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This qualitative research paper explores how undergraduate engineering students utilize social capital through the resources of a cohort program. Presented are the emerging themes generated from the data featuring descriptions of which parts of the cohort program were meaningful to undergraduate engineering students. This paper draws on social capital theory as an anti-deficit approach to guide the development of educational systems that support historically excluded students leveraging, developing, and utilizing relationships. The 16 participants in this study were in a four-year-long cohort and took part in focus groups at the end of each semester. This work focuses on the first two focus groups, representing the participants' first year in their engineering programs. Questions about how the cohort program helped the students prompted reflections on their experiences with the different facets of the program. These experiences were used to create themes representing the shared sentiment regarding the specific components of the program. Findings are presented to illustrate the importance of social capital development opportunities to first-year undergraduate students.
Steinhorst et al. (Wed,) studied this question.