Sarah Wilson, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, has received a new award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to bolster well-being among engineering students in the amount of $347,824.
The estimated 3-year project is a collaborative effort with the University of Michigan’s Karin Jensen, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and Jensen brings an additional $559,831 to the collaborative research project.
Titled, “Supporting Student Well-being with a Community of Transformation,” the project aims to shift the culture in engineering education away from stress and survival and address the growing mental health and well-being (MHWB) challenges faced by students, faculty and staff. It builds on an existing community of practice, the Wellness in Engineering Community of Transformation (WE-CoT), which includes a broad network of faculty, staff, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and university administrators.
“The community of practice is a national network with faculty, students and staff from a wide range of universities,” said Wilson. “Currently, we have about 200 participants that are signed up for the network from universities across the country.”
The community promotes discussions and strategies to support MHWB, with a focus on proactive, asset-based approaches and not waiting until a student is visibly in distress. The project will expand WE-CoT through mini-grants to fund MHWB interventions, along with qualitative research to assess the development and experiences of participants.
The endgame for Wilson and Jensen is to foster cultures of well-being across undergraduate engineering education. If successful, the results from this research will inform WE-CoT initiatives to increase the effectiveness of the community in supporting engineering students across the globe.
“With this grant, we saw an opportunity to deepen the impact of the virtual community by addressing the barriers faculty face in becoming agents of change for mental health in engineering,” Wilson shared. “Our goal is to equip faculty, staff, and students with the resources and support they need to drive change around mental health within their own institutions.”
Wilson and Jensen share a yearslong collaboration on their work building this community of practice. The two have also worked together to develop a workshop—that has been presented both nationally and internationally—for faculty and staff on supporting undergraduate engineering student mental health and well-being. The workshops have provided opportunities to engage and educate participants on how they can integrate best practices for supporting student well-being into their classrooms.
Research reported in this publication was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Award No. 2336268. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.
