The Really Smart Kids Here": Student Characterizations Of Belonging In Engineering, Lisa J. Musselman, Jacqueline A. Rohde, Brianna S. Benedict, Allison Godwin

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

This research paper is a qualitative study of how students with diverse demographics, mindsets, and identities describe what it means to belong in engineering. Engineering students’ sense of belonging has a significant impact on students’ decisions to leave engineering. Talented students who feel that they do not belong in engineering are more likely to leave than their peers. Previous studies have focused on belonging for underrepresented students in engineering (e.g., women or minorities) or specific factors contributing to student belonging (e.g., classroom performance). However, few have explored how students describe what it means for them to belong in engineering to …