(61f) Can Enriched Extracurricular Activities Influence Early Undergraduate Students’ Interest and Participation in Chemical Engineering Design Teams?

Conventional wisdom advocates that engineering student’s involvement in extracurricular activities is one of the key factors for a fulfilling and beneficial college experience. Engineering literature shows that extracurricular activities such as professional organization and participation in design teams can positively impact undergraduate students, in particular, those from underrepresented communities. The current work explores the use of extracurricular professional development workshops to motivate and engage early undergraduate students on enriched process design activities. Student primary motivators for participation are building their strength for future job hiring, building community with their peers, and to represent our institution during the design team competition hosted by AIChE every year.

The first cohort of the professional development workshops invited students to engage voluntarily in chemical engineering design skills. Only students that were in their first, sophomore and junior years were accepted to participate. Students online instructional videos independently and then partake in design challenges in a collaborative setting. Video lessons focused on completing simulation exercises that introduce common industry equipment (e.g., Reactors, Pumps, Heaters, Coolers, Mixers, and Tees), and processes. Modeling and simulation of these processes were facilitated by using UniSim/HYSYS tools. Each face-to-face workshop required students to work on team projects challenges using what they learned in the online tutorials to solve exercises at a higher level. The study will use an already validated pre- and post- questionnaire and open ended-questions to examine how attitudes before and after being impacted by the professional development workshops. The current work will present valuable information for designing enriched extracurricular activities that can potentially be used for curriculum improvement and participation in design teams.