“Fail a little, succeed a lot”: How Experiential Learning Influenced Civil Engineering Students’ Approach to Coursework

Abstract The workforce of the United States needs newly trained engineers now more than ever, intensifying a need for strong practices to retain students in engineering education and particularly to broaden access to and participation in engineering education for historically underserved groups. Student support programs that focus on students' academic skills and institutional capital are valuable in building students' academic self-confidence, grade point average, and foundational math skills (Allen Ami, 2001; Cabrera, Miner, a solid engineering identity helps students advance through challenging courses. Even as more support programs incorporate strong connections with career readiness and experiential learning, these are still often either in the context of the curriculum (for example, a flipped classroom), or as secondary to the academic identity (extra-curricular club membership), implying that liberatory outcomes are still outranked by normative, academic outcomes in intentional strategies to broaden participation in engineering. Findings from this study indicate that liberatory outcomes may lead to resiliency in the classroom, building students' ability to overcome curricular struggles in pursuit of a rewarding career.