Collaborative Research: From Cornerstone to Capstone and Beyond: Transforming Engineering Teaming to Support a Diverse and Empowered Engineering Community

This Level 3 Engaged Student Learning project aims to serve the national interest by creating environments in engineering design courses, which are pivotal for persistence in engineering. By implementing evidence-based teaching practices in engineering design courses from first year (cornerstone) to final senior design projects (capstone), the project aims to improve retention of engineers. While more individuals from these communities are enrolling in engineering programs, students often face unwelcoming academic environments. As such, this project seeks to address a critical need in the engineering community: developing and validating scalable teaming models that foster success in undergraduate engineering communities for all students. In order to achieve the project goals, three aims are proposed: 1) identify the impact of INTEGRAL training materials on students’ persistence in engineering and their ability to develop collaborative teams across varying university settings; 2) foster instructors’ abilities to facilitate teaming through a validated train-the-trainer program, and; 3) increase sustainability by identifying what factors impede or enhance effective implementation in different university settings. The methods used in this project include both short-term and long-term components in collaboration with external evaluations. The mixed-methods approach is intended to lead to richly contextualized and generalizable data sets, transforming understanding of learning environments in STEM. The implementation and evaluation of the project's teaming educational practices seeks to impact 29,000 students and 140 faculty members across 12 campuses from two public universities. The systems focus (student, faculty, campus, and university lenses) are likely to lead to scientific advancements in how educators prepare, train, and implement teaming practices across different educational levels and institutions. The NSF IUSE:EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. 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.