Stephanie Claussen
San Francisco State University, CA·Education Research·Early-career
More than half of American college students are low-income or first-generation, meaning neither parent holds a bachelor's degree. Many of them attend broad-access institutions, colleges that admit almost everyone who applies.
- Fields
Education Research
Engineering
Social Science
- Topics
engineering education
first-generation students
low-income students
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2030
What they work on
- Trace how low-income and first-generation engineering students convert family and community assets into the social and cultural capital needed for success, using longitudinal interviews with students and recent graduates.
- Examine how engineering faculty and staff perceive students' assets and how they believe students can best use them, through interviews with educators.
- Build a case study of low-income and first-generation engineering students at one broad-access, minority-serving institution by combining student, alumni, faculty and staff data, and share the findings through a national community of practice.
More about the research
These students graduate at about half the rate of their peers and leave with more debt. Yet engineering education research has paid them little attention. This project asks how such students succeed in engineering despite a system slow to meet their needs, and what faculty and staff can do to help.
Why it matters
Low-income and first-generation students make up most U.S. college students but graduate from engineering at lower rates. This work could give engineering faculty and staff at broad-access institutions practical, asset-based strategies to support these students. A national community of practice will share the strategies to help improve programs at many institutions.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jane Lehr
California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo, CA·Education Research
Test whether scholarship program activities grow transfer students' social networks, resilience, confidence and sense of belonging, using social network analysis, surveys and qualitative interviews.
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.
Lance Perez
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, NE·Education Research
Identify the rural assets and structural barriers that shape engineering awareness before college, through site visits and semi-structured interviews with principals, counselors and STEM teachers at rural Nebraska high schools.
The school
San Francisco State University: 3 labs on PI Pages, $42M a year on research, 17 research doctorates a year.
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