Creating a Veteran-friendly Engineering Program through Triadic Approaches

This paper introduces a systemic program innovation that yielded successful undergraduate curriculum development and a cultural shift in an engineering program at a public university in the United States. Our interdisciplinary engineering and education faculty team led a triadic program initiative to provide holistic and effective support for student veterans. The initiative had three key components: a. development of a new undergraduate course focusing on military technology, b. a culturally sustaining mentoring program for graduate student veterans, and c. systematic program evaluation over the three years of program implementation. The program's positive outcomes are explained based on evaluation data, including statistically significant differences in three student learning outcomes and career interests (p<.001). We identified three major factors crucial to the initiative's success and offered pragmatic recommendations for other institutions aspiring to launch a similar initiative to support veterans in engineering and other stem disciplines.