Welcoming Student Veterans to Engineering: An Interactive Session for Faculty and Administrators
- Conference
- Location
-
Virtual - 1pm to 5pm Eastern Time Each Day
- Publication Date
-
January 24, 2021
- Start Date
-
January 24, 2021
- End Date
-
January 28, 2021
- Conference Session
- Tagged Topics
-
Diversity and CoNECD Paper Submissions
- Page Count
-
39
- DOI
-
10.18260/1-2--36138
- Permanent URL
-
https://strategy.asee.org/36138
- Download Count
-
232
Paper Authors
Catherine E. Brawner Research Triangle Educational Consultants
Catherine E. Brawner is President of Research Triangle Educational Consultants. She received her Ph.D.in Educational Research and Policy Analysis from NC State University in 1996. She also has an MBA from Indiana University (Bloomington) and a bachelor’s degree from Duke University. She specializes in
evaluation and research in engineering education, computer science education, and technology education. Dr. Brawner is a founding member and former treasurer of Research Triangle Park Evaluators, an American Evaluation Association affiliate organization and is a member of the American Educational Research Association and American Evaluation Association, in addition to ASEE. Dr. Brawner is also an Extension Services Consultant for the National Center for Women in Information Technology (NCWIT) and, in that role, advises computer science and engineering departments on diversifying their undergraduate student population. She remains an active researcher, including studying academic policies, gender and ethnicity issues, transfers, and matriculation models with MIDFIELD as well as student veterans in engineering. Her evaluation work includes evaluating teamwork models, broadening participation initiatives, and S-STEM and LSAMP programs.
Catherine Mobley Clemson University
Catherine Mobley, Ph.D., is a Professor of Sociology at Clemson University. She has over 30 years experience in project and program evaluation and has worked for a variety of consulting firms, non-profit agencies, and government organizations, including the Rand Corporation, the American Association of Retired Persons, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Since 2004, she been a member of the NSF-funded MIDFIELD research project on engineering education; she has served as a Co-PI on three research projects, including one on transfer students and another on student veterans in engineering.
Susan M. Lord University of San Diego
Susan M. Lord received a B.S. from Cornell University in Materials Science and Electrical Engineering (EE) and the M.S. and Ph.D. in EE from Stanford University. She is currently Professor and Chair of Integrated Engineering at the University of San Diego. Her research focuses on the study and promotion of diversity in engineering including student pathways and inclusive teaching. She is Co-Director of the National Effective Teaching Institute (NETI). Her research has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Lord is among the first to study Latinos in engineering and coauthored The Borderlands of Education: Latinas in Engineering. Dr. Lord is a Fellow of the IEEE and ASEE and is active in the engineering education community including serving as General Co-Chair of the Frontiers in Education Conference, President of the IEEE Education Society, and Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Education (ToE) and the Journal of Engineering Education (JEE). She and her coauthors received the 2011 Wickenden Award for the best paper in JEE and the 2011 and 2015 Best Paper Awards for the IEEE ToE. In Spring 2012, Dr. Lord spent a sabbatical at Southeast University in Nanjing, China teaching and doing research. She is on the USD team implementing “Developing Changemaking Engineers”, an NSF-sponsored Revolutionizing Engineering Education (RED) project. Dr. Lord is the 2018 recipient of the IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award.
Joyce B. Main
Purdue University-Main Campus, West Lafayette (College of Engineering)
orcid.org/0000-0002-3984-533X
Joyce B. Main is Associate Professor of Engineering Education at Purdue University. She received an Ed.M. in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a Ph.D. degree in Learning, Teaching, and Social Policy from Cornell University. Dr. Main examines student academic pathways and transitions to the workforce in science and engineering. She was a recipient of the 2014 American Society for Engineering Education Educational Research and Methods Division Apprentice Faculty Award, the 2015 Frontiers in Education Faculty Fellow Award, and the 2019 Betty Vetter Award for Research from WEPAN. In 2017, Dr. Main received a National Science Foundation CAREER award to examine the longitudinal career pathways of engineering PhDs.
Abstract
Undergraduate education is enrolling an increasing number of veterans and approximately 14% of veterans major in STEM. Veterans offer the potential to diversify engineering education because they are typically older and more racially diverse than their traditional first time in college counterparts. This interactive session for faculty and administrators shares practical tips for welcoming student veterans to engineering. We begin with a brief overview of the national context for veterans in higher education generally and engineering specifically. We then introduce our five-year study of student veterans in engineering (SVEs) which sought to answer these four research questions: 1) Why do veterans pursue a Bachelor’s degree in engineering? 2) How do military experiences shape student veterans’ educational experiences? 3) What are the experiences of student veterans in engineering education? 4) How do institutions support veterans in engineering education? This session focuses on the fourth question. In our qualitative study, we collected interview and focus group data from key informants (e.g., veterans’ services officials, admissions, advisors, counselors, etc.) and student veterans in engineering (SVEs) themselves on four campuses. We use an asset-based approact to frame our research while acknowledging challenges that many veterans face. Key assets brought by veterans include discipline, persistence, maturity, leadership, teamwork, and technical training. Key challenges include not fitting in, impatience with younger students, and service-related injuries. Faculty can accommodate veterans through seating preferences, accommodating multiple learning styles, and acknowledging their service. We conclude with promising practices encountered at our four study institutions. Session participants will have the opportunity to share their experiences on their campuses with student veterans and promising practices that they have implemented. The presenters will provide specific tips and feedback that can be immediately implemented by attendees when they return to their home campus.
Brawner, C. E., & Mobley, C., & Lord, S. M., & Main, J. B. (2021, January), Welcoming Student Veterans to Engineering: An Interactive Session for Faculty and Administrators Paper presented at 2021 CoNECD, Virtual - 1pm to 5pm Eastern Time Each Day . 10.18260/1-2--36138
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: © 2021 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