Planning: Enhancing Engineering Education through a Project-Based Approach at a Community College

This project aims to serve the national interest by transforming introductory engineering courses at a Hispanic-serving two-year college to better support student success and interest in pursuing and completing a STEM degree. Students in the early stages of their education are known to benefit from meaningful experiences that allow the time and space for exploration and authentic project-based design activities. This project leverages this approach by providing early-career engineering students with significant and incremental project work that integrate technical skill-building experiences and activities that prepare students to explore intermediate-level applications of different branches of engineering. These experiences utilize faculty- and peer-curated activities to support students as they engage independently in creative project work. By developing quasi-independent, low-cost and accessible classroom-based materials for engineering students, this project contributes to advancing STEM education innovation and broadening participation in STEM. The goal of this planning project is to establish a foundation for developing, implementing and assessing engineering projects that build both confidence and interest in obtaining a STEM degree. Advanced two-year college engineering students will be paid to work with faculty to develop the materials and curriculum necessary to implement a project-based approach in existing introductory engineering courses. Project work will extend student technical skills and provide significant exploration of intermediate-level content from different fields of engineering. Student developers will journal their experience and efforts to gain insights about how their sense of professional identity, motivation and values develop as they engage with project design and faculty. These responses will shape the scope of follow-up proposals that seek to address questions about how educational experiences and technical skill development can impact the growth and development of autonomy and competence in early-career engineering students. The NSF IUSE: Innovation in Two-Year College STEM Education (ITYC) Program accelerate the impact of and advance knowledge about education at two-year colleges. 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.