Collaborative Research: Supporting Student Well-being with a Community of Transformation

This project aims to serve the national interest by working to shift the narrative nationally in engineering education from surviving in a culture of stress to a narrative of thriving. Higher education is facing a mental health crisis, with increasing rates of mental health and well-being (MHWB) challenges both nationally and globally. This change towards a culture of thriving in engineering is particularly important because MHWB impacts every aspect of engineering culture.

Most approaches to support MHWB use faculty training in recognizing students in distress, which is a deficit approach instead of a proactive, asset-based approach. This Level 2 Institutional and Community Transformation project is designed to build on an existing community of practice that includes over 100 people, including faculty, staff, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and university administrators.

This group empowers members to discuss MHWB in engineering and share strategies to support student, faculty, and staff MHWB. Strengthening and expanding this community will have an asset focus on how to promote and celebrate well-being, normalizing these conversations in engineering education. This project has the potential to directly support the MHWB of students, faculty, staff, and administrators in engineering education.

The main research question is: How can faculty, staff, and administrators act as agents of change for cultures of well-being in undergraduate engineering education? The design consists of (1) a programmatic expansion of the Wellness in Engineering Community of Transformation (WE-CoT) with well-being advocate mini-grants to support the integration and assessment of MHWB interventions as well as (2) qualitative research that assesses the experience and advocacy development of participants via focus groups, interviews, and photovoice, a method centering members’ voices.

The programmatic expansion plans to include a monthly meeting series and development of a sustainable community structure. The project includes support for development of a MHWB intervention, assessment plan, and data analysis for mini-grant recipients. Each project will receive mentorship support with experts in educational research methods and/or intervention development and counseling.

This programmatic expansion is positioned to support the continuation of MHWB workshops for engineering faculty, staff, and administrators nationally. The project plans to utilize a qualitative research design focused on centering the voice of engineering faculty, staff, and administrators to answer the research questions. These will consist of photovoice interviews and focus groups with both members in the WE-CoT and also with non-community students, faculty, staff, and administrators who are engaged in engineering education.

If successful, the results from this research will inform WE-CoT initiatives to increase the effectiveness of the community in supporting change agents around mental health in engineering. Research results will be disseminated in scholarly publications as well as through WE-CoT monthly meetings and conference MHWB workshops. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students.

Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities.

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.