Planning: Track 1: Engineering WISE (Wellness through Integrated Support and Engagement)

This planning grant will allow for the development of a blueprint for a Center for Equity in Engineering, the Engineering WISE Center, that will drive cultural change in the College of Engineering (COE) at the University of Kentucky (UK) through prioritization of Wellness through Integrated Support and Engagement. Mental health differentially impacts students who are traditionally underserved in engineering.

For instance, sexual minority, first generation, Black and Latinx students perceive that mental difficulties impact their academics more frequently than their engineering peers. Thus, we must drive cultural change to create an engineering environment that prioritizes and supports the mental health of all students. The Center Mission Statement is: to create practices aimed at enhancing student well-being and improving sense of belonging within a COE.

The Center will increase access to resources that support student mental health and ensure students receive positive messages about their identities and challenges. Relationships are an important tool in meeting this goal, which is to help engineering students thrive through their engineering training and beyond. Activities will be designed to improve mental health and sense of belonging outcomes for all COE students.

Additionally, the planning grant will ensure that the Center activities are transferable to outside institutions. This work will provide insight into how to create supportive and inclusive environments for all students, allowing students to thrive through their engineering training and beyond.

This planning grant will develop, identify and refine activities for a Center for Equity in Engineering focused around supporting student mental health and wellness through five concurrent stages: 1) Refine Center activities established based on prior research, 2) Identify novel Center activities, 3) Integrate activities into existing institutional resources, 4) Ensure transfer of activities to outside institutions, and 5) Collect baseline data and develop a plan to evaluate Center outcomes. Participatory research methods will be used with key engineering stakeholders (e.g., students, faculty, administrators) to define the problem of mental health in engineering, identify priority areas and develop interventions for integration into the future Center.

Faculty and student interviews will facilitate understanding of how faculty communication can positively (and negatively) impact mental health culture and sense of belonging in the classroom. This will allow for the development of tailored and specific communication training for engineering faculty that is informed by the engineering student experience.

Finally, focus groups with students, faculty, staff and administrators will guide strategies for Center structure, function and branding to enhance student engagement. An internal advisory board will ensure that the Center activities complement and integrate with existing campus mental health and wellness resources. Further, an external advisory board consists of faculty from a broad range of institutions with experience in research on student mental health and supporting pathways for students through STEM.

This external advisory board will ensure that activities developed for the Center meet the needs of all engineering students across the full breadth of institutional contexts. This planning grant will result in a blueprint for the Engineering WISE Center that will maximize impact on mental health culture in engineering that is feasible not only at UK, but also outside institutions.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.