NSF Awards: 2131875
The Research-Oriented Learning Experiences (ROLE) in Engineering Program seeks to contribute to the educational equity and research initiatives of Latino/a college students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. This project aims at encouraging Latina undergraduates to participate in high-impact research-oriented educational activities, where undergraduates will be guided to conduct research in collaboration with Latino/a graduate students and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) faculty, leading to pathways to graduate programs.
Hilda Cecilia Contreras Aguirre
Research Scientist
Thank you for visiting our Research-Oriented Learning Experiences (ROLE) in Engineering video. Our project is in its initial stage, we started in February 2022 with our first student cohort. The project seeks to encourage Latinas to be involved in research and further their interests in graduate studies. We are especially interested in discussion regarding what other aspects could positively influence the college experiences of women of color in Engineering. However, you can also comment on any aspect of the project.
Jeff Milbourne
STEM Coordinator-Writing and Learning Center
@Hilda Thanks so much for your video. The project concept is great, particularly given the local/contextual factors at NMSU. I'm admittedly biased towards research experiences for undergraduates: I think those activities constitute a fantastic tool for both learning and career development. The particulars of the research activities that the video highlighted were great (looked like a lot of fun actually...).
I did have a few questions:
How does the mentoring process work between the graduate and undergraduates? Mentorship is a key component of a successful research experience, so I'm curious what that looks like in your program.
Beyond graduate school pathways, how are you thinking about program outcomes and impacts?
Kristin Flaming
Hilda Cecilia Contreras Aguirre
Hilda Cecilia Contreras Aguirre
Research Scientist
Thank you for watching our video. Your question is very interesting! For this first cohort of undergraduate students, participating in our program was their first experience with research. We vision the mentoring side as a network where undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty work together and support each other building community. Our Latina students have even mentioned seeing more women in the lab than in their own classes, which has triggered a sense of camaraderie and friendship. This shows already an improvement in their college experience.
Jeff Milbourne
STEM Coordinator-Writing and Learning Center
That's great to hear; increased representation in lab settings is a fantastic outcome.
Hilda Cecilia Contreras Aguirre
Sarah Haavind
Senior Research Project Manager
Hello Hilda and ROLE team! I agree with Jeff that the operating term for this program is absolutely "fantastic!" It is obvious that your participants are deeply engaged already since February, given the exemplar project you highlight in the video working with drone technology. Kudos! It also sounds like the mentoring element of ROLES has already provided memorable positive impacts: opportunities to observe many women conducting science in the lab. I'm curious what are your next steps, or what are you already learning needs more attention since you began working with your first student cohort? You have laid an exceptional foundation, what's next?
Hilda Cecilia Contreras Aguirre
Luis Rodolfo Garcia Carrillo
Assistant Professor
A next step would be the involvement of one of the members of this cohort as a mentor in the following group. This will allow us to give some continuity and speed up the process of learning and transferring knowledge, not only among peers of the same cohort but also among consecutive cohorts. The learning curve of our technical tools (Robot Operating System) is steep at first, so having a conversation with someone who has recently faced all the challenging situations encountered while learning ROS is seen as a critical need
More attention is needed regarding the interaction between participants. Since these students come from different academic departments and different academic levels, we have observed that it is very challenging to have a group of students (women) that interact often on a daily basis. Most of the time they see different partners every day. We will try to find a better way to coordinate schedules for the next cohort.
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Luis
Kristin Flaming
Hilda Cecilia Contreras Aguirre
Sarah Haavind
Kristin Flaming
This is a great idea Luis. Like you said it will save time with the experienced mentors can build on what has worked and not worked to make improvements. We have what we call peer mentors with our Passion-Driven Statistics model. These are undergraduate students that have taken the introductory statistics course and now serve as a mentor to students currently enrolled. We do find that students in the class are more comfortable going to the peer mentor versus the instructor for help. Many of our partners require one session a week with a small cohort of students and their peer mentor without the instructor. We also find that peer mentors that return for a second or more time as a peer mentor are much better at helping the new peer mentors learn the ropes.
Are you/do you plan to collect data from the mentors? We have found the formal feedback from our peer mentors invaluable in the early stages and do plan to write that data up when we get closer to the end of our third phase of funding in a few years.
Sarah Haavind
Hilda Cecilia Contreras Aguirre
Research Scientist
Thank you for watching our video, Kristin. Peer mentors play a quite important role in undergraduate students. We will collect data from mentors through two interview protocols. The first interview protocol will examine program and activities expectations, and prior leadership and mentoring experiences. The second protocol will address professional development, mentoring outcomes, and the effectiveness of mentoring training. Other documents generated by mentors reflecting on their research experiences through journaling, documenting practices, and completing training activities will be also used as part of the data collection.
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Cecilia
Kristin Flaming
Sarah Haavind
Kristin Flaming
Sounds like you will have a lot of qualitative data to comb through that will be very valuable to your project.
Bhaskar Upadhyay
Associate Professor
Retention and recruitment can't be emphasized enough to build the capacities of LatinX students and students from other minority groups. Also, the focus is on providing research experiences for students to see how they find this field as a part of their identities. I really believe that bringing Latinx students as researchers would support and encourage them to experience what a scientist is and how they could be one. What is less clear is what kinds of experiences Latinx students want in this context?
Hilda Cecilia Contreras Aguirre
Research Scientist
Thank you for your comment and question, Bhaskar Upadhyay. Besides acquiring experience outside of what they are learning in classrooms through research, Latinx students value having a supportive group of peers who help each other. Sharing cultural values and communal effort to eventually help others are remarkable characteristics perceived among Latinx (in particular Latinas) undergraduate students in STEM.
Mohsin Jamali
This is a great project and learning experience for students. Thanks for sharing with us.
Hilda Cecilia Contreras Aguirre
Research Scientist
Thank you so much to all people who watched, commented, and vote for our video!
If you are interested and want to know more about my research, you can go to: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hilda-Ceci...