Our overarching research questions around broadening participation and recruitment are:
- What roles do different institutional actors play in broadening participation in engineering?
- More specifically, what roles do institutional actors play in recruiting undergraduate and graduate students to Texas Engineering?
Specific Research Questions | Center Initiative | |
What are research-based best practices for effective engineering outreach? How can students, staff, and faculty adopt these best practices? | → | Professional development: conducting outreach (in progress) |
What impact does providing BPE grant support have on the funding success rates of faculty writing technical engineering proposals? How are faculty thinking about the intersections of BPE and their technical engineering research? | → | Supporting Faculty in Integrating BPE in NSF Proposals (completed August 2023) |
What role do CSE staff play in broadening participation? How can this impact the future workforce of engineers? | → | Supporting staff participation in broadening participation in engineering activities (ongoing) |
Fleming, G. C., Fernandez, K. E., Julien, C., & Mastronardi, M. (2023, June). Evaluation of Summer Camp Recruitment Methods and Campers’ Perceptions of Engineering. In 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. What could the impact be of two different summer camp recruitment methods on broadening participation and reaching campers from historically excluded backgrounds in engineering? What is the role, if any, of the summer camp in changing campers’ perception of engineering as a profession? Fleming, G.C., Julien, C., Fernandez, K. (forthcoming in 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition) How did being a camp counselor enable engineering students to build their perceptions of community cultural wealth? How did being a camp counselor enable engineering students to build their perceptions of engineering identity? How do undergraduate student camp counselors use their community cultural wealth assets to grow their engineering identities? | → | Recruiting undergraduates through K-12 outreach (ongoing) |
What are effective methods of recruiting graduate students? | → | GEM GRAD Lab (ongoing) Grad student visit day (in progress) Mentoring program for graduate students applying to UT Austin Engineering (not yet started) |