Event Date
Materials Science and Engineering Weekly Seminar:
Higher education is facing a mental health crisis that continues to intensify, underscoring the urgent need to increase our understanding of student mental health to develop proactive supports. Limited research has focused on mental health in engineering undergraduate programs, but research suggests that engineering students may experience higher rates of mental health challenges while simultaneously being less likely to seek help. These disciplinary differences demonstrate the need to consider the intersection of mental health and disciplinary culture. I will share research on student stressors and perceptions of the role of mental health in engineering culture. I investigate the narrative of required stress and hardship during engineering undergraduate programs that perpetuates a stress culture. Towards this goal, I discuss the development of measures of stress culture that are used to collect data longitudinally, combined with student, faculty, and staff interviews. We leverage this data to explore the stress culture and how perceptions around norms impact student help-seeking and peer interactions. Finally, I will share how we connect this research to curricular interventions to support student wellness through biometric device design projects, with the ultimate goal of changing the narrative in engineering to create a culture of wellness.
