Dina Verdin found out yesterday that she was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship for her proposal titled, "First in the Family: Fostering First-generation College Students' Critical Engineering Agency through their Social and Cultural Funds of Knowledge." This program  recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions. For the 2016 competition, NSF recieved close to 17,000 applications and made 2,000 award offers. Verdin said, "I'm still in shock. I'm excited about what this means for the future direction of my career and the opportunity to pursue research on first-generation students." Her research will focus on shift the deficit perspective around first-generation students by supporting their prior knowledge and understanding their identity development in engineering. Ultimately, she hopes her research will create change in how engineering is taught in college classrooms that is culturally relevant to first-generation students and improve recruitment, retention, and belongingness of these students in engineering.