Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Factors Associated with Academic Belonging of Engineering Graduate Students

Academic belonging is an important construct essential for student success in engineering. It involves a sense of connectedness, acceptance, and identification within the learners' academic environment. Students may disengage and ultimately drop out of their program of study where the sense of academic belonging is lacking. This work in progress bridges the gap by examining the correlates of academic belonging in order to understand the processes by which graduate engineering students develop a sense of belonging within their chosen programs. 227 graduate students from six universities in the United States completed the Postsecondary Student Engagement (PosSE) survey. Using Pearson Correlation, we evaluated the relationships between major valuing, achievement striving, major satisfaction, peer interaction, positive faculty relations, passion, perseverance, and academic belonging. The results show that major satisfaction has a positive strong relationship with academic belonging, while major valuing and positive faculty relations have a significant positive medium relationship with academic belonging. It was noted that achievement striving, and peer interaction has small positive but significant relationships with academic belonging. The theoretical and practical implications of this study will be discussed.