Impact of COVID‐19 on sense of belonging: Experiences of engineering students, faculty, and staff at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)

Abstract

Background: COVID-19 has spurred a global crisis that has disrupted everyday lives and impacted the traditional methods, experiences, and abilities of higher education institutions' students, faculty, and staff, especially at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).Purpose/Hypothesis: Given the pressing need demonstrated by the National Academies to advance the utilization of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education at HBCUs, this study aimed to explore the abrupt transition to remote teaching and learning at HBCUs guided by the following research question: How has COVID-19 impacted the success and persistence of engineering students, faculty, and staff at HBCUs? Design/Methods: Three surveys were developed, tested, piloted, and sent to HBCU stakeholders using a snowball sampling approach via email and social media outreach. Results: Of the 171 student respondents (126 engineering majors), 79% agreed that not being able to access faculty in person affected their academic performance. Additionally, across all HBCU stakeholders' surveys, students had a statistically significant higher response when asked if the transition to virtual learning increased their overall levels of stress and anxiety. Conclusions: During a global pandemic, HBCUs continue to provide a culture of support and inclusion for students, faculty, and staff in engineering. Increased stress levels experienced by students indicate that a safe and adequate transition back to campus is essential for their social and academic persistence. Due to the well-documented inequities HBCUs faced before the pandemic, the impact of this unprecedented on their continued contributions toward broadening participation in engineering for students should be further explored.

Progression from the mean: Cultivating instructors' unique trajectories of practice using educational technology

“…Such a theoretical framework is fundamentally different from common framings such as diffusion of innovations (Rogers, 2003) or fidelity of implementation (Borrego et al, 2013;O'Donnell, 2008) in that an ecosystems perspective foregrounds and legitimizes local needs and values in negotiating uptake, potentially in ways inconceivable to those in more privileged contexts. Importantly, instructors need to nimbly respond to unanticipated perturbations to their instructional ecosystems, such as the disruptions from the COVID pandemic during this study (Fletcher et al, 2023;London et al, 2022) or the introduction of generative artificial intelligence tools like the ChatGPT chatbot that have recently emerged (Kasneci et al, 2023;Rudolph et al, 2023). A dynamic, ecosystems model fundamentally addresses instructor decision making around educational technology and pedagogical practices amidst these perturbations in ways that theories like fidelity of implementation are unable to.…”

“…Institutional context played a role in the ways that instructors and students responded to the pandemic as well. For example, Fletcher et al (2023) attributed the positive culture of institutional support and sense of belonging at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to their ability to navigate the shift to online instruction and to safely reopen campuses with fewer infection cases than non-HBCUs.…”

Who Benefits? Understanding the Impacts of Faculty Development Efforts on Engineering Faculty and Student Capacity through the COVID-19 Transition to Online Learning

“…Al Miskry, Hamid, and Darweesh (2021) conducted a study in the United Arab Emirates with students, faculty, and staff, and found that all participants' mental health and physical health were negatively impacted by the pandemic. Lastly, a study similar to ours is one that was conducted by Fletcher, Jefferson, Boyd, Park, and Crumpton-Young (2023) in engineering programs at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the US. They reported that faculty experienced more challenges with instruction, research, and mentorship during the pandemic.…”

Gender and STEM Education: An Analysis of Interest and Experience Outcomes for Black Girls within a Summer Engineering Program

“…However, Black and African Americans continue to be disproportionately underrepresented among students attaining an engineering degree [10]. Within this population, Black women are twice as likely to enroll in higher education compared to Black men [11]. Yet, when it comes to engineering degree attainment over the past ten years, an average of only 24% of the Black recipients were women [10,11].…”

“…Within this population, Black women are twice as likely to enroll in higher education compared to Black men [11]. Yet, when it comes to engineering degree attainment over the past ten years, an average of only 24% of the Black recipients were women [10,11]. A well-documented solution to increasing Black girls' interest in engineering and more broadly, in STEM, has been exposure to the curriculum and programming through pre-college and informal activities and initiatives, especially those within informal settings [12][13][14].…”