Please click on each link to a complete list of conference papers and publications for our ongoing research projects.
Current Projects
Our research team developed a series of reflective prompts based on the Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) framework (Yosso, 2005). In this study, undergraduate students were asked to complete reflections based on these prompts at the beginning of, during, and end of a four-week engineering study abroad program. Preliminary analysis shows that by completing these reflections, students realized skills they didn’t know they had, increased their confidence in navigating the world, and came to understand that their lived experiences are assets rather than deficits. The results of this study can help engineering faculty and staff design curricula and programs that empower students.
Our research group explores multiple aspects of University makerspaces. Our research findings have identified why students first use a makerspace and why they do or do not return. We have also explored faculty pedagogical shifts to incorporate projects that use makerspaces into traditional engineering curricula. Our team is also collaborating with other colleges and programs across the university including the Colleges of Education, Natural Sciences and Fine Arts. All of our research uses an inclusive, asset-based lens to understand the experiences of all engineering students and faculty as they use and incorporate university makerspaces into engineering education. The Makerspace research group at the Center for Engineering Education works closely with Texas Inventionworks throughout all phases of our research.
The climate for LGBTQ+ students in STEM has been widely characterized by a chilly climate that is implicitly and explicitly exclusive of queer-identifying students, particularly those at the intersection of other marginalized identities. Despite a decade of literature documenting the negative experiences of queer STEM students, not much has been done to change this climate on a systematic level nor to identify the assets queer-identifying students bring to their engineering work. Our group is taking a collaborative approach to this topic, empowering LGBTQ+ identifying STEM students to engage with their queer identity and drive the changes they wish to see in STEM. Our current research efforts are in understanding how different interpersonal and environmental factors construct systems of oppression, and how these factors can be targeted for change.
In addition to this research, we have developed a class, ME 379M focused on understanding LGBTQ+ experiences in engineering, in which students are able to read queer literature and discuss the ways their own identities have impacted their experiences in engineering. We have also conducted a queer specific analysis of the data from the 2020 Cockrell School of Engineering Climate Survey, and hosted talks with engineering faculty centered around queer STEM student issues.
Our group has a history of employing systematic review and related literature review approaches that integrate critical perspectives. In the past, we have highlighted applications of community cultural wealth in STEM settings, effective interventions to support Latinx transfer students and exemplar articles applying critical theories in STEM higher education.
A recent project started with a scoping review of the literature on undergraduates with disabilities in STEM courses and majors. Scoping reviews differ from more focused syntheses because they tend to be broader and do not engage in quality appraisal (Munn et al., 2018). A scoping review may serve many different purposes; in this case, our goal was to identify research questions and plan for deeper systematic reviews from this large literature set. Our findings will inform the design of strategies for undergraduates with disabilities to use when talking to their STEM instructors, workshops for STEM faculty, and discussion guides for disability service professionals. Systematic reviews branching off of this project answer questions about disability research in natural science fieldwork education, the differences for students with disabilities in STEM vs non-STEM settings, and disciplinary differences in the treatment of disability.
Ensuring inclusivity and accessibility for all students is of paramount importance. Disabled students, especially those pursuing STEM degrees, often encounter distinct challenges in accessing resources and meaningful engagement at their higher education institutions. To address these challenges, our research group is dedicated to understanding the experiences of disabled students in higher education, particularly in the context of science students in laboratory settings, science researchers, and engineering students.
Our research aims to:
- Investigate how disabled students interact with instructors, disability offices, and peers, and how their needs are met within these interactions. We explore the impact of marginalized identities on access to essential resources and accommodations in STEM fields.
- Examine the efficacy of accommodations and support provided to disabled engineering students, focusing on laboratory spaces. By identifying what is effective and what requires improvement, we seek to enhance accessibility in STEM learning environments.
Our research group aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of the experiences and challenges faced by disabled students in STEM higher education. So far we have explored these questions through qualitative studies and workshop development for instructors. Ultimately, we seek to provide evidence-based recommendations to create a more inclusive and accessible educational environment for disabled students in STEM disciplines, enabling them to thrive and reach their full potential. This work has been funded by University of Texas at Austin’s Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost’s Actions that Promote Community Transformation (ACT) SEED grant and the UT Austin Center Teaching and Learning Grant.
Multiple group members have completed their dissertation research on various aspects of career planning and decision making as undergraduate and graduate engineers enter the non-academic workforce. This work has been funded by National Science Foundation grants to study the effect of graduate student funding types on learning experiences and career outcomes, and on career preparation for graduate students’ nonacademic careers.
We have also collaborated with offices across our campus to help evaluate and publish articles about faculty search committee training, graduate mentoring programs, future faculty postdoc initiatives, and seed grant programs.
Previous Projects
The NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Nanomanufacturing Systems for Mobile Computing and Mobile Energy Technologies (NASCENT) at UT Austin develops nanomanufacturing systems to take nano-science discoveries from the lab to the marketplace. In addition, the NASCENT Center organizes an array of educational activities to create a specialized educational program for its students and implement innovative programs with elementary, middle and high school partners. Our group works closely with NASCENT to implement a robust and comprehensive evaluation plan of all the educational activities with the goals of providing ongoing feedback to allow real time adjustments to the programs, and publishing high-quality papers to add to the literature in this field.
This research project explores the use of project-based service-learning to teach engineering to pre-college youth. In this design experiment, one class of sixth-graders engaged in a full cycle of the Engineering Design Process to identify a need within their community, conceive of, and design a solution for this need. More specifically, the sixth-graders worked in teams of four to design assistive devices for the elderly within their community who suffer from arthritis. This research is specifically interested in exploring the intersection of social purposefulness, project-based service-learning, and engineering (career) interest. It, therefore, seeks to explore the following research questions: 1. How, if at all, does participation in a PBSL engineering design unit contribute to middle school students’ sense of purpose-in-life, their perceptions of, and their interests or aspirations in engineering? 2. How, if at all, did educators (teachers and mentors) perceive the design and enactment of a PBSL engineering design unit and its potential impact in promoting youth purpose and interest in engineering? 3. What are some initial guiding themes for the design and enactment of K-12 PBSL engineering design units?
Adopting evidence-based teaching practices, such as active learning, has proven to increase student learning, engagement, and interest in STEM and subsequently, the number and diversity of STEM graduates. Despite these compelling findings, the translation of educational research to classrooms has been slow, in part due to instructors’ concerns about student resistance. Here, we define student resistance as any negative behavioral or attitudinal response to a teaching practice that could discourage instructors from using active learning.
This project focuses on eliminating this barrier for STEM instructors by studying several teaching strategies that have been proven to be effective at reducing resistance; results of this research will be disseminated through professional development workshops for STEM instructors. Additionally, this project explores the range of student responses to active learning in STEM classrooms, using classroom observations and student surveys. This research is led by a multi-institutional team and addresses our research questions through collaborations with a wide range of STEM classrooms, including those at 2-year colleges and Minority Serving Institutions.
As part of a NSF-funded grant, this project explores conceptualizations of engineering identity, how it is formed and eroded, and how it can be measured reliably. The focus of this project specifically seeks to understand engineering identity in undergraduates will particular attention to the representation of women in engineering by investigating gendered affinities towards engineering practice, and attitudes as related to career expectations.
Graduate education is becoming an increasingly common pathway for career advancement and additional training in STEM fields. Working collaboratively with researchers at Virginia Tech, our NSF-funded project seeks to understand how mechanisms of graduate funding influence doctoral students’ experiences within graduate school and subsequent outcomes, such as employment. Common mechanisms of graduate funding include research assistantships, teaching assistantships, and fellowships. Our work has focused on a variety of aspects related to funding, including early career outcomes and interests, recruitment of graduate students, and skill development. We use several different data sources on this project, such as interviews of program administrators and graduate students, the Survey of Earned Doctorates and Survey of Doctorate Recipients, and survey(s) designed by our research team.
The “Capacity Building for Competitive S- STEM Proposals in Two-Year Colleges” program consists of a series of workshops aiming to improve the competitiveness of proposals submitted by two-year colleges (2YCs) to the NSF Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (NSF S-STEM) program. Our group works closely with the workshops’ organizers to implement a comprehensive evaluation plan with the goals of providing internal feedback aiming towards improvements of the workshops’ content and delivery and publishing high-quality papers to add to the literature.