Cañada College

In the current practice, sensors such as the accelerometers and strain gages are attached to or embedded into structure to measure its response for structural health monitoring purposes. However, installation and maintenance costs of these sensors are high, and the process is time and cost consuming partially because the operation of the structure has to be interrupted to perform the maintenance. Acoustic sensor with its ability to capture sounds through air vibration is very promising means to perform the task of measuring vibration for structural health monitoring purpose as a non-contact, non-destructive method. However, challenges remain on developing proper algorithms to convert measured acoustic data to vibration measurements from the source. The XXX System, with its enrollment of approximately 2.5 million students, is in a prime position to grow the future science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce. Through a U.S. Department of Education funded XXXXX program between XX, a Hispanic-Serving community college and XXXX, a public comprehensive university, a 10- week summer program is set up to provide opportunity for community college students to experience the excitement of the state-of-the-art research. As one of the Civil Engineering projects in this summer program, the community college students are working closely with graduate students at XXXX to investigate the possibility to use acoustic sensor for non-destructive structural health monitoring. After learning basic theory through a series of training workshops, the students performed experimental testing with an array of microphone sensors with various configurations on a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) structure exciting on a shake table. With the acquired data, several post-processing algorithms are proposed to extract the useful information and eliminate the noise. In addition to the surveys, the participants were invited to participate in a 30-minute conversation about their summer internship experience to examine the internships' impact on interviewees in terms of: i) engineering self-efficacy and commitment to engineering as a career; ii) academic goals, including interest in research; iii) career goals; and iv) network of/engagement with professionals from academia and industry. The feedback from students shows that the XXXXX program offers an effective way to engage students from community college in engineering research.

Undergraduate research experience has been identified as an effective approach for engaging science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students and increasing their retention rates. Community colleges enroll almost half of the nation's undergraduate students and play a significant role in STEM education. Thus it is important to develop strategies to provide community college students with research opportunities and experiences. With support from the Department of Education Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program (MSEIP), a cooperative internship program between a community college and a public comprehensive university has been developed to engage community college students in leading-edge engineering research. In summer 2017, five sophomore students from the community college participated in a ten-week computer engineering research internship project in a research lab at the four-year university. This internship project aimed to develop a low-cost, portable, and flexible human-machine interface for real-time gesture recognition. Electromyography (EMG) is a technique for measuring the electrical activity generated by skeletal muscles. EMG pattern recognition (PR) is an intelligent method for deciphering neuromuscular information from EMG signals to identify users' intended movements. The human-machine interface developed by the interns provides real-time processing speed and sufficient storage capacity for computationally complex EMG PR algorithms by integrating mobile and cloud computing techniques. Specifically, a mobile Android application was developed which provides easy interface with a commercial EMG sensing armband Myo (Thalmic Labs) and a modular software engine seamlessly integrating a variety of signal processing modules, from data acquisition through pattern recognition, to real-time evaluation and control. In addition, an interface between the Android application and the Amazon Web Services Cloud Server was built which allows real-time cloud computing and storage. Real-time experiments were conducted on able-bodied subjects for hand gesture recognition to evaluate the accuracy, response time, and usability of the developed system. The project provided a great opportunity for the student interns to gain valuable research experience in human-machine interfaces and to improve their skills in teamwork, time management, as well as scientific writing and presentation. It also helped the students strengthening their confidence and interest in pursuing a STEM profession.

With support from the US Department of Education through the Hispanic-Serving Institution Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (HSI STEM) program, four community college engineering students participated in a ten-week summer research internship program at XXXXXXXX in summer 2017. A popular seismic damping device, magneto-rheological damper, was investigated by the interns during the internship. By analyzing different numerical models of the dampers, existing large-scale damper tests were studied and the damper response under external excitation is reproduced using the computing program software. UQ Lab was then applied to experimental results to explore the uncertainties inherent to the damper modeling. The probabilistic distributions of model parameters were derived and studied for their effect on real-world applications. This paper presents the summer intern project findings. Through the integration of state-of-the-art structural engineering research into the internship, this program also enables the development of project management, time management and teamwork skills, strengthens students' knowledge in earthquake engineering, and prepares them for successful academic and professional careers. The internship program therefore provides valuable mentorship for community college students during their transition to a four-year college.

Research experience is enriching and inspiring for undergraduate students. Traditional curriculum postpones conduct of research by students to graduate level. In this paper, we present a flipped approach in which undergraduate students are exposed to research early on. Given the often-lengthy background preparation needed for conduct of research, it is difficult to incorporate research experience as a curricular activity in regular semesters when students have a lot of discretions managing various assignments by different courses. To address this challenge, we have developed summer research opportunities for community college students. Summer is a time when students have less distractions and can be effectively engaged in a focused research activity. The research internship is planned over 10 weeks of summer, and the student interns are assigned a graduate student mentor and a faculty advisor. This paper presents the details of this project, research and educational objectives, results obtained, and the student surveys assessing the outcomes. The planned research project is related to non-volatile resistive memory technologies, which are promising nano-scale technologies for information storage. In such technologies, the information is stored in a resistive form which is a state of a material that is non-volatile and also much more scalable as compared to the existing charge based storage technologies such as SRAM, DRAM, and flash. The main target application of resistive memory technologies is for large data storage and the main targeted market is replacement of computer DRAM main memory and SRAM cache. In this research, we propose a unique application for resistive memory technology and that is to realize non-volatile single-bit latch element that can be used for building reconfigurable logic circuits. The results of student surveys on the experience of student participants with the research internship strongly suggest that such an experience is very valuable in helping the students decide if they want to purse STEM research careers. Moreover, this experience enhances students' technical research skills such as scientific thinking, ability to analyze and interpret results, and presentation skills. This flipped approach to educational pathways in which research experience is offered early on results in students to be more determined and motivated as they progress through their educational pathways.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) are part of a diverse community. However, this community's complexity and diversity are often overlooked due to the model minority myth, racism, discrimination, and stereotypes. The common thread throughout the successes and struggles of AAPIs is community, mutual reliance, family and community support, and the development of knowledge capital. Research examining culturally aligned mentorship notes the importance of cultural context and identity. This chapter on AAPI graduate students and new professionals focuses on narratives of resilience, persistence, and growth through mentorship. The chapter takes the form of dialogues among authors on culturally aligned mentorship, intersectionality, belongingness, and resilience. Recommendations include better onboarding for faculty and staff, developing communities of learning and practice, addressing bias through open discussion, cataloging AAPI leadership opportunities, proactive outreach by mentors, and using group mentoring models.