WIP: Belonging Matters: Exploring Student Engagement in Innovation Ecosystems

This innovative practice WIP paper describes how a sense of belonging is a crucial element in closing the participation gap in Innovation Competitions and Programs (ICPs) among underrepresented students. Apart from fostering student innovations and career readiness, ICPs, such as hackathons, startup incubator competitions, and customer discovery labs, are essential to college entrepreneurship ecosystems. However, there is a participation gap in ICPs among traditionally underrepresented students (e.g., students identifying as women, ethnically or racially diverse, low socio-economic status, or individuals with disabilities) compared with their counterparts. In addition, employers now look for distinctive innovation-focused skills on resumes and consider ICPs as a differentiating attribute. Therefore, low ICP participation among underrepresented students places them at a disadvantage regarding their career development. Using an interview research methodology, this paper investigates two research questions: (i) what are the dimensions of belonging in the context of ICPs? (ii) how does belonging manifest in various student groups?

I. Introduction

In today's engineering and technology education, fostering innovation and entrepreneurship is crucial for empowering students to cultivate essential 21st-century skills. Student Innovation Challenges Programs (ICPs), which include but are not limited to hackathons, idea challenges, technical competitions, start-up competitions, and customer discovery labs, are an effective way of introducing students to innovation and entrepreneurship. ICPs also provide students with opportunities to apply their classroom learning in real-life settings, expose them to new areas and interests, and support them in making more informed decisions about their career choices. In recent studies, ICP organizers [1] and participating students [2] mentioned that ICPs develop abilities and skills such as adaptability and resilience, communication, domain-specific knowledge, networking, entrepreneurship, problem-solving, and teamwork, which are critical to innovation. Apart from fostering student innovations and career readiness, ICPs are essential to college entrepreneurship ecosystems [3], [4]. Despite booming university entrepreneurship ecosystems that provide opportunities for enhancing STEM education [5], there is a participation gap in ICPs among traditionally underrepresented students (e.g., students identifying as women, ethnically or racially diverse, low socio-economic status, or individuals with disabilities) compared with their counterparts [6], [7]. A lack of diversity and inclusion is identified as one of the student's negative experiences with ICPs [2] and a barrier to underrepresented student participation in ICPs [8]. Underrepresented students often find ICPs unwelcoming with judgment and perceive ICPs and the innovative industry as misogynous [9], [10]. These perceptions can significantly reduce the diversity of students who participate in ICPs. With these concerns, this paper investigates the role of belonging in enhancing the inclusivity of ICPs and the perceived belonging of students in ICPs, which is an under-studied topic in STEM education.