Improving Engineering Curriculum and Enhancing Underrepresented Community College Student Success through a Summer Research Internship Program

Efforts to remain competitive internationally in engineering and technology require a significant increase in the number of STEM graduates in the United States. A recent report prepared by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology states that currently less than forty percent of students entering college to pursue a STEM career end up completing a STEM degree, citing that students typically leave the STEM field in the first two years of their program. One of the Council’s recommendations to address this issue is to engage students with research experiences in the first two years. Recently there has also been an increasing awareness of the important role that community colleges play in educating STEM professionals, especially in broadening participation among students from underrepresented groups. This paper presents the results of a collaborative project between a small Hispanic-serving community college and a large urban university to address the retention and completion problems among community college students through a summer research internship program that provides opportunities for freshmen and sophomore community college students to participate in engineering research under the supervision of a university professor and a graduate student mentor. Developed through a grant funded by the NASA Curriculum Improvements Partnership Award for the Integration of Research (CIPAIR) program, the summer internship program integrates research with curriculum improvements by providing the framework for students to use their research experiences to develop instructional materials to improve the engineering curriculum. The paper highlights the results of the research done by the mechanical engineering student group who helped develop a novel haptic apparatus and associated curriculum for teaching upper division mechanical engineering laboratory courses in control systems, mechatronics, and haptics. Over the ten-week program the group made significant design improvements to the apparatus, manufactured a set of the devices to outfit a laboratory classroom at the university, and helped define instructional methods and learning outcomes for a mechatronics laboratory curriculum. In addition to developing research skills among participants, three years of implementation of the program have also been successful in strengthening students' identity as engineers, in increasing student interest to further engage in research activities, and in enhancing student self-efficacy for successfully transferring to a four-year university, completing a baccalaureate degree in engineering, and pursuing a graduate degree.