Mapping Assets of Diverse Groups for Chemical Engineering Design Problem Framing Ability

Engineering programs across the US are engaged in efforts to increase the diversity of their student populations. Despite these efforts, students from groups underrepresented in engineering are still less likely to persist, relative to their peers. One approach taken is adding design earlier in programs, but faculty sometimes doubt that freshmen and sophomore students have the capacity to design. The students themselves may not realize they already possess skills and beliefs that are valuable for engineering design. We describe an approach to uncover potential and discover the attributes, skills, and beliefs that students hold. Students in the first two courses of a chemical engineering program at a Minority Serving, Very High Research university (N=136) completed a survey and an assessment of their problem framing ability. We identified the following attributes, skills, and beliefs: women were significantly likelier than men to view design as a co evolutionary process and first generation college attendees were significantly more likely to agree that design is a learning activity. Regression analysis revealed that students in the introductory course produced more expert problem framing if they viewed constraint as endemic to design. Students who rated their pre college knowledge of and confidence in engineering lower actually framed problems more expertly. This suggests students need to learn early that constraint is endemic to design. Implications for instruction include communicating to students that the work of engineers involves framing problems and providing opportunities for them to develop these abilities. Identifying the strengths students bring could help faculty build on students' existing strengths. We should not view limited prior experience and low confidence as a deficit.  Engineering programs across the US are engaged in efforts to increase the diversity of their student populations. Despite myriad efforts, students from groups underrepresented in engineering are still less likely to persist, relative to their peers. To address this, many programs have incorporated design projects early in the curriculum, leading to higher overall retention of diverse students in engineering. For instance, students from underrepresented groups were likelier to persist if they completed a first year design course, and this was attributed to the hands on and contextual nature of the experience. Elsewhere, higher retention of diverse students is attributed to the fact that students like getting exposure to authentic projects, 25 because such projects provide opportunities for students to learn professional skills (e.g. project management, teamwork) and allow students the opportunity to integrate knowledge and practice. 31 However, faculty sometimes doubt that freshmen and sophomore students have the capacity to design, and students may not realize they already possess skills and beliefs that are valuable for engineering design. We contribute to this body of work by describing an approach to uncover potential and discover the attributes, skills, and beliefs that students hold. For instance, consider students like Paloma, a first year student who sees herself as creative and who did well on high school assignments that required problem solving. She worked in a small landscape architecture business, mostly answering phones, but enjoyed when she got to sit in on meetings with clients, even if it was only to take notes, because she got to see how the landscape architects worked together to understand what clients wanted, what the constraints were, and creative ways to navigate those constraints. These attributes, skills, and beliefs are all very relevant to engineering design, but students like Paloma may not realize this, and these engineering "assets" may remain dormant. Currently, there is no commonly used, simple way to uncover such assets. Our research aims to design and refine a simple method to reveal the assets diverse students bring as they begin a chemical engineering program. We aim to identify diverse students' assets and connect these to professional engineering practices and identities. We argue that this effort complements other approaches to recruit and retain diverse students in engineering. Revealing engineering assets to both students and faculty can provide a firmer foundation for early design projects. It can help faculty know where students may need additional support. It can also help students connect their current identities to engineering, supporting them to begin developing professional engineering identities. We review research on one of the main predictors of persistence in engineering knowing where you are going and on the formation of professional engineering identities; both of these areas informed our survey development, as we sought to uncover aspects of these with our survey. Knowing where you are going One of the main predictors of persistence in engineering is "knowing where you are going" 1, students who have a parent or family friend who is an engineer tend to have a better understanding of engineering practices. Those who do not have such connections are disproportionately underrepresented in engineering, and they tend to make assumptions about the engineering profession from popular media, publications and early coursework. Textbooks present problem solving as a quick, elegant, linear process when it is actually a highly iterative, failure prone approach that few students master while they are undergraduates. Core coursework tends to present the work of engineers as problem sets, always with a single correct answer. Students unfamiliar with actual engineering problem solving can be led to believe problems are best solved through a quick, elegant, linear process and that there is always one right answer. When such students encounter more authentic, complex problems late in their program of studies, they may feel engineering is a place they don't belong. Developing professional engineering identity When students leave engineering they cite difficulty with the curriculum or advisement, as well as feeling like they don't belong; this effect is more pronounced for those already underrepresented in engineering, as difficulties with curriculum can further negatively impact their sense of belonging. When students don't see engineering as "consistent with their personal identity or sense of self," they are more likely to leave engineering. Providing students with opportunities to discover their value and develop a sense of intellectual belonging can positively impact their willingness to engage academically and hence this supports retention. 43 But it is also important to recognize that students retain diverse identities as members of families, communities, and other avocational endeavors. In this way, students' identities are like crystals with multiple facets. This concept has been referred to as the crystallized self, a way to talk about identity that interrupts the sense of "real" versus "fake" selves; for instance, in engineering, a student who questions her potential to become a "real" engineer may feel she needs to shed or sacrifice her other identities (such as mother, artist, or athlete) The notion of a crystalized self places more of the responsibility on the organization for cultivating a culture in which a member can live "a life wrapped in a quilt of many colors rather than one suffocated by a monochromatic blanket." In engineering, this concept has been studied, suggesting that understanding engineering identity as multi faceted is linked to retention. We build on this notion of the crystalized identity by considering how students might come to see their various identities not only as permissible, but also as relevant to engineering. Given that engineering is one of the most human of endeavors, the other facets of one's identity can easily be called into play in engineering design. By focusing on crystallized identity, we suggest we need to acknowledge the varied ways in which facets of identities can be called into play, serving as assets. Asset mapping is an approach that focuses on the strengths students possess instead of focusing on their deficiencies. Such asset based approaches are successful in engaging rural students and Latino/a students in engineering. For instance, in one study, researchers first identified the assets Latina/o high school students brought, then connected these to community engaged design projects. 49 Such approaches help develop students' self efficacy and make engineering seem more relevant and more connected to their lives, thus better supporting underrepresented minority students to learn. 52 Asset based approaches have been shown to support low income, first generation college attendees, revealing they bring assets such as the ability to define and solve problems related to limited financial means, and having empathy for marginalized communities. However, previous work to identify assets has involved ethnographic methods, which are time and labor intensive. We investigate how a survey might be used to efficiently identify engineering assets, explore whether these vary systematically, and consider how faculty might leverage these assets in their teaching.