The proliferation of digital educational applications (apps) has revolutionized the pedagogical landscape for students and instructors, both within and beyond the confines of traditional classrooms. Educational apps offer a variety of features that can help students learn more effectively, including personalized instruction and real-time feedback.…

This dissertation explores the significant role of knowledge and engineering in shaping society, with a focus on the Enlightenment period's emphasis on science and its practical applications through engineering and technology. While recognizing the contribution of practical expertise and technoscientific awareness to societal progress, the…

This dissertation contains findings from two research projects. The first research area focused on assessing engineering students problem solving skills. Problem solving related to two material and energy balance topics--vapor liquid equilibrium and reacting systems with recycle - were examined first followed by a more holistic analysis across two…

Global manufacturing companies rely upon many just-in-time solutions to deliver technical training and performance support tools. Due to a global business model, it is necessary to translate all training content for non-English speaking learners. The increased importance that videos play in an overarching training strategy has placed a spotlight…

This study examined the racialized enclosure that African American/Black women in technology and engineering experience as they navigate to executive leadership. This qualitative narrative inquiry research explored, through lived experiences, the racialized enclosures inhibiting African American/Black women from excelling to executive leadership…

There is a growing interest in socially engaged engineering, which emphasizes the consideration of social, cultural, environmental, and economic factors to broadly benefit society. However, current workforce training and engineering education programs do not adequately support skill sets needed to link complex societal needs and contexts to design…

Software engineering is a growing field, with ever-increasing demand for capable engineers who can design, implement, and test the software that is needed for the modern world. With this increasing demand for software engineers, there is a corresponding increase in the demand placed on computer science programs that graduate these engineers.…

Motivated by applications in health care systems, this study focused on queueing network models with instances of simultaneous resource possession under capacity restrictions in different stages. Customers during service at certain nodes in the first-level or primary system may simultaneously need service from a second-level server. In this…

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) will drive the economy of the West in the future. The competitiveness and strength of the U.S. economy are reliant on a workforce with the skillset necessary to ensure that the nation remains a powerful force in the global economy. As a result, the under-representation of women in STEM is a…

This study examined how a technical college can best meet the needs of engineering technology-based employers to address the current workforce gap. The study also explored what engineering technology-based employers see as the largest skills gaps in the current workforce, as well as how a technical college can address the concerns. Using a…

Despite the open science movement and mandates for the sharing of research data by major funding agencies and influential journals, the citation of data sharing and reuse has not become standard practice in the various science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Advances in technology have lowered some barriers to data sharing,…

This dissertation investigates the intersection of economics of innovation and human capital development to understand how to empower individuals and marginalized communities to be directed to innovation and STEM disciplines. The research focuses on three main chapters: Chapter 1 examines the effectiveness of an education program in teaching and…

This dissertation presents a collection of three essays on the economics of higher education. Although these essays were conceived as independent research projects, they all concern higher education in Chile. For that reason, I begin in chapter 1 with a general overview of Chile's higher education system. I briefly describe the institutional…

This dissertation was driven by a need to better understand how the growing movement of nature-based education, particularly nature-based preschools, compares to more conventional approaches. This dissertation analyzed videos of preschool teaching to describe nature-based teaching practices, particularly around the outdoors as a classroom and a…

For many students in engineering and engineering technology programs in the US, senior capstone design courses require students to form a team, define a problem, and find a feasible technical solution to address this problem. Students must integrate the knowledge and skills acquired during their studies at the college or university level. These…