The University of Michigan's M-STEM academies program: Examining the social community of future engineers

A social community framework is used to examine the program elements of the University of Michigan's (UM) M-Engin Program, an undergraduate engineering mentoring program, to provide insights about its social community elements. At this initial research stage, a methodical analysis of the program data (e.g., analytics, features, elements, and artifacts) was performed to create a portfolio to begin to understand the role of social community within the M-Engin Program. From this research, we can learn how to better serve members of various program communities by identifying opportunities for improvement. Future research will include conducting informal interviews with the program's coordinators and surveying and interviewing program participants.