Engineering professors studying how co-op impacts student journey

Researchers received National Science Foundation grant to support the project

At the University of Cincinnati's College of Engineering and Applied Science, every undergraduate student begins alternating between semesters in the classroom and semesters of work after their first year. This program called cooperative education or co-op allows students to graduate with real-world experience in their chosen field.

Jim Tappel is part of the team working on the National Science Foundation project looking at student cooperative education experiences. Photo/Provided

Under the leadership of Cedrick Kwuimy, associate professor educator in the Department of Engineering and Computing Education, a research team is investigating how a student's first co-op experience shapes their overall journey as an engineering student and how educators can better prepare students for these experiences. The team includes Professors So Yoon Yoon, Jim Tappel and Chris Tonnis, College of Cooperative Education and Professional Studies, and two doctoral students. After two years of preliminary trials, the team has received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to support this research.

All engineering students go through a sequence of first-year engineering courses designed to introduce them to engineering and prepare for their first co-op. Researchers want to know whether the courses are providing the most effective skills and tools to students. The project will answer this critical question.

Over the next three years, the team will dive into the theory of transformative learning to understand how individual experiences and backgrounds can have a long-term impact on a student's educational journey and their readiness at work.

Mezirow's transformative learning theory focuses on the idea that people can change their way of thinking when new information is introduced. Kwuimy explains that a person's way of thinking is guided by their frame of reference, how knowledge is interpreted and processed, and how problems are understood. This frame is formed over a lifetime of social interactions and life experiences, making it unique to each individual. This research builds on the dissertation work of Sukeerti Shandliya, PhD, titled “Transformative Learning Outcomes of Experiential Learning Programs,“ successfully defended in 2025 and advised by Kwuimy. Emily Sullivan, current first-year PhD student, will continue this line of research under Kwuimy's supervision.

Assistant Professor Yoon, an expert in psychometrics, educational assessment and program evaluation, will lead the development of the Engineering Workforce Readiness Scale, a research-based instrument designed to measure how engineering students grow professionally through co-op experiences. Working alongside first-year doctoral students Anne Hone and Emily Sullivan, the team aims to assess technical competencies and workplace adaptibility. This scale will enable researchers to examine how students' tranformative co-op journey influence their work readiness.

This research will inform us as educators in what we need to do to better support our students and prepare them for their first co-op

Cedrick Kwuimy, UC College of Engineering and Applied Science

Tappel and Tonnis, co-op faculty advisers, will coordinate research activities to align with student co-op schedules, support both quantitative and qualitative data collection, provide tailored guidance to students based on project findings, and contribute to the dissemination of the project outcomes.

"This research will inform us as educators in what we need to do to better support our students and prepare them for their first co-op," Kwuimy said.

The project will also help students and employers better understand the types of learning that occur in real-world settings. Students will reflect both before and after their employment, providing evidence of how co-ops help students apply classroom lessons to real-world challenges. Over time, educators will be able to track trends and improve co-op programs and preparation for students.

“Part of our research is to identify and characterize these frames of reference, and see how different student experiences impact their co-op, and what elements in that frame of reference support, or hinder, the impact,” he said.

The team will collect data from over 1,000 students participating in various types of co-op positions including research, industry, in-person and remote. Students will be categorized based on their types of co-op and, working with academic advisers, the research team will analyze if there are significant similarities, differences or improvements in their transformative learning and work readiness based on various factors.

The data they gather will provide valuable insights about what can be added or modified within the first-year engineering sequence to maximize the academic outcome of the first co-op experience.

Co-op was invented at UC more than 100 years ago and has since become a cornerstone of engineering education across the nation. Today, UC’s co-op program is ranked among the top five in the country. The outcome of this project will not only be beneficial for students at UC, but students at other co-op institutions as well.

Featured image at top: UC College of Engineering and Applied Science researchers Chris Tonnis, Anne Hone, So Yoon Yoon, Emily Sullivan, and Cedrick Kwuimy are investigating how well UC is preparing students for co-op. Photo/Samuel Cella/CEAS Marketing + Communications

Engineering professors studying how co-op impacts student journey

Researchers received National Science Foundation grant to support the project

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