How does family support impact engineering student belongingness

A number of factors impact a student's academic success: motivation, the instructor, family socioeconomic status, and whether they feel like they belong. A Rowan University study funded by the National Science Foundation is examining the role family support plays in fostering belongingness among low-income engineering students, with a specific focus on the difficulties families face in doing so.

Due to the rigorous nature of engineering education, students may question whether they belong in the discipline . However, a sense of belongingness, rather than GPA and SAT scores, is a better predictor of student success over the long term.

This study specifically looks at low-income students' academic experience and what challenges and joys their families feel, too-and how these challenges affect belongingness.

"Families play an important role in the lives of low-income students," said Justin Major, Ph.D, an assistant professor in the Experiential Engineering Education Department at Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering . "A lot of the strains that low-income students experience, in some ways, are due to the challenges faced by family."

For the study, Major is recruiting 12 low-income students from diverse backgrounds-including different races, genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, and neurodivergent identities-for interviews. In addition to speaking with each student, Major will conduct interviews with their families and chosen families-individuals with whom the student has intentionally formed deep, intimate connections-to understand how they support the student. Major will also explore the challenges these family members face in their own lives and examine how those experiences affect the student.

Evaluating the impact of students' chosen connections is essential to the study, Major explained.

"Chosen families end up being a supplemental family for low-income students to help them succeed," Major said.

Major hopes the insights gleaned from the interviews will expand understanding of what it means to belong, how families impact belonging, and how to better support low-income students' families.