Engineering Education Commons^™

The Impact Of Volunteering At A Girls Outreach Activity On Community Formation, Donna C. Llewellyn, Janet Callahan, Amy J. Moll, Catherine Rose Bates

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper is focused on exploring the motivation for volunteering at an engineering outreach activity. The outreach activity itself involved a two day, overnight experience for 9th and 10th grade girls that started in 2005, and which has been held annually since that time. The outreach event takes place in Boise, Idaho, and at the time of its onset was the only outreach or camp activity in the state focused on girls or young women. Across ten years, 510 total girls have participated, with approximately 85% of them coming from the immediate metropolitan area. The program was developed with a …

Towards Alternative Pathways: Nontraditional Student Success In A Distance-Delivered, Undergraduate Engineering Transfer Program, Angela L. Minichiello

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Nontraditional students, including those who delay college entry, attend college part-time, work full-time, or financially support themselves or dependents, are highly underrepresented in engineering education. Recently, the United States began emphasizing a need to access this untapped human potential. U.S. educational policymakers now seek increased nontraditional student participation in engineering education through the creation of robust new pathways—within and between 2- and 4- year institutions—to undergraduate engineering degrees.

To be impactful, alternative pathways must be grounded in knowledge related to nontraditional student success in engineering. To access this knowledge, this study qualitatively examined the experiences of 14 nontraditional students who …

Conversations About Diversity: Institutional Barriers For Underrepresented Engineering Students, Leroy Long Iii, Joel Alejandro Mejia

Publications

The United States is becoming increasingly more diverse. Specifically, demographics are shifting because of growth among historically underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities, including African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. At the same time, a declining number of skilled workers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields threatens U.S. global competitiveness and national security. Low participation, representation, engagement, and inclusion continue to reduce the intellectual capacity of the U.S. STEM workforce. The aforementioned societal changes require diversity in STEM education and the nation at large. Past research offers additional support for the importance of diversity. For example, racial diversity can …

Teaching Robot Kinematics For Engineering Technology Students Using A Created Three-Dimensional Robot And Camera, Cheng Y. Lin, Yuzhong Shen

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Teaching robot kinematics is important to engineering technology students in the robot automation. The study can help students not only in the coordinate transformation principles from a joint to its following joint in a robot, but also in relating the coordinate systems between a robot and a machine vision system. While students can utilize math software to compute robot kinematic transformations, they have problems verifying their answers. In this paper, a three dimensional vertically articulated robot is created to help students visualize the location and orientation of the end effector. Students can check their robot kinematic answers based on the …

Measuring The Educational Benefits Of Diversity In Engineering Education: A Multi-Institutional Survey Analysis Of Women And Underrepresented Minorities, Terrell Lamont Strayhorn, Leroy L. Long Iii, Michael Steven Williams, Marjorie Luce Dorime-Williams, Derrick L. Tillman-Kelly

Publications

Changing demographics of the U.S. population drive growing emphases on diversity in engineering education. Still, questions persist about the educational benefits of race and gender diversity within the student population, despite decades of supportive research. The present study sought to estimate the educational benefits that accrue to undergraduate engineering students who interact with diverse peers and perspectives. Furthermore, differences across gender and race were explored. Multi-institutional survey data were analyzed for over 100 undergraduate engineering students using a 2007 administration of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). Findings show that encouraging contact among students from different economic, social, or …

Managing Diversity In Virtual Teams Through Perspective Taking, Nina C. Magpili, Pilar Pazos

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The emergence of information and communication technologies has provided firms with global access to individual talent often resulting in virtual work teams with diverse sets of skills and perspectives. Diversity in the virtual workplace has been linked to richer and more innovative work solutions. However, diversity in surface attributes (ethnicity, gender, etc.) and deep-level attributes (values, attitudes, etc.) may also lead to conflict and misunderstandings which affect the level of trust and team outcome. A virtual environment further complicates diversity interactions because of reduced levels of awareness, isolation, and uninhibited behaviors. Perspective taking has the potential to help teams deal …