The seven Explorer Fellows teamed up and selected their topics from a range of questions administrators and faculty identified as being important to investigate, but not yet explored.

“The students get a chance to address a real and important research question in a relatively low-stress way,” says Dr. Stephen Hoffmann, assistant head for FYE.

The Fellows conducted background work and set the scope of their research, interacted with the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and data collection. They presented their early analysis work during the weekly ENE Research Seminar on Dec. 4.

The Fellows’ early research work also allows them to learn more about the School, the FYE program, and the discipline of engineering education. They also receive one semester of financial support from the School.

Dr. David Radcliffe, Kamyar Haghighi Head of the School of Engineering Education, hopes this experience smooths the transition into the Ph.D. program.

“In a conventional graduate program in engineering, students enter with a good understanding of the discipline,” he says. “For the emerging discipline of engineering education, entering students do not necessarily have this same familiarity and background that enables them to know what rigorous research in engineering education entails.”

As part of their presentations, the groups outlined analysis that still needs to be done and reflected on the experience, so far.

“We came in thinking we were going to get our data right away, it was right there on the shelf, we were going to get it and go,” says graduate student Karen De Urquidi, “but it was much more difficult than that.”

“In doing the interviews, we found that we led interviewees,” admits graduate student Hector Rodriguez. “We’re trying to find ways not to do that.”

The three groups submitted abstracts of their work for the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) conference in June. All abstracts were accepted and the students are currently writing their conference paper submissions.