Board # 18 : Improving Performance and Retention of Engineering Graduate Students through Motivation and Identity Formation

Abstract

where she has served as the Director of Undergraduate Programs since 2011. Her research focuses on the intersection of science and engineering identity in post-secondary and graduate level programs.

Identity‐based motivation: Connections between first‐year students' engineering role identities and future‐time perspectives

“…Our work has established the connections that exist between the theoretical paradigms of identity and motivation; however, the body of literature exploring the intersection of these two theoretical paradigms is sparse. While work has begun to extend these conversations in engineering education from undergraduate to graduate education (Cass et al, 2017;Kajfez et al, 2016;Miller et al, 2017;Perkins et al, 2017;Tsugawa-Nieves et al, 2017), the findings in this work need to expand to other identity and motivation theories in engineering education to develop and support the theoretical foundation of identity-based motivation. While these facets of students' affective beliefs must be measured in specific contexts, identity-based motivation offers promising ways to frame students' current ways in which they see themselves as actors within their worlds and their individual motivation to act in those worlds.…”

Inequity in graduate engineering identity: Disciplinary differences and opportunity structures

“…This analysis is part of a larger research project investigating engineering graduate students' social identities, role identities, future time perspectives, identity-based motivations, and graduate school experiences (Cass et al, 2017;Perkins et al, 2018a). Here participant selection, analytic methods, and variables considered for the research questions are described.…”

“…Kirn and colleagues validated the identity domains of researcher, scientist, and engineer through focus groups exploring each identity domain and graduate student experiences more generally. Qualitative interviews and focus groups preceded and guided the development of a 15-min survey focused on each of these domains (Cass et al, 2017;Miller et al, 2017;Perkins et al, 2017;Perkins et al, 2018a;Tsugawa-Nieves et al, 2017). The development of a quantitative measure of GEI for each of these domains followed procedures outlined in previous identity work (Godwin, 2016).…”

WIP: A Case for Disaggregating Demographic Data

“…Existing research in intersectionality focuses on undergraduate engineering students and uses gender and race as the primary intersectional identities [8]. While we are focused on graduate engineering students, literature on engineering graduate students is limited [9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Therefore, our research uses literature on undergraduate students as a starting point for both intersectionality and engineering identity.…”

“…Performance/competence, interest, and recognition have been identified as key components of engineering identity for undergraduate students [19]. Graduate engineering identity is beginning to be explored, including how it is similar to undergraduate engineering identity [9][10][11][12]. This research attempts to explore potential differences in the experiences of engineering graduate students by looking at the intersections of identities while comparing the strength of students' engineering identity.…”