A team of students under Biomedical Engineering professor Megan Madonna will explore the connection between young students’ sense of belonging in a community and their ability and motivation to solve hard problems related to their community. We are interested in studying who and why people become and remain engineers. The goal of the 2025 Data+ project would be two-fold: 1) quantify the impact of Ignite on students’ confidence STEM and 2) correlate students’ interviews and levels of engagement through the Ignite program to students’ resilience and community identity. We aim to study how challenging students to use STEM to solve problems in their own community may boost students’ likelihood of remaining in and enjoying STEM. This project will build off of data collected in Ignite’s 2024-2025 Bass Connections team.
Project Lead: Megan Madonna, BME
Project Manager: Marcia dos Santos, BME
View the team’s final poster here
Improving Students’ STEM Identity through Design and Tinkering
Watch the team discuss their project
