Leveraging Students' Funds of Knowledge in Chemical Engineering Design Challenges Supports Persistence Intentions

Lower division chemistry and chemical engineering courses commonly emphasize efficient acquisition of core content. While experts perceive the organization of the discipline, students perceive their courses as fragmented. This has a more severe impact on students from groups historically excluded from STEM fields, who may not have a deep understanding of the opportunities that lie on the horizon. In order to make progress on this issue, we first sought to better understand our diverse students' chemical engineering funds of knowledge.that is, the everyday and cultural experiences salient for chemistry and chemical engineering. We found that minoritized students expressed more funds of knowledge: women expressed STEM interest and past success more than men; students from minoritized racial and ethnic groups and/or who spoke a language other than English at home expressed more community funds of knowledge. We developed design challenges for core chemical engineering courses to build on these varied funds of knowledge. We found no differences between minoritized students and their more privileged peers in terms of their intent to persist. We share implications for both chemistry and chemical engineering courses seeking to support diverse student success.

Automated summary

The study found that marginalized students in chemical engineering express more foundational knowledge, such as women's interest in STEM and success experiences, as well as students from minority ethnic groups or who speak other languages at home expressing more community knowledge. By developing challenging courses, it is possible to better build on different knowledge bases. The research also indicates that marginalized students and more privileged peers do not differ in terms of persistence intentions.