2024 Student Academic Success Research Grants Awarded

The Student Success Research Lab is pleased to announce four new grantees under the Student Academic Success Research (SASR) Grants program. Winning proposals received top marks for methodological quality and practical importance from a panel representing multiple colleges, units, and campuses across the university, with a focus on ensuring that each funded project has clear and practical implications for the design, implementation, engagement, or scale-up of practices to improve Ohio State student success. This year’s topics range from the impacts of Student Farms Programs to the development of students’ identity as engineers; read on for more information about each project.

Potential for Student Farm Programs to support accessible and impactful undergraduate education promoting agri-food systems thinking and urban agricultural career pathways (Fernanda Souza Krupek, assistant professor and urban food system horticulturalist, and Florence Sessoms, assistant professor in roots, rhizosphere and resilience, Department of Horticulture and Crop Science) 

Student Farm Programs provide hands-on experiences that help develop a work-ready labor force for agricultural jobs in Ohio and the Midwest Great Lakes Region broadly. This study will explore how involvement with Student Farms affects students’ system-thinking skills, confidence, sense of belonging, and connection to career pathways, as well as how Student Farm Programs can improve their integration with other aspects of students’ college experiences and learning.

In addition to her role as an Assistant Professor, project co-leader Fernanda Krupek serves as the state extension specialist in urban food systems, and provides leadership for an applied research and extension program focused on horticultural food production systems in urban and urbanizing environments and communities across the Midwest Great Lakes region. She also works alongside her project co-leader Florence Sessoms to advise the university’s Student Farm program and provide mentorship to a cohort of students. As Dr. Krupek says, “Through this SASR grant project, we look forward to providing science-based and data-driven understanding of how our Student Farm Program as hands-on training can support accessible and impactful agri-food systems education. Ultimately, we hope this research will provide the foundation for positive impacts on future approaches to promote student success and increase enrollment, especially from urban and suburban populations, which is a major focus area for our department and college.”

Identifying Structures and Practices that Support/Hinder Engineering Identity Development Using Critical Frameworks (Geraldine L. Cochran, associate professor, Department of Physics) 

This study aims to understand the structures and systems that impact engineering identity development among engineering students enrolled in introductory physics courses. Findings will have implications for the structure, design, and transformation of introductory physics sequences, particularly those designed for engineering majors.

As an Associate Professor, Geraldine Cochran conducts equity-oriented physics education research, with the aim of making physics more accessible and enjoyable for learners and professionals, and enabling them to connect with the information and find it meaningful to their lives. As Dr. Cochran says, “With the SASR grant project, I look forward to learning more about student engineering identity, physics identity, and math identity. Prior research shows an important relationship between student disciplinary identity and their persistence, success, and enjoyment in learning. However, there is very little research connecting identity development to course components. There is a growing body of literature connecting disciplinary identity to other aspects of identity but there is still a lot that we don’t know. I look forward to contributing to these two areas.”

From classroom to career: Examining student experiences and career intentions in the field of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (Benjamin Ahn, associate professor, Department of Engineering Education) 

This mixed-methods study will explore the learning experiences of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) students from a diverse array of backgrounds, how and why certain experiences contribute to students’ decisions to pursue engineering occupations, and how learning experiences can be improved to support the pursuit of engineering occupations.

In his role as an Associate Professor, Benjamin Ahn focuses his research on improving outcomes for students and professionals in engineering. Through his work of enhancing engineering education, he finds new ways to impact students in their educational experiences and to support their career aspirations. Dr. Ahn says, “I am particularly excited about the SASR grant project, which explores the intersection of aerospace engineering and engineering education. Through this project, I look forward to collaborating with faculty members and students, learning from their expertise, and contributing to advancing aerospace engineering education.”

“A single stick may smoke, but it will not burn”: Unveiling the community cultural wealth of Black women in Engineering student organizations (Dira Melissa "Mel" Delpech, engineering education Ph.D. student, graduate assistant, GEM fellow, and Emily Dringenberg, associate professor, Department of Engineering Education) 

This study will explore the distinct struggles faced by Black women in higher education, specifically in the field of engineering. The data will shed light on how Black women interpret their participation within engineering organizations, including how these women navigate stratified gendered and racial environments.

As researchers in engineering education, both Mel Delpech and Emily Dringenberg work to integrate social science theories and research methods into technical context. They use asset-based theories to understand the experiences of engineering stakeholders, especially students who remain marginalized, with the ultimate aim of building an engineering workforce that can serve everyone as societal stakeholders. As the two say of their partnership, “We are excited to provide engineering students with space to express the complex challenges that they face. Through our project, we will identify concrete ways in which the university and student organizations can be more strategic and nuanced in how they support all students as dynamic individuals in an ever-changing world. As a research team, we also look forward to completing this work with a high degree of quality and to the opportunity to gain empathy and understanding through what the participants share with us such that we can all be positive change agents in engineering and beyond.”

For more information about the SASR Grants Program, including a list of past grantees, visit the Student Success Research Lab website.