Understanding Interactions Between Affect and Identity in First- and Second-Year Engineering Students
Research how engineering students form their engineering identity through their experiences and personal identities.
Project description
This National Science Foundation project examines undergraduate engineering students’ affect, or emotions, feeling, and values, and how it shapes the development of their engineering identity. Emotions is emerging as a new and exciting topic within engineering education. This project examines how emotions experienced during the first two years of a student’s engineering degree changes the way they feel about math science and engineering and how they develop their engineering identity. This project uses a model of engineering identity by Godwin which examines the factors of interest, performance, competence, and recognition. Thus far the project has collected interviews from 27 students at the end of one to four semesters, with over 50 interviews collected in total. Initial analysis has shown affect influences some aspects of engineering identity, but has little effect on recognition.
Currently, for students in cohort 1 who have completed the first two years of their college experience, we have asked them to reflect on summaries of our analysis. The research team will be analyzing these reflections during Spring of 2025 and aim to write a summary article about our cohort 1 participants. We also aim to investigate how other aspects of students’ identities, e.g. athlete, strong family ties, LGBTQIA+, impacted the development of their engineering identity.
This project collaborates with professors and researchers at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
Project outcome
The student will become a member of the research team as a knowledge generator and author. We aim for the student to learn about the fields of education and engineering education research, analyze research data, and contribute to research papers. The student will work closely with the other research team members analyzing data, forming arguments about data, writing memos, and working on manuscripts. The student will also help design the poster to be presented at and special presentation at the American Society for Engineering Education conference.
Project details
| Length of commitment | Longer than a semester; 6-9 months |
| Start time | Spring (January/February 2025) |
| In-person, remote, or hybrid? | Hybrid Project (can be remote and/or in-person; to be determined by mentor and student) |
| Level of collaboration | Small group project (2-3 students) |
| Benefits | Stipend |
| Who is eligible | Sophomores and Juniors; experience with Google docs, an interest in engineering education demonstrated by a paragraph in the application. |
Core partners
- Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, PA
- Trinity University, San Antonio, TX
Project mentor
Jessica Swenson
Assistant Professor
Engineering Education
Phone: (716) 645-3927
Email: jswenson@buffalo.edu
Start the project
- Email the project mentor using the contact information above to express your interest and get approval to work on the project. (Here are helpful tips on how to contact a project mentor.)
- After you receive approval from the mentor to start this project, click the button to start the digital badge. (Learn more about ELN's digital badge options.)
Preparation activities
Once you begin the digital badge series, you will have access to all the necessary activities and instructions. Your mentor has indicated they would like you to also complete the specific preparation activities below. Please reference this when you get to Step 2 of the Preparation Phase.
Reading research articles relevant to the research project and completing IRB training
Keywords
engineering, education, research, LGBTQ+, SEAS