Date August 26, 2024

Incoming engineering hopefuls STEP onto campus for college readiness experience

By Beth James

A cohort of 23 incoming engineers joined the inaugural Summer Transition Engineering Program (STEP) for a week on campus prior to the start of the semester, and the beginning of their collegiate career.

It was the prospect of doing something “collaborative” that drew Alicia Chen ’28 into the STEP program, as she was looking forward to meeting and talking with peers before the start of classes. The STEP residency program was the conclusion for a select number of rising first-years who had attended the online series of modules facilitated by Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Megan Russell prior to the start of the fall semester.

Engineering’s STEP program is the newest pre-orientation program offered at the University, welcoming students to campus before classes begin and designed to foster inclusion, community, and the inspiration needed to thrive as a Brown engineer. It included exposure to key mathematical concepts and problem-solving exercises that engineers are likely to encounter during the first year of engineering studies, and beyond.

STEP was modeled after Computer Science’s Mosaic+ Transition, a year-long mentorship and peer-support program that welcomes newly admitted underrepresented students to Brown’s Computer Science department. That program also begins with an online summer course, followed by a week of on-campus activities and tasks to help prepare them for the rigors of computer science just before the semester begins.

The online portion of Engineering’s STEP was held from July 8-August 16, with the in-person residency following from August 19-23. During both pieces of the hybrid format, Russell planned meticulously planned how students would engage with the various support resources available across the University and the School of Engineering. No prior engineering experience was required.

Seventy-seven incoming engineers participated in the seven-week online session, logging more than 1,700 online learning hours and sharpening calculus and problem-solving skills, while unpacking engineering culture. Modules in Coursera on learning styles and communication were interspersed with problem-solving strategies and calculus reviews. Students explored access to Schaum’s study guides and entered into breakout sessions for targeted math and science discussions in smaller groups. University personnel from the Center for Career Exploration, the Chaplain’s Office, Stonewall House, and Engineering professors like Sorensen Family Dean Tejal Desai, Louise Manfredi, and Alex Zaslavsky introduced themselves online to the cohort, coming “live” via Zoom from their offices and campus spaces. Current engineering concentrators serving as STEP coordinators answered questions and moderated breakout rooms as needed to make sure all students were engaged.

By Tuesday morning of the residency week, with two dining hall experiences, dorm room keys and student IDs all situated, the smaller on-campus cohort sat through its first lecture on the mechanics of sports: ball collisions. Professor Roberto Zenit, who instructs several first-year engineering courses and is the Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence in Engineering, introduced the idea of using the mechanics of impact to understand sports. After the lecture, he opened his laboratory for two days of group collaboration, where students learned to lean on each other to explore problem-solving exercises and experimentation for the project.

“It’s all about the students,” Zenit said. “We are very good at selecting students, all students that come to Brown are brilliant, but they come from diverse backgrounds. Some of them have had calculus in high school, some of them have not had calculus or physics, so it’s important for them to feel that they belong, that they can succeed. Programs like this can really make a difference in making them feel like they belong in such a place. Just by talking to a professor or somebody that looks like them, or just looking at physics in a more friendly way, that can make a big difference,” he said.

Graduate students from the Zenit lab were crucial in safely guiding the students through lab experiments where they loaded squash balls into an air cannon, unleashing it with a thwump against a backboard over which the correct lighting had been preset and a high-speed camera recorded the image of the ball’s impact. The students used MATLAB and other software to take measurements in finding the coefficient of restitution of the collision.

“If they want to be engineers,” Zenit said, “they need to understand how stuff works. Using sports as an example teaches them to analyze a problem in terms of motion and forces. They have to learn how to think scientifically and systematically … jumping or throwing a ball, it’s the same principles that we teach them in ENGN 30 and ENGN 40. It’s just a push to start thinking in that way.”

A provided rubric also indicated what the final (ungraded) presentation should include the following day. Russell worked time into the schedule to introduce the cohort to the SoE Career Closet (a gathering of professional items of clothing available to engineering students for free), and office hours with Professor Zenit to help prepare for the presentations.

“Office hours are such an important part of monitoring your own learning,” said Russell. “To know how to use them to take full advantage of engaging with a professor takes practice. Practice is what makes question-asking come naturally. To be able to clearly explain where you got lost in a problem, for example, instead of just saying ‘I don’t get it’ is realizing where the gap in knowledge is, and is a lifelong metacognitive skill even after college.”

Russell emphasized that the focus of STEP is not merely on mathematics and engineering applications, but more so to help students begin to build community, develop resilience and a growth mindset, practice effective study skills and academic help-seeking, and gain confidence in their ability to master whatever they desire, through consistency, strategic practice, patience, and persistence.

“One of the top priorities for Dean Desai is inviting students who have been historically underrepresented in engineering to consider the field, and to provide the pathways and tools to promote full engagement and enjoyment. It’s no surprise, then, that she was an avid supporter of STEP from the program’s inception,” she said.

Russell also said engineering faculty and current students were strongly in favor of developing an engineering-specific pre-orientation program to better support incoming students, which was feedback she had garnered in interviews throughout the previous academic year. In addition, alumni were especially enthusiastic about this new initiative, given their own experience and strong desire for current students to receive enhanced guidance on navigating engineering studies and career paths.

“We look forward to more and more students interested in engineering considering Brown as the place where they belong,” Russell said. “While more immediately, in the year ahead, STEP coordinators and residents have organically started a STEP mentoring program, and we’re planning to host multiple STEP-themed events like study sessions, workshops and more.”

Results were these curated experiences meant to enrich the transition into Brown, brought to fruition through the STEP program.

Yaeli Ranel Filus ’28, who came to Brown from Tel Aviv after taking two gap years, signed up for STEP because she was looking for an opportunity to refresh her mathematics and physics basics. “I feel so lucky to have had this intimate situation in which I could do so, and get to know peers and other university people on this level,” she said. Mirabel Sanchez ’28, from Chicago, agreed. “The emphasis was on collaboration, not individual gain,” she said. “I really liked the idea that new ideas were fostered in groups instead of struggling on our own.”