three students working at a table

Evaluating Impact of STEM Design and Mentorship in Durham

2026

A team of students led by BME professor Megan Madonna, director of Ignite, will transform Ignite’s raw program data into a clean, multi-year database capturing attendance, engagement, retention, survey outcomes, and classroom observations from 2021 to the present. They will analyze data from the 2025–2026 implementation while expanding and standardizing past datasets to make trends easily interpretable for non-experts. The team will also build predictive models linking in-class engagement to constructs such as engineering identity, resilience, and STEM self-efficacy, and develop automated tools to support future longitudinal research. This work will produce a usable database, reproducible modeling code, and visualizations that directly support upcoming evaluation efforts.

Project Lead: Megan Madonna (BME)

Project Manager: TBD

Contact

Assistant Director of Student Research, Data+ Program Director

Mathematics