Professional development activities that improve the persistence of low-income, academically talented underrepresented graduate students in engineering

Abstract

Recent federal budgets for STEM education are based on the belief that "the United States must equip students to excel in science, technology, engineering and mathematics to meet the needs of the 21st century." While the United States moves toward minority-majority status, that change is not reflected in the number of graduate degrees being awarded to underrepresented minorities. The Preparing Engineering Graduates Students for the 21st Century (PEGS21) project at UC Davis seeks to look at the transition from undergraduate to graduate study and extend prior research that identifies barriers to graduate degree attainment in first generation students. PEGS21 scholars participate in weekly seminars and a series of professional development workshops in the UC Davis GradPathways program and are asked to reflect on the value of each workshop on their learning. Analysis of the results from these reflection assignments suggests that GradPathways workshops have the potential to address certain challenges facing firstgeneration, low-income graduate students. In addition, measures of participants' self-efficacy related to persistence in graduate school improved with participation in the program and changes in self-efficacy were greater than the general population of first-year graduate engineering students. Future efforts will include a refinement of practices and resources creating more successful strategies for increasing numbers of low-income, academically-talented underrepresented engineers with graduate degrees in the workforce.