Background: Engineering culture research to date has described the culture as rigid, chilly, and posing many barriers to entry. However, the COVID-19 pandemic provided an important opportunity to explore how engineering culture responds to a major disruption. Purpose: The purposes of this study are to understand how elements of engineering culture…

Background: Real-world engineering problems are ill-defined and complex, and solving them may arouse negative epistemic affect (feelings experienced within problem-solving). These feelings fall into sequenced patterns (affective pathways). Over time, these patterns can alter students' attitudes toward engineering. Meta-affect (affect or cognition…

Background: Black engineering graduate students represent a critical and understudied population in engineering education. Gaining an understanding of the lived experiences of Black engineering graduate students while they are simultaneously weathering two pandemics, COVID-19 and systemic racism, is of paramount importance. Purpose/Hypothesis:…

Background: Engineering-oriented bridge programs and camps are popular strategies for broadening participation. The students who often serve as counselors and mentors in these programs are integral to their success. Purpose: Predicated on the belief that mentoring contributes to positive outcomes for the mentors themselves, we sought to understand…

Background: COVID-19 has spurred a global crisis that has disrupted everyday lives and impacted the traditional methods, experiences, and abilities of higher education institutions' students, faculty, and staff, especially at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Purpose/Hypothesis: Given the pressing need demonstrated by the…

Background: Degree completion rates for doctoral engineering students remain stagnant at levels lower than necessary to meet national and global workforce needs. Increasing degree completion can improve opportunities for individuals and provide the human resources needed to address engineering challenges. Purpose/Hypothesis: In this work, we…

Background: Researchers have shown that students leave undergraduate engineering programs during the first 2 years. Justifiably, many studies have tried to tackle engineering student persistence and attrition, especially during the first year, and then developed interventions to address the challenges. Although those interventions have improved…

Background: While studies examining graduate engineering student attrition have grown more prevalent, there is an incomplete understanding of the plight faced by persisting students. As mental health and well-being crises emerge in graduate student populations, it is important to understand how students conceptualize their well-being in relation…

Background: A predictor of student success, sense of belonging (SB) is often inhibited for minoritized students in engineering environments and difficult to foster in online courses. A shift to remote learning formats necessitated by COVID-19, therefore, posed an additive threat to SB for engineering first-year students, especially those with…

Background: Mental health issues reported among college-aged individuals have increased. Prevalence of these issues has an established impact on students' personal, professional, and academic outcomes. Graduate students experience unique stressors that impact their mental health. In particular, engineering graduate students have lower help-seeking…

Background: In Spring 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic sent universities into emergency remote education. The pandemic has been disruptive but offers the opportunity to learn about ways to support students in other situations where abrupt changes to teaching and learning are necessary. Purpose/Hypothesis: We described the responses of engineering and…

Background: Families and community networks serve as sources of cultural capital and provide resources that aid the development of Black male engineers. Community cultural wealth (CCW) has been leveraged by engineering education scholars to understand and highlight student and community assets available in communities of color. Little is known…