Congratulations to Ed Berger, Allison Godwin and Michael Loui for their newly awarded NSF collaborative grant, The Role of Non-Cognitive and Affective (NCA) Factors in Engineering and Computing Student Academic Performance. Purdue School of Engineering Education is the lead for this three-institution collaboration with Cal Poly and UTEP. 

The project uses a mixed-methods design to explore the role of NCA factors in undergraduate engineering student academic success. Across the three partner institutions, which present diverse student bodies in multiple settings, survey, interview, and intervention data is being collected and correlated to academic performance as measured by course grades using a variety of statistical techniques including regression and topological data analysis. The project has important intellectual merit because it is the first project to systematically examine student academic performance in the face of specific obstacles as mediated by their NCA profile and cognitive makeup. It demonstrates broader impact by operationalizing the "same" intervention in multiple settings, and recognizing the role of local context in the implementation and outcomes. The role of both traditionally-defined and "latent" diversity in answering the research questions holds important implications for the research and practitioner communities alike.

Congratulations to Allison Godwin on her recent NSF collaborative grant award with Tripp Shealy from Virginia Tech for the project, Preparing engineers to address climate change and its implications on sustainability: modeling impact of college experiences on students.  

This research builds on critical engineering agency theory in which students' learning and interest is enhanced when they see an opportunity to make change in their world. Critical engineering agency includes an individual's growing professional identity and attachment to their practice as an engineer. The guiding research question is, how do engineering students develop critical engineering agency and beliefs in college to address climate change and its implications for sustainability in their careers? This question will be answered using a nationally representative survey (n=4000) distributed to students in senior design or capstone courses. This quantitative approach will provide generalizable trends about influential experiences during college. A panel data analysis will help uncover differences among students' sustainability beliefs compared to prior collected data. We will also investigate differences in engineering identities among disciplines and predict both engineering agency and career expectations from their college experiences using MANOVA. Without recognition of climate change, action to address the issue is less likely to occur. The long-term vision is that this research becomes a catalyst for teaching about topics related to climate change and its implications for sustainability. Teaching will support students' critical engineering agency (e.g., empowerment and identity in engineering contexts) and beliefs about sustainability. Students' agency and beliefs may influence their career choice and expected career outcomes. As a result, more engineering students will pursue careers to solve societal challenges that mitigate and prepare for climate change and its global implications for sustainability.