| Affiliations: | STEM Research Leadership |
| Project Leader: | Mary Lockhart mlockhart@tamu.edu Teaching, Learning & Culture |
| Faculty Mentor: | Karen Rambo-Hernandez, Ph.D. |
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Meeting Times:
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TBD |
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Team Size:
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3
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| Open Spots: | 0 |
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Special Opportunities:
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Selected students will have the opportunity to participate in at least each of the following endeavors with other special opportunities possible: publicly present research findings, learn how to navigate and investigate data sets containing quantitative data, learn to search for relevant literature in the social sciences, learn to conduct basic quantitative analyses
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Team Needs:
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Students engaged in this research project should be somewhat interested in STEM, willing to learn new statistical and research methodologies, and desire to contribute unique knowledge and skills to the entire research team |
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Description:
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Ongoing research efforts have supported the importance of engineering students being Calculus-ready before college entrance. Indeed, Calculus-readiness has been directly linked to engineering students’ persistence to actual degree attainment in engineering. Yet, newer research efforts are also pointing to the importance of psychosocial variables such as engineering identity to students’ engineering persistence. In this study we seek to enhance this research base by examining three tracks of engineering majors. Each track is based upon the level of mathematics preparation the incoming engineering major is deemed to have. The primary goal of this study is to gain insights into demographical and psychosocial variables that potentially influence the relationship between engineering students’ mathematics readiness upon college entrance and their persistence to obtaining a degree in engineering. Together, we will create demographic and psychosocial profiles of each engineering track and compare how these profiles differ between the different tracks. We will then explore the links between the engineering track profiles and engineering persistence in an attempt to isolate variables that are impacting persistence. Student responsibilities will include: working with team members to learn about social cognitive career theory and variables that are related to student persistence, calculating and reporting descriptive statistics, applying basic quantitative analyses techniques as appropriate, and providing weekly updates to the research team. Students are not expected to know how to perform these duties when they join the team. However, a willing spirit to learn how to perform these tasks is essential! Students who commit themselves to the purposes of this research should expect to learn responsible data management and research practices, contribute to scholarly products, and ultimately further the research-base regarding engineering persistence |