Leveraging Students’ Funds of Knowledge in Chemical Engineering Design Challenges Supports Persistence Intentions

Abstract

Lower division chemistry and chemical engineering courses commonly emphasize efficient acquisition of core content. While experts perceive the organization of the discipline, students perceive their courses as fragmented. This has a more severe impact on students from groups historically excluded from STEM fields, who may not have a deep understanding of the opportunities that lie on the horizon. In order to make progress on this issue, we first sought to better understand our diverse students’ chemical engineering funds of knowledgethat is, the everyday and cultural experiences salient for chemistry and chemical engineering. We found that minoritized students expressed more funds of knowledge: women expressed STEM interest and past success more than men; students from minoritized racial and ethnic groups and/or who spoke a language other than English at home expressed more community funds of knowledge. We developed design challenges for core chemical engineering courses to build on these varied funds of knowledge. We found no differences between minoritized students and their more privileged peers in terms of their intent to persist. We share implications for both chemistry and chemical engineering courses seeking to support diverse student success.

Developing a “Revolution”: Design Challenges in a Chemical Engineering Department

“…Challenges for translating this approach to higher education include larger class sizes and often highly diverse and far-flung communities that university students come from. To overcome this issue, we sought to identify various kinds of everyday experiences students might have that could be valuable to them in learning to frame and solve engineering design problems (Chen et al, 2022;. This type of asset-oriented thinking is particularly key at our institution.…”

Values Are More Than Statements: Connecting Actions to Values to Build Inclusive Cultures in Chemistry Research Groups

“…There has been a shift toward learner-centered practices in chemistry education, which emphasize connecting concepts in the chemistry classroom to students’ lived experiences and causes they view as part of their identity, such as social justice. , These approaches focusing on students’ scientific and personal perspectives have been shown to improve motivation, engagement, and belonging to build inclusive communities in undergraduate education. ,, However, few practical resources exist for extending this philosophy to academic research groups, where the bulk of students’ graduate education occurs. Recent department-level analyses and interventions have highlighted the need for strategies that positively impact students’ self-perception and agency, , are discussion- and student-driven, , and incorporate students’ individual goals in their training at all levels .…”

Insights and Outcomes from a Revolution in a Chemical Engineering Department

“…Ultimately, as a result of the changes, our students developed more expert-like skills related to designing [43][44][45][46], more sophisticated ethical reasoning [47,48], improved collaboration skills [44,49], and all without having a negative impact on conceptual learning. Our longitudinal analysis suggests that our approach has fostered persistence, especially among first-generation Latinx students, in part because of a focus on students' assets [50,51].…”