Undergraduate engineering education must train students to not only solve design challenges that transcend disciplinary boundaries, but also communicate, transfer knowledge, and collaborate across technical and non-technical boundaries. One approach to achieving this goal is teaching bio-inspired design (BID) in an engineering curriculum. In…

In recent years, employers have expressed concerns that Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) graduates, though proficient in their academic disciplines, lack the critical skills necessary for success in the workplace (Karimi & Pina, 2021). Additionally, many non-STEM majors do not develop the basic STEM competencies that…

In a year-long undergraduate research program, life science majors were paired with majors in the other STEM disciplines of computer science, engineering, mathematics and physical sciences, to work on interdisciplinary life science projects. Typical teams had one undergraduate in a life science and one from another STEM discipline, along with…

This paper deals with an integration of STEM education and project-based learning (PBL) by introducing a hybrid hardware/software-based learning platform covering eight learning units. PBL not only bridges the gap between theory and practice, but also focuses on improving students' soft skills, which is important as they prepare for further…

This paper summarizes our experience of teaching undergraduate robotic courses in the past ten years. The objective is to introduce students to the fundamental knowledge in robotics. Lecture topics covered subjects in both Autonomous Mobile Robots and Robotic Manipulator. In the lab sessions, students work on physical robots to acquire basic…

Background: The field of collaborative biostatistics plays a critical role in translating scientific discoveries into practical applications by providing sound statistical analysis, ensuring data integrity, and facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration in translational science and decision-making in healthcare. The role of a collaborative…

A curricular approach to supporting low-income STEM Scholars is outlined and initial associations with retention, social and cultural capital, perception of science, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations are examined. Details are provided for the curricular support program based on interdisciplinary research, service learning, and an explicit…

With support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Merced Anomaterials Center for Energy and Sensing (MACES) was launched in the summer of 2015 at the University of California Merced (UC Merced). MACES is a research and education center, focused on creating innovative materials-enabled solutions for energy and…

An interactive, field-based course on the environmental aspects of natural water was developed as part of STEM initiatives at a comprehensive university in the United States. The project is funded by the National Science Foundation. The course is focused on two fundamental student skills, such as hydrologic field procedures and analytical methods.…

Methods traditionally used to teach and train in STEM fields are being used to educate for careers in homeland security, Wall Street investments, and financial planning. An example of this trend is the increasing number of courses offered at institutions of higher education, such as financial engineering, computational finance, and risk analytics.…

LAZARUS is the Lab for the Analysis of Zombie Activity and Research into Undead Simulations. LAZARUS began in 2014 through a [UNIVERSITY] and [ISD] partnership, aimed at engaging K-12 students in rigorous research in a unique way. This partnership was the initial driving force in the conceptualization and creation of a super-computer known as the…

The "Grand Challenges" for Engineering are an effort to portray engineering as a field that has profound impacts on society. This study explores the level of interest first-year engineering students had in various "Grand Challenges" and in nanotechnology topics. We administered a survey to a large sample of students enrolled in…

St. Olaf College recently restructured its Summer Bridge Program (SBP) course for incoming low-income (LI) and first-generation (FG) college students from a non-major biology course, "Issues in Biology," to an interdisciplinary "Explorations in Science" course. Two significant changes were made with the intention of giving…

There are strong classroom ties between mathematics and the sciences of physics and chemistry, but those ties seem weaker between mathematics and biology. Practicing biologists realize both that there are interesting mathematics problems in biology, and that viewing classroom biology in the context of another discipline could support students'…

In an attempt to address declining persistence rates of university STEM majors (Science, Teaching, Engineering, and Math), concerns regarding retention rates and waning STEM faculty participation in faculty development, we report on a year-long professional development program called the STEM Professional Academy to Reinvigorate the Culture of…