Track 2: Examining the role of fellowships funding on engineering students and their professional development.

Examining the role of fellowships funding on engineering students and their professional development seeks to redefine graduate fellowships as transformative tools that promote all American engineering students’ success. By investigating how fellowships function beyond funding, we aim to highlight their potential as way to pursuing graduate education, mechanisms of financial support, and tools for fostering degree completion and workforce development. This approach will enhance their ability to navigate academic and professional challenges. Our work will guide engineering programs and faculty by equipping them with insights into fellowship design and strategies to provide support. This comprehensive approach will improve retention, accelerate time-to-degree completion, and better prepare students for fulfilling engineering careers. In the long term, the outcomes of this research will transform fellowship infrastructure at federal agencies, private organizations, and universities, aligning with national efforts on the engineering field and workforce. Our findings will influence strategies and policies at the national level, promoting organizational and conceptual changes in fellowship initiatives to recruit, support, and retain more americans graduate students. The proposed project will strengthen Engineering and Innovation in the US by advancing understanding of how fellowship variables impact engineering graduate students, addressing the issues and unintended drawbacks often overlooked in fellowship programs. While fellowships are widely seen as funding mechanisms, this research will uncover their implications, including their effects on student recruitment, academic experiences, graduation, and early career outcomes. The study will examine how fellowships shape engineering students’ professional development. Through a national-level assessment, the research will provide insights for institutions, programs, and faculty to design fellowships that better support all American students. The anticipated outcomes include conceptual models of fellowships as ways to expanding all American students participation, improving retention, and advancing professional identity. Students will benefit from an enhanced understanding of fellowships and their career implications, while institutions will gain tools to create fellowships that promote academic and professional success. Additionally, the project will produce a transferable set of best practices for funding agencies, academic programs, and faculty to ensure adequate support for fellowship holders, enabling their successful transition to the workforce. These findings will strengthen fellowship programs and advance the engineering field. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.