Loyola faculty members receive NSF grant to research quantitative literacy among engineering students – Newsroom



Raenita Fenner, Ph.D., chair and associate professor of engineering, and Peggy O’Neill, Ph.D., professor of writing, have been awarded a two-12 months grant from the National Science Foundation to aid educators put together engineering college students for successful occupations. The $125,000 grant will guidance their task, “Collaborative Analysis: Investigate Initiation: Defining Engineering Quantitative Literacy.” Fenner and O’Neill are commencing work on the grant with their collaborators this summer season.
“The key target of this challenge will be to attain evidence to produce a scholar product for upcoming evaluation devices intended to evaluate first-yr engineering students’ quantitative literacy,” reported O’Neill. “One more aim of the grant is to acquire our talent as engineering education and learning scientists by functioning with far more experienced researchers, just one at Purdue and one at University of Florida, who will serve as our mentors all through the job.”
Fenner and O’Neill’s research will assistance recognize college or university-degree engineering students’ quantitative literacy, which include computational, interpretative, reasoning, and interaction expertise in phrases of quantitative information and facts and knowledge. This challenge aims to determine the quantitative literacy expectations of initially-year engineering students and create a usually means for measuring quantitative literacy, which will make it possible for educators to much better prepare potential engineering pupils for achievement.
“Dr. O’Neill and I have been collaborating considering that 2017 in the very best practices of teaching writing to engineering college students,” said Fenner. “Through this analysis we aim to present a holistic expertise for engineering students—weaving alongside one another engineering and producing to established them up for results in their long run occupations.”
Utilizing an proof-centered built framework, the investigate staff will articulate a university student design for assessing initial-12 months engineering students’ quantitative literacy as a result of various scientific tests. The investigation team will carry out a content evaluation of introductory engineering curricula. Subsequent, they will administer a observe-up study of introductory engineering school to deal with more exclusively the depth of learning anticipated of college students. Then, a smaller sample of assorted initially-calendar year students will be interviewed to decide the possibilities they had to establish their quantitative literacy capabilities. Ultimately, the outcomes will define quantitative literacy in just the particular context of engineering.
Loyola’s four-year undergraduate application in engineering brings together the University’s remarkable liberal arts means with strong coverage of both standard and rising regions of engineering to generate graduates who are prepared to excel in today’s assorted and quickly shifting setting. Students benefit from the University’s concentration on tutorial rigor and instructing excellence though getting broad-based mostly instruction in engineering fundamentals, though also choosing to focus in one of four concentration areas: computer system engineering, electrical engineering, components engineering or mechanical engineering.


