Development and First-Year Outcomes of a NSF-Funded Summer Research Internship Program to Engage Community College Students in Engineering Research

Abstract

Increasing the recruitment and retention of engineering students is essential to produce sufficient professional engineers for continued US economic growth and competitiveness in today's technology sectors. Undergraduate engineering research experience has been identified as an effective approach to increasing student engagement, academic performance, and retention rates. Community colleges play a significant role in today's US higher education; however, conducting basic research at community colleges is challenging due to limited resources and opportunities. With support from the National Science Foundation's Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (IUSE-HSI) Program, a collaborative summer research internship program between a public four-year degree institution and two local community colleges provided community college students with impactful engineering research opportunities and hands-on experiences. In summer 2022, the 8-week research internship program engaged nine community college students from diverse backgrounds to participate in four engineering research projects across several engineering disciplines. Each project team was supervised by at least a faculty advisor and a student peer mentor enrolled in the four-year university. The research project outcomes of the internship, as well as the external evaluation results, have shown that the summer research internship program delivered its objectives to have student interns gain valuable engineering research experience, strengthened their confidence in problem solving, and reinforced their interest in pursuing an engineering degree. Furthermore, the program improved the students' technical skillset, team collaboration, time management, and communication skills. The first-year development and implementation of the program, as well as its outcomes and lessons learned, will be presented in this paper.