Skip navigation
STRIDE
Shaping Transformative Research on Identity and Diversity in Engineering

Brianna Benedict

Eng Education Ug Ra - Non Pu Student S
Engineering Education
West Lafayette
Email:  benedicb@purdue.edu

Bio

Brianna Benedict is a graduate research assistant in the School of Engineering Education. She works on the project titled, “CAREER: Actualizing Latent Diversity: Building Innovation through Engineering Students’ Identity Development,” where she has contributed to the development of a national survey, designed interview protocols, and managed the recruitment and data collection process for the longitudinal interviews and national survey to aid in our understanding about the identity trajectories of students who are latently diverse.

In addition to her assistantship, her research focuses on characterizing the infrastructure of interdisciplinary engineering programs, how interdisciplinary engineering programs serve as hybrid spaces, and how hybrid spaces influence engineering identity development and belonging in engineering. While at Purdue, she has served in leadership positions in the American Society for Engineering Education (i.e., 2017-2018 research and scholarship chair) and Engineering Education Graduate Student Association (i.e., 2017-2018 Social Justice and Inclusion chair, 2018-2019 President and Student Relations Chair). In 2018, she interned at the National Science Foundation in the Division of Research in Informal and Formal Settings through the Quality Education for Minorities Network, Talent Development and Innovation in Science Program. She is a proud HBCU alumna of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University where she earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering. In her spare time, Brianna enjoys volunteering in her local community where she has tutored elementary students with their homework, facilitated activities, and discussions regarding entrepreneurship, conflict resolution, and communication skills, to name a few.

Research Interests

  • Interdisciplinary experiences
  • Hybrid spaces for learning, identity development, and belonging