Adding Wellness to the Engineering Education Equation
How do engineering students perceive wellness? What practices do they actually use? Can relatively small interventions introduced in technical coursework change how they approach their own well-being?
Susan Gentry, a professor of teaching in materials science and engineering at the University of California, Davis, will seek to answer these questions with a grant from the National Science Foundation, which will support her research at the intersection of engineering education and social-emotional learning frameworks.
A Self-Care Journey
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Gentry saw that students were struggling. She proposed a one-unit First-Year Seminar that would cover wellness strategies, such as time management and boundary setting, that she learned at a faculty bootcamp she had attended a few years earlier.
Though the course was successful, Gentry noticed that few enrollees were engineering students. Other attempts to reach her students through optional programming also received little participation.
“You see a lot in engineering that people are so busy and may not have a lot of time for self-care,” Gentry said. “Maybe students aren’t taking these classes because they don’t have time. Self-care is important, but [it can feel like] it’s just ‘homework’ on top of everything else they have to do.”
During a sabbatical in 2025, Gentry interviewed individuals from other institutions to see how they were addressing the gap between engineering education and social-emotional learning frameworks.
At the University of Southern California, for instance, the Viterbi College of Engineering has a Director of Student Wellness who develops and implements programs for engineering students and faculty. A faculty member at California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, meanwhile, had implemented a wellness fair for engineering students.
Educating the Educator
The two-year grant is funded by the NSF’s Professional Engineering Education (PFE): Research Initiation in Engineering Formation program, which seeks to increase the community of researchers conducting PFE research. The program is housed within the NSF Directorate for Engineering, which invests in engineering education and workforce development through research and experiential learning opportunities.
Gentry will work with two mentors: Elizabeth Montaño, a professor of teaching in education at UC Davis, and James Huff, an associate professor of engineering education at the University of Georgia. They will guide Gentry in her investigation of how engineers learn about self-care and what they implement in their daily lives.
“My background is in materials science. I don’t have a background in educational research or social sciences,” Gentry said. “This program is designed to train people like me, who are faculty members in engineering, on how to do educational research to expand the community.”
As part of the study, Gentry will incorporate four modules on wellness topics she explored in her bootcamp into her technical materials science courses. She will spend five to 10 minutes at the beginning of class reviewing the topic and how students can make small changes in their lives to support their own well-being.
Wellness Tips from Gentry
It can be tough to prioritize self-care amid lectures, labs, internships, clubs and... what time does the Silo close again? Gentry offers some quick tips to squeeze in “you” time and bring moments of calm to the chaos.
- Work during work time and rest during rest time to avoid wasting time on devices without truly relaxing.
- Break large projects into smaller, manageable tasks to build momentum.
- Use small rewards, like taking a walk or listening to a favorite song, as motivation to complete tasks.
- Recognize that stress is a biological tool; it doesn’t have to be an obstacle.
- Pause and reflect around mid-quarter. If something isn’t working, change it.
The modules will cover time management, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, stress management and communication styles. The module on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, for example, will cover setting personal goals with small rewards, such as taking a walk or listening to a favorite song.
Finding the (Mind/Body) Connection
The grant gives Gentry a way to pursue an interest that, for years, she wasn't sure fit within her work.
“For a while, I just felt like I had no idea what I was doing, and my research didn’t fit in anywhere,” Gentry said. “To realize that I’m going to be able to do educational research projects, do them well and contribute to the engineering education community is exciting.”
More than anything, Gentry is enthusiastic about learning how best to support engineering students when they are feeling stressed and to equip them with the tools they need to sustain mental well-being.
“I think students know more about wellness than we give them credit,” Gentry said. “It’s not that they don’t know that wellness is important, but there is still this gap that lies in ‘How do we get them to do these things?’ We know that our students are stressed. How do we get them to take care of themselves and recognize that these things are important for engineers?”
