Project Grant 2422010

This $179,171 project grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (CFDA 47.041 - Engineering) to the University of Georgia Research Foundation aims to reconceptualize community cultural wealth in the context of engineering design courses. The research team will conduct interviews with approximately 12-15 minoritized undergraduate engineering students to explore how their linguistic, resistant, navigational, familial, social, and aspirational capital manifests in design experiences. The researchers will then develop and validate a survey instrument to assess engineering students' opportunities to practice design-based forms of community cultural wealth and its impact on their self-efficacy and identity development. The project will publish critical counternarratives and provide workshops for educators to integrate asset-based approaches into the professional formation of engineers, helping to build a more diverse engineering workforce equipped to address complex 21st century challenges. This award reflects NSF's mission and has been deemed worthy of support based on its intellectual merit and broader impacts.