ASEE PEER - Board 220: CAREER: ‘Support our Troops’: Re-storying Student Veteran and Service Member Deficit in Engineering Through Professional Formation and Community Advocacy: YEAR 3
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Board 220: CAREER: ‘Support our Troops’: Re-storying Student Veteran and Service Member Deficit in Engineering Through Professional Formation and Community Advocacy: YEAR 3

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Conference

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Portland, Oregon

Publication Date

June 23, 2024

Start Date

June 23, 2024

End Date

July 12, 2024

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Tagged Topics

Diversity and NSF Grantees Poster Session

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/46789

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Paper Authors

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Angela Minichiello Utah State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-4545-9355

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Angela Minichiello is a US Army veteran, registered professional mechanical engineer, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Utah State University. She is a 2021 NSF CAREER awardee and currently serves as Co-Director of Engineering Workforce Development for the NSF-sponsored ASPIRE Engineering Research Center. Her research examines issues of access, equity, and identity in the professional formation of engineers and a diverse, transdisciplinary engineering workforce.

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Hannah Wilkinson Utah State University

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Hannah Wilkinson is a graduate student in Engineering Education at Utah State University. She received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering in from the University of Utah and a M.S. in Engineering Education from Utah State University.

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Samuel Shaw Utah State University

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Samuel Shaw is an undergraduate student in Mechanical Engineering at Utah State University.

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Allison Miles Utah State University

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Allison Miles is an undergraduate student in Mechanical Engineering at Utah State University.

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Abstract

There is an urgent need to recruit, retain, train, and sustain a diverse engineering workforce able to meet the socio-technical and environmental challenges of 21st century society. Together, student veterans and service members (SVSM) are a unique yet understudied group that comprises substantial numbers of those historically underrepresented in engineering based on their race, ethnicity, gender, or ability. That, in combination with technical interests and skills, maturity and life experience, and leadership and teamwork training, makes SVSM ideal candidates for helping engineering education meet these demands. This NSF CAREER project aims to advance full participation of SVSM within higher engineering education and the engineering workforce. The project plan comprises a 1) Research Plan to develop deeper understandings about how SVSM participate, persist, and produce professional identities in engineering education, and an 2) Education Plan to place new understandings into practice through collaborative development, implementation, and broad dissemination of an evidence-based orientation, community building and mentorship workshop for SVSM in engineering, and a set of modularized awareness/support training materials to introduce engineering faculty, staff, and administrators, and the general engineering student populace to military student issues. The research plan builds from previous work using a longitudinal, narrative inquiry research approach and an innovative, two-strand theoretical framework. In doing so, it aims to both critically examine higher engineering education structures and interpretively explore SVSM professional identity development in engineering programs at 2- and 4- year public institutions in the western United States. The education plan draws from both grounded theory methods and design based research approaches. Concurrent with the research plan, the education plan works to connect local theory to practice by characterizing the current support structures available for SVSM in engineering and higher education, and implementing new supports based on SVSM identities and both required and preferred resources. This paper reports on project activities conducted and substantial outcomes during project YEAR 3. Specifically, the following activities and outcomes are described: 1) Research Plan: qualitative thematic and narrative findings centered on institutional structure and professional identity development and constructed from SVSM personal narrative journal entries and one-on-one narrative interviews, 2) Education Plan: progress to-date oncollaboratively developed and member-checked military student awareness training for engineering faculty, staff, administration, and students, and 3) Education Plan: preliminary findings from early activities to develop an engineering workshop to support SVSM and other post-traditional students navigate and find community within their engineering degree program.

Minichiello, A., & Wilkinson, H., & Shaw, S., & Miles, A. (2024, June), Board 220: CAREER: ‘Support our Troops’: Re-storying Student Veteran and Service Member Deficit in Engineering Through Professional Formation and Community Advocacy: YEAR 3 Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/46789

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