Project Background

This website highlights the key elements from the National Science Foundation (NSF) EAGER Grant: Using Human-Centered Design to Conceptualize and Prototype Ways to Increase Graduate Student Engagement with Transformative Research.

Patrick Little, Professor Emeritus of Engineering at Harvey Mudd College is the Co-Investigator along with Tom Maiorana, Assistant Professor of Design at University of California, Davis. The goal of this project has been to explore and prototype ways to support transformative research in engineering graduate school.

We investigated this issue using a human-centered approach which entailed conducting a series of interviews with current and potential graduate students, engineers who opted out of graduate school as well as faculty and administrators of engineering graduate programs. The content from the interviews was then synthesized into key themes which we explored through a variety of low-to mid-resolution prototypes.

Our team found five key obstacles to students within engineering: A perceived lack of creative fulfillment, barriers to entry, student well-being, the pull from industry and a lack of perceived interdisciplinary options. This website provides an overview of those findings as well as the variety of artifacts and interventions (prototypes) that we used to explore this complex topic.