Enrichment Activities in Support of a Student Integrated Intern Research Experience

A national need exists for increasing the number of United States citizens who complete engineering degrees. The Student Integrated Intern Research Experience (SIIRE) program at the University of Arkansas, now in its second year, provides financial support to students from all engineering departments within the College of Engineering. Through scholarships and integrated industry supported work experiences with on-campus research activities, SIIRE provides a pathway to a graduate engineering degree. Progress made in the first year of the SIIRE program will be discussed including the process used for the selection of the inaugural cohort of students. A set of activities designed to mentor and enrich the professional development of the SIIRE students will be described including summer work experience, research experience, professional development, faculty mentoring and peer mentoring. The professional development activities are designed to target specific points in the students’ plan of study. They include various topics such as preparation of a personal development plan (sophomore level), resume writing and job search skills (sophomore and senior level), developing research skills (junior level), seven habits of highly effective people (senior level), writing and presenting an engineering-based business case (junior level), and presenting and communication research (M.S. level). Overview of the SIIRE Program The Student Integrated Intern Research Experience (SIIRE) program at the University of Arkansas is funded via the NSF S-STEM program. The NSF S-STEM program provides student scholarship funds to encourage and enable academically talented but financially needy students to complete STEM degrees and enter the workforce. The SIIRE project addresses NSF’s programmatic goal by integrating external (industry supported) intern or co-op experiences of students with ongoing on-campus engineering research activities to provide a guided pathway to a graduate engineering degree. The requested scholarship funds defray student educational costs during their sophomore, junior, and senior years of undergraduate study and during 1.5 years of their graduate studies. The SIIRE program addresses the following objectives: 1. To provide underrepresented and financially needy undergraduate students with information on the benefits and opportunities associated with graduate education, 2. To provide underrepresented and financially needy undergraduate students with enhanced financial support and career experiences to improve the likelihood of completing both a BS and a MS in engineering, 3. To provide personalized integrated industry and academic mentoring and professional development that results in increased enrollment and completion of graduate engineering degrees involving industry beneficial research, 4. To increase the number of highly skilled employees in engineering fields ready to directly apply engineering research, Page 24532.2 5. To develop an innovative program that integrates industry based student experiences with on campus research experiences that result in benefits to industry, faculty, and students. These objectives are achieved via the following features 1) leveraged scholarship support for a cohort of students with financial need, 2) a cohort of students focused upon engineering strategic research initiatives, 3) integrated one-on-one faculty and industry joint mentoring, 4) industry motivated graduate research topics, 5) course work options enabling completion of B.S. and M.S. degrees in 5.5 total years, and 6) the seeding of highly trained practicing engineers within the workforce. Details of this program at the University of Arkansas were described and presented at the 2013 ASEE conference. Rather than repeating these details, the reader is referred to this previous paper. In this follow-on paper, we describe progress made in the first year of the SIIRE program, including the process used for the selection of the inaugural cohort of students. Next, activities designed to mentor and enrich the professional development of the SIIRE students are presented. Finally, we conclude with some thoughts for future efforts within the program and suggestions on how the SIIRE program developed at the University of Arkansas can be readily adapted and implemented at other programs across the nation. Progress Made in Year 1 In the first year of the program, a cohort of students needed to be recruited into the program. A decision was made by the program oversight team to focus predominantly on recruiting incoming sophomores (with perhaps a few juniors) into the program. We chose not to recruit seniors or masters degree students. During the Spring 2013 semester, all College of Engineering students (approximately 2,700 students) were contacted via email and handouts. The University of Arkansas College of Engineering has a common freshman engineering program (FEP). SIIRE students were initially recruited from the FEP during their second semester of study to enter the SIIRE program in their sophomore year. Freshman engineering students (809 students) were specifically targeted via classroom announcements. Freshman engineering students were given information about the SIIRE program and in addition, the program oversight team visited all freshman engineering students in their Freshman Seminar class to describe the SIIRE program and answer any questions. The SIIRE program was presented to the College of Engineering department heads so that they could relay the program information to appropriate faculty within each department involved with student advising. In addition, there is at least one faculty member from each of the eight engineering departments on the program oversight team and we relied on these individuals to market and recruit upperclassmen from their respective departments into the SIIRE program. As was indicated, in this first year, we limited our search of upperclassmen to students in their junior year. SIIRE undergraduate students must meet the following criteria: 1) must be a US citizen, permanent resident, national or refugee eligible to receive NSF funds; 2) must receive a University of Arkansas renewable scholarship (minimum criteria 24+ ACT and 3.5+ HSGPA); 3) must have financial need, as determined by the federal government through Free Application for Federal Student Aid FAFSA submission; 3) must pursue a bachelor of science degree in engineering and be a full-time engineering student; 5) must demonstrate a work ethic, time P ge 24532.3 management skills, communication skills and professionalism; and 6) must agree to participate in all parts of the program. The application process required that students submit an application form showing that they met the SIIRE criteria identified above, a two-page essay, and two letters of recommendation from faculty. The program oversight team held a workshop prior to the submission due date to assist students in preparing their application process. During the time frame from March 1 to April 15th of 2013, we received a total of twenty-six applications for the SIIRE program. Students from all eight engineering departments (Biological (4 students), Biomedical (5 students), Chemical (6 students), Civil (1 student), Computer/Computer Science (1 student), Electrical (1 student), Industrial (4 students) and Mechanical (4 students)) were part of the applicant pool. A subset of the program oversight team individually reviewed each applicant and rated them in one of three categories, (1) fund, (2) consider funding, and (3) do not fund. A “do not fund” rating was reserved predominantly for students who did not meet one or more criteria. Typically, this was due to an inferior GPA or not meeting a mandatory NSF criteria (e.g. not a U.S. citizen). Of the twenty-six students, ten students were eliminated due to incomplete applications or for not meeting NSF program eligibility criteria. Of the sixteen applicants in the remaining pool there were ten applicants from underrepresented groups (8 women) . A team meeting was held by the program oversight committee to collectively review the applicant pool. Once a group ranking was determined, we confirmed each student’s financial need based on their Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) application. In the end, there were four applicants who met all SIIRE criteria, except the financial need. Rather than excluding these student from the program outright, we consulted with each student to determine if they wished to participate in the SIIRE program without funding. Three of the four students elected to participate citing the various benefits of the program beyond the scholarship. This was a great achievement for a couple of reasons. First, the financial eligibility of students can change from year to year, thus students once financially eligible may find themselves not eligible in the future. We now have evidence that we may be able to retain these students without funding as a result of the value placed on the other various benefits of the program. Second, this allows us to expand the program to more students with our limited scholarship funds. In the future, we can challenge ourselves to find alternative, unrestricted sources of funding to award to students who by definition do not meet the financial need test. In the end, the composition of the inaugural SIIRE class included 15 students with one to three students from each of the eight engineering departments. A total of 13 sophomores and 2 juniors were included in this cohort, with 6 women and 1 applicant of color. This class entered the SIIRE program in Fall 2013. An integral component of the SIIRE program and one of the reasons we decided to accept a large sophomore class is the program enrichment activities designed for a cohort of students. The next section describes these activities.