Jingru Benner
Western New England University, MA·Education Research
Many academically strong students from low-income families leave engineering before they finish their degree. This project asks which supports help them stay and graduate.
- Fields
Education Research
Engineering
- Topics
STEM education
engineering education
mechanical engineering
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Provide four-year scholarships to two cohorts of low-income, high-achieving mechanical engineering students and track their retention and graduation.
- Create course-based laboratory research experiences that deepen scholars' technical engineering knowledge early in their degree.
- Develop an entrepreneurship curriculum that teaches students to identify opportunities and builds workplace skills, and measure how it affects student success.
- Evaluate mentoring, learning communities and the new courses with validated assessment instruments and feedback, then extend effective practices across the university.
More about the research
It focuses on whether combining hands-on research experience with training in entrepreneurship can raise students' confidence in their own abilities early in college, and so improve retention and degree completion.
Why it matters
Low-income engineering students graduate at lower rates than their peers, which narrows who enters the technical workforce. Evidence from this project on which combinations of research experience, entrepreneurship training and mentoring keep these students enrolled could guide universities in designing support programs. It could help more low-income students finish STEM degrees and enter engineering careers.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
David Lipke
Missouri University of Science and Technology, MO·Education Research
Increase degree completion among about 45 academically talented, low-income ceramic and glass engineering undergraduates at three universities by providing scholarships of up to $15,000 for up to five years.
Daniel Gillen
University of California-Irvine, CA·Education Research
Provide cohort-based scholarships for up to three years to about 115 low-income statistics and data science undergraduates across seven universities, continuing support for at least 65 into graduate study.
Dustin Grote
Weber State University, UT·Education Research
Examine how intra- and inter-institutional partnerships are designed and sustained to support low-income engineering students, through a multiple case study of S-STEM program leaders and their organizational partners.
The school
Western New England University: 2 labs on PI Pages.
Reach out
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