| Abstrakt: |
The Culture and Attitude (C&A) program aims to attract, retain, and graduate more STEM students, especially women in engineering, through scholarships, industry mentors, professional development, and a new curriculum that engages diverse learning styles. Participating departments include metallurgical, industrial, mechanical, mining, and civil engineering. In addition to scholarship support, the C&A program offers several components to help students gain confidence and build successful professional relationships. There is four critical program elements (i) program mentoring, (ii) professional development, (iii) personal development, and (iv) curriculum modification (based on best practices). Curricular change is critical as data suggests that incoming engineering students are diverse in their learning styles and strengths, falling among four Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) quadrants: analytical, experimental, practical, and relational. Conversely, graduating engineers tend to be primarily analytical despite industry demand for greater diversity. This aspect is spurred by research indicating diverse teams produce better results. Therefore, new elements were integrated into selected C&A courses to better engage and retain students in all HBDI quadrants, such as: • Experiential workshops • Service-learning • Kinesthetic "hands-on" activities • Group discussion and cooperative learning • Brainstorming and visualization • Industrial site visits • Engineering design case studies • Teaming • Engineering synthesis and historical perspectives Results of student typology and self-efficacy assessment about student professional development and curricular changes are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
