Broadening the Participation of Latinx in Engineering: Highlights from a National, Longitudinal Study

To broaden participation of Latinx in engineering, we conducted the largest scale, longitudinal retention study of an underrepresented minority group in engineering to date. Here, we present quantitative and qualitative findings of the first 3 years of this 5-year project, which investigated the temporal effects of social cognitive, personal, and contextual factors on engineering students’ persistence decisions as posited by Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) [1, 2]. We present themes that emerged from individual interviews with 32 Latinx and White engineering students [3]. Using a large sample of over 800 Latinx engineering students from 6 Hispanic Serving Institutions and 5 Predominantly White Institutions, we found that SCCT predictors contributed significant variance in satisfaction and persistence outcomes, with self-efficacy and supports serving as reliable predictors [4]. We found nonsignificant, single-group differences in associations within the model (i.e., Latinxs vs. Whites); however, intersectional differences were found. Specifically, we found contextual differences for Latinx engineering students (i.e., differences between Latinxs attending HSIs and PWIs). These results suggest that interventions aimed at broadening Latinxs’ participation in engineering need to be tailored for Latinx student subgroups.