[156-162] I valued my art professor because he cares about me, genuinely. Over the summer, I ended up teaching a summer camp for 3D modeling. I taught an entire day of that camp in his classroom. He even gave a little, not lecture, but he showed up, he did an interview with the kids and whatnot. He’s shown me ways where, even though he’s mostly an artist, he still has to deal with a lot of the problems that engineering does, mainly because his designs are just how to get around that. What else? He’s funny. He has one-on-one sessions with every one of his students in his intermediate class. He knows everyone’s strong suits already or he knows that there’s things that people […] I feel like I’m rambling. He’s very good at his job.
Author: godwina
[34-40] My other course is mechanics and materials. It’s really giving me a hard time, not to the point where I think I should not be in engineering, but it’s just the course. The way my professor teaches the course, it’s rough. There’s very little online help that he could provide. All of his notes are in person, and they go by super-fast. It’s not very helpful for me, where I like to instead of looking at my notes, because my notes are not always the best, I like to just look at the slides, whatever extra material, over and over again just so I can get it right. The way that he teaches, it’s just not very helpful for me. I’ll probably retake that class, which I don’t mind. Yes, I don’t mind retaking a course that I actually really need to know.
[168-181] I’ve had the mechanics and materials professor once before. However, this professor, it’s hard for me to understand what he’s teaching because he doesn’t read the room very well. When people ask questions, he doesn’t understand the question all the time, so when he’s trying to answer the question, it kind of makes it more confusing. He’s certainly not a bad professor, he’s just not one that I’m more accustomed to, or I’m predisposed to. I guess, because I don’t like taking notes. It’s been a bad habit of mine since high school where I just can’t take the best notes. Combined with that, in my classes I’m shy, so I don’t have the guts to talk to people around me and ask what I miss. It’s not entirely the professor’s fault. I went to his office hours, I talked to him about some of the things that I’ve been struggling with, and he was very, very kind. He even loaned me his book when I couldn’t get a copy, the same edition that he wanted, so he ended up loaning it to me. I was going to take pictures of the homework that I would need to complete. I don’t think I ended up doing that because I think I was going through some mental health stuff then. But overall, he’s a good professor. He’s not my type of professor. I’ll really need to rethink how my classroom habits are so I can go to this class again next semester.
[49-54] Aside from stress from work, extracurriculars, and school impact my mental health. Overall, my mental health has been getting better since last year. Overall, I think I just need to lower my workload with extracurriculars. Work is kind of unavoidable because I want to be in an apartment next school semester, so work is one thing. Extracurriculars, I feel I can fall back on. Maybe in a year I’ll be out of the extracurriculars. Then school, I still need to […] finding a good habit for school work is still something that I think I actively avoid. It’s a problem for me, so I need to find that for myself.
[193-198] I think one of the main reasons why I went into extracurricular activities was so I could stress out about something else other than school. I mean, other than seeing friends and feeling like I’m a part of something, other than those feelings, a lot of that was finding something else to stress out about other than school and actually working on myself for academic work. I should put more focus on my academics, as much as I don’t want to, as much as I want to just take these classes and get by, that’s not going to happen very well for my next classes coming up.
[203-207] I’m currently the president of an E-Sports Club, which is the biggest sports club on campus. This is my only curricular activity for this semester, for this school year actually. Last school year I was a part of three big organizations, and it was bad then. I thought it would be better now that it would only be one, but I took on a presidency instead of a different role, so it’s still a lot. There’s a lot of promises that I made to myself about the club that I want to achieve, and I guess I was putting a lot of that pressure on myself, so I just ended up getting over-stressed or overwhelmed
[250-258]And more often than not, the thing that relieves my stress the most is just getting something done. Such an insane concept, just finishing something. I think for me, procrastinating is a double-edged sword. It provides temporary relief, not long time, and I still need to get over that.
With the health insurance and the physical therapy, that I’m still kind of salty about, but I can’t really do much right now until the stay-at-home order ends. Then dealing with all the COVID business, still dealing with it. I’m on campus, which I think is healthier for me versus staying at home. I still get free food, even though I’m out of a job the University is still paying me, so I feel like I’ll be fine. It’s just the schoolwork that’s really going to suffer. Procrastinating was a problem before and it’s been a bigger problem now.
[274-279] I do have a therapist on campus and they’re currently trying to get a teletherapy thing started. There were a few places on campus where I knew that my friends would be because they worked there, so I would go there often. The arena itself, the E-Sports computer lab, I use that place a lot for general relaxation and sometimes studying. It’s just now that I’m cooped up in the dorms it’s just like I have to rework my mind and make sure I don’t fall asleep in the same place where I do my homework.
[301-303] I don’t have many interactions with my peers in engineering. I wish I had more because I’m a little shy and intimidated by my peers. I’m not sure if there is a reason, I know personally I can talk to girls a lot easier than guys, I’m not sure why, I just can. Because there’s not that many girls in Engineering, it’s just harder for me to approach people.
[307-310] My intimidation may be due to an inferiority complex-type thing where I’m constantly comparing myself to other people. It’s just like, I know I don’t need to do that, but it just happens. Then what else? Yeah, some part of it is like I don’t want to sound stupid. It’s just a lot of little insecurities that you add up and then I just don’t have the ability to talk to somebody who very well could help me.
[328-333] Overall, I think I’m making some good steps, good progress. It’s hard to say that I’ll be done next year, I think I’ll have at least another year, which I am completely fine with. I’m taking advances to improve me, my mental health, my physical health. I’m taking steps to improve me, rather than continue on my degree as fast as I could. I could have taken two more engineering classes if I really wanted to, but I decided to work on myself. Hopefully, by the end of my next two years I’m at least a healthy person, if I’m not an engineer. I’d rather make sure I’m okay.
[342-347] In addition to ensuring that I’m okay, over the summer, if all of this COVID stuff goes by, I hope to be a camp counselor or a camp instructor. The instructor pays more, so I hope to be that more often than not. That job opened a lot of doors for me, so I want to continue on with that one. Then getting out of college, I hope to do something similar to the company I visited last year where it has a lot of those opportunities to be in the engineering design process.
Authors
Transcript
Allison Godwin
Brianna Shani Benedict
Dina Verdín
Aaron Robert Hamilton Thielmeyer
Rachel Ann Baker
Jacqueline Ann Rohde
Excerpt: Students often have limited perceptions of what it means to be or think like an engineer. Often this perception stems from social norms and the culture of engineering that emphasizes particular values and roles that engineering includes. The result of this culture is that only particular types of students are recognized as an engineer, and the process of educating engineers homogenizes rather than diversifies students’ skills and potential for innovation. This process of homogenization develops engineering graduates that are more alike in their problem-solving approaches, ways of thinking, and identities as engineers than as unique innovators [1]– [3]. Students who do not conform to this mold of “being an engineer” are often alienated from engineering, do not develop engineering identities, and leave engineering, which reduces the much-needed human potential for innovation [4], [5].
Allison Godwin
Brianna Shani Benedict
Jacqueline Ann Rhode
Dina Verdín
Aaron Robert Hamilton Thielmeyer
Herman Ronald Clements III
Zhihui (Sherry) Chen
Excerpt: Cultivating a culture of inclusion is critical to engineering education. The environment in which students learn shapes not only their competencies but also who they become or their identities as engineers. Developing an engineering identity has been found to be important for a number of different outcomes including academic and personal development [1]–[5] as well as retention [6]–[8]. Students form their engineering identity in relation to the ways of being, thinking, and knowing that are valued in engineering culture. As a result, students who do not align with the cultural values in engineering may experience a lack of belonging [9], [10], which can ultimately lead to negative experiences and even attrition. For example, one of our participants, Mark, expressed that he loved studying mathematics, but he felt that “there wasn’t much room for creativity in engineering”. This mismatch in his goals and values led him to switch out of engineering to major in business. Ultimately, he felt that this change allowed him to be exposed to more diverse ways of thinking about problems in business applications.
H. Ronald Clements III
Brianna Shani Benedict
Allison Godwin
Jacqueline Ann Rohde
Sherry Chen
Abstract: This research paper examines students’ perceptions of faculty and how it influences their identity trajectory. First-year students enter undergraduate engineering education with rich stories of how they came to choose engineering as a career pathway. Over time, the culture of engineering and network of peers, faculty members, and professionals shape students’ stories and identity trajectories. How students “cast” faculty members in their story, often as helpful or hurtful actors, have implications for their identity trajectory, success, and, ultimately, retention in engineering. In this paper, we used two composite narratives constructed from longitudinal narrative interviews with 16 students to illustrate how students cast faculty into a role as either a support or an obstacle, based on their classroom experiences and interactions with them. This paper highlights the interactions that led these students to view faculty as helpful or harmful and explores the effects resulting: influence over student identity trajectory by fostering or hindering relationship building and networking, as well as influencing intellectual growth and personal ability beliefs.