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Board 391: Supporting and Understanding Undergraduates' Computing Pathways Through the Flit-GAP S-STEM Program

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Tagged Topic

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Page Count

6

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43105

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/43105

Download Count

135

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Paper Authors

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Stephen Secules Florida International University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-3149-2306

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Stephen is an Assistant Professor Engineering and Computing Education at Florida International University. He has a prior academic and professional background in engineering, having worked professionally as an acoustical engineer. He teaches undergraduate students foundational courses on interdisciplinary engineering and graduate students about engineering and computing education. His research interests focus on equity and culture in undergraduate engineering and beyond.

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Nivedita Kumar Florida International University

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Nivedita is pursuing her Ph.D. in Engineering & Computing Education at Florida International University. She has a computer science and engineering background as well as K-12 teaching. She thinks about creating an inclusive learning environment using critical and feminist frameworks in undergraduate engineering and computing classrooms.

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Mark A Weiss Florida International University

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Mark Allen Weiss is an Eminent Scholar Chaired Professor, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in the College of Engineering and Computing, and Associate Director in the School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami Florida.

He joined FIU after receiving his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Princeton University in 1987. His interests include data structures, algorithms, and education, and he is most well-known for his Data Structures textbooks, which have been used at hundreds of universities worldwide. From 1997-2004 he served as a member of the Advanced Placement Computer Science Development Committee, chairing the committee from 2000-2004. Dr. Weiss is an ACM Distinguished Educator, AAAS Fellow, and the recipient of the 2015 SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education and 2017 IEEE Taylor Booth Education Award.

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Michael Georgiopoulos University of Central Florida

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Michael Georgiopoulos received the Diploma in EE from the National
Technical University in Athens, his MS degree and Ph.D. degree in EE
from the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, in 1981, 1983 and
1986, respectively. He is currently a Professor in the Department of EECS
at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL. From September 2011 to June 2012 he served as the Interim Assistant Vice President of Research at the Office of Research and Commercialization. Since July 2012 he is serving as the Interim Dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

His research interests lie in the areas of Machine Learning and applications with
special emphasis on neural network and neuro-evolutionary algorithms,
and their applications. He has published more than 60 journal papers
and more than 170 conference papers in a variety of conference and
journal venues. He has been an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks from 2002 to 2006, and an Associate Editor of the Neural Networks journal from 2006 to 2012. He has served as the Technical Co-Chair of the IJCNN 2011.

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Jacqueline Faith Sullivan University of Central Florida

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Since 2012, Jackie Sullivan (MSEnvE), has been an Adjunct Instructor at UCF (Orlando) in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (CECS) and has instructed the first year engineering students since 2015. Ms. Sullivan worked in consulting engineerin

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Maimuna Begum Kali Florida International University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-1770-7363

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Maimuna Begum Kali is a Ph.D. candidate in the Engineering and Computing Education program at the School of Universal Computing, Construction, and Engineering Education (SUCCEED) at Florida International University (FIU). She earned her B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). Kali's research interests center on exploring the experiences of marginalized engineering students, with a particular focus on their hidden identity, mental health, and wellbeing. Her work aims to enhance inclusivity and diversity in engineering education, contributing to the larger body of research in the field.

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Bailey Bond-Trittipo Florida International University

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Bailey Bond-Trittipo is an engineering and computing education Ph.D. student in the School of Universal Computing, Construction, and Engineering Education (SUCCEED) at Florida International University. Her work centers on understanding how systems of oppression shape the culture of undergraduate engineering education and developing strategies to support engineering students in resisting oppression within institutions of higher education and society more broadly.

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Abstract

Supporting and Understanding Undergraduates' Computing Pathways Through the [ProgramName] S-STEM Program

This poster describes the findings of an NSF S-STEM scholarship program called ProgramName. [ProgramName] is a collaborative program across three partner institutions: [PartnerUniversities]. The project is recruiting a target number of 150 students (total) over a 5-year period (50 per partner institution). Our recruitment criteria are based on: (1) Junior-level students (transfer or non-transfer) with 60-89 credits; (2) major in Computer Science (CS), Information Technology (IT), Cybersecurity (Cyber), or Computer Engineering (CpE); and (3) minimum 3.0 Grade Point Average. Students are supported with S-STEM scholarship funding through to their graduation. Upon graduation, these students continue receiving funding through one year of graduate school should they enroll at [PartnerUniversities] to pursue a computer-related master’s degree. Beyond award funding, the primary support service for this project includes offering three pathways for students to pursue - internship, research, and/or entrepreneurship – and conducting an annual symposium for students to share their pathway experiences with their peers, industry partners, and faculty. In addition to the pathway experiences and annual symposium, this project also provides the following student support services and interventions: professional workshops (e.g., LinkedIn presence, resume and interview preparations), industry tours (in-person & virtual), mentoring (through pathway experiences), career air support, advanced degree information (e.g., graduate school workshops and funding opportunities), proactive advising (toward degree completion), shared online technical electives (between the 3 institutions), and cohort community (social activities, discord communications)

The knowledge generation component of the project includes interviews and surveys with ProgramName participants and observations of ProgramName programming. Findings have included the following: (1) The career paths we asked our student participants to consider are tradeoffs between forms of capital. For example, the risk of losing economic capital loomed large in considerations, and investment in the cultural capital of a graduate degree was not seen as an attractive tradeoff. (2) We found that students may lack certain relevant understandings of a particular pathway or have no foundational knowledge for deciding that a particular pathway is or is not for them. (3) For every 10 participants out of 36 participants in the survey, 6 of them chose industry/professional pathway, 3 of them were still undecided on their pathways, 1 of them chose graduate pathway, and none of them chose entrepreneurship. (4) Opportunities to advance in their career, job security and salary were the top factors that the participants would consider important while looking for a job in the future.

Evaluation of ProgramName by Evaluator considered the following questions: (1) to what extent is [ProgramName] successful in recruiting its targeted students?; (2) to what extent is [ProgramName] successful in retaining and graduating its students?; and (3) to what extent is [ProgramName]’s research activities being carried out and results disseminated as proposed? [ProgramName] recruited 41 S-STEM eligible students across PartnerUniversities during Year 1 of the grant. This represents 82 percent of the project’s annual recruitment goal. Recruitment challenges were primarily due to State policy changes that impacted students’ financial eligibility for the [ProgramName] scholarship. The three partners have spent significant time discussing recruitment strategies for Cohort 2. We surveyed students about program implementation, attendance, and students’ satisfaction and perceptions about the value of opportunities such as the orientation and annual showcase. [ProgramName] offered several hybrid, cross institutional events including the graduate school showcase, “Welcome Back” social, alumni panel, LinkedIn event, and industry panel event. These five virtual events were well attended and most appreciated among the 2021-2022 academic year offerings. 100 percent of students reported being very satisfied with their experiences at the hybrid events.

Secules, S., & Kumar, N., & Weiss, M. A., & Georgiopoulos, M., & Sullivan, J. F., & Kali, M. B., & Bond-Trittipo, B. (2023, June), Board 391: Supporting and Understanding Undergraduates' Computing Pathways Through the Flit-GAP S-STEM Program Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43105

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2023 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015