More students abandon engineering school than graduate, and a growing body of evidence suggests they leave engineering because they feel unwelcome.
Katherine Goodman, who received a PhD in Technology, Media & Society in 2015 from the ATLAS Institute, is with a University of Colorado Denver research group spearheading an effort to help students "from all walks of life" feel welcome in engineering. The project, Broadening Participation in Engineering, received a $350,000 National Science Foundation grant to support a three-year faculty learning community within CU Denver's College of Engineering, Design and Computing.
Goodman's PhD research focused on using both quantitative and qualitative methods to characterize transformative experiences in higher education, particularly in STEM disciplines. She is an assistant professor/associate director at CU Denver's InWorks, an innovation initiative of the CU Denver and the Anschutz Medical Campus where creators, thinkers, designers and makers collaborate "to solve humanity’s most pressing problems."