The past few months of my PhD journey have been an absolute whirlwind! Aside from my typical class and GTA responsiblities, I was juggling my dissertation proposal, an ASEE conference paper, and preparing for the KEEN (Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network) National Conference! It was a lot of work at times and a little daunting, but whenever I took a step back from it all, I realized how cool all the work is that I’m doing and how amazing it is to be doing it as a PhD student. Along the way, I learned several important lessons that will inform how move through Engineering Education moving forward.
A long term goal of mine was to finish my dissertation proposal, send it to my committee, and formally start my candidacy exam on February 1st which happened! I blocked of time weekly to work on my proposal and flesh out my research design since the Summer of 2023, and seeing the kind of progress and growth I was making was incredible. For some time, I had learned about all the different elements of research design, what kinds of things I need to consider, and what decisions need to be justified, and finally putting all this knowledge into practice helped to make all this conceptual knowledge more tangible. This process also showed me the power of setting aside dedicated work time for specific projects. With each passing week, I could see the progress I was making and always ended each week a few steps ahead than where I started.
While finishing up my proposal and sending that to my committee, I was able to work on an ASEE paper with fellow RIME members, Amanda Singer and Carter Huber, along with Drs. Kajfez and Kecskemety! This paper focused on the application of some indirect assessments our KEEN Research & Assessment Team developed in the honors track of our first-year program. We had some interesting findings in our data analysis and it’s exciting to put this out into the world for other practitioners to reference as they help their students develop an entrepreneurial mindset. It was also very cool to begin collaborating with my peers on research! I think we all brought something valuable to our work and that helped to make our findings shine.
The submission of both my proposal and this ASEE paper culminated with a trip to the KEEN National Conference (KNC) which was held in Austin, Texas this year! It was refreshing to be with a group of educators who are also invested in how we teach students and making sure it’s done in a way that benefits their growth. The conferenced largely focused on different kinds of workshops and helping educators see how they could bring new ideas and practices into their classrooms to enhance student learning. But, the best parts of the conference were attending with Dr. Kajfez and meeting up with fellow RIME member, Meg West, and RIME alumn, Abby Clark (see photo below).
Looking forward, I will soon begin working on the written portion of my candidacy exam. While it can be a little intimidating, it will encourage me to think deeply about different pieces and parts of my study design and make sure I’m ready to think through any curveballs that come my way post-candidacy. I’m excited to begin this part of my PhD journey and see what my study design will look like by the end of the spring semester!
