Assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering Jerrod Henderson has received nearly $400,000 in NSF funding for his project “Research: Photovoice: Visualizing Undergraduate Student Engineering Identities,” which will run through 2029.
The project builds upon what is already known about engineering identity and its connection to student persistence in engineering — that is, whether engineering students continue, engage, and thrive throughout their educational experiences — to paint a clearer picture of how this student engineering identity develops over time.
“We’re following students from their first year through their sophomore year and asking them to ‘show us,’ through photographs and their own stories, what becoming an engineer looks and feels like,” said Henderson. “There’s been a lot of attention paid to the first-year experience, but we know much less about what happens as students move into that second year. That’s really where we’re digging in.”
He characterizes their earlier photovoice work as more “exploratory,” akin to pilot studies; these efforts helped researchers identify the potential of photovoice, develop individualized approaches to applying the method in engineering education, and build expertise in using students’ photographs and stories to understand their engineering identities.
“This project,” he said, “allows us to take that work much further. For example, instead of capturing students’ experiences during a single semester, we’re following the same students across four semesters, from their first year through their sophomore year.
“We’ve also been able to innovate methodologically as we’ve continued this work. We’ve learned a lot about how to design photovoice studies, develop prompts that elicit meaningful reflection, engage students in making sense of their own photographs, and use those photographs to better understand experiences that can be difficult to capture through more traditional research methods.”
The project is recruiting students from different types of institutions to better understand how the college or university environment contributes to a student’s engineering identity development, and Henderson hopes that the findings from this study do not only live on “in the pages of academic journals.”
“We want what students share with us to inform how we design interventions, programs and support systems within engineering education. This work isn’t about figuring out how to ‘fix’ students. It’s about asking what faculty, staff, departments and colleges of engineering can learn from students’ experiences and what we can do differently to create environments that support their development.”
Locally, he hopes the work “elevate[s] our own conversations about student success and, more importantly, informs the action plans that come from those conversations.”
“We have an opportunity to listen closely to what students are showing and telling us about their experiences and to use that knowledge to think differently about how we support them,” he said. “Then there’s the broader community-facing piece. Through public photo exhibitions and other forms of dissemination, we want students’ photographs and stories to spark conversations about who becomes an engineer, what that journey looks like and what it takes to support students along the way.”
“This is a large-scale project that will involve Henderson Research Group (HRG) Ph.D. students, ACES postdoctoral researchers, Drs. Lori D. Rhea, Montrey Pertile and Geoff Green II, and other members of our research team throughout data collection, analysis and dissemination,” Henderson added. “That’s exciting to me because we’re not only conducting the research; we’re also using the project as an opportunity to train the next generation of engineering education researchers.
“I also want to acknowledge Dr. David Horton Jr., who was instrumental in developing this proposal and helping us think through the design of the project. Although he is no longer at the University of Houston, his contributions were incredibly important in getting us to this point.
“Ultimately, I’m excited that we have an opportunity to listen to students over time. They’re going to let us into their lives for two years and show us, quite literally, what becoming an engineer looks like from their perspective. There’s something really powerful about that.”
The project will conduct its first focus groups this fall, and is looking for first-year engineering students who are willing to share their experiences and stay connected to the study as it follows them through their sophomore year.
“We’re hoping our colleagues across the country will help us get the word out and connect us with first-year engineering students connect us with first-year engineering students who may be interested in participating,” said Henderson. “We’re excited to get started.”