Janet Yi-Jen Tsai

University of Colorado Boulder | CUB · Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME)

is a researcher and instructor in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on ways to encourage more students, especially women and those from nontraditional demographic groups, to pursue interests in the eld of engineering. Janet assists in recruitment and retention efforts locally,...

Today’s college-aged students are graduating into a world that relies on multidisciplinary talents to succeed. Engineering college majors are more likely to find jobs after college that are outside of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, including jobs in healthcare, management, and social services. A survey of engineeri...

The understudied sophomore year features the final required mathematics and science classes for most undergraduate engineering degrees. This study is focused on the engineering mathematics courses typically taken in sophomore year, and ethnographically examines the experience of students, instructors, and Teaching Assistants (TAs) in these courses....

The second year or sophomore year of most 4-year engineering undergraduate programs includes completion of the final fundamental math and science courses required for an engineering degree. We believe the intensive examination of this critical year in undergraduate engineering education is warranted, and advocate for a new perspective in analyzing...

The second largest attrition rate during an undergraduate engineering degree occurs during the second (sophomore) year. Students who persist past the first year of engineering school find themselves at a transitional, stressful, and competitive turning point as they enter the final math and physics requirements for their degrees. We adopt an ethnog...

YOU’RE@CU is a mentoring program in which graduate students are paired with 1st or 2nd year undergraduate engineering students to conduct research is now entering its third year of operation at The University of Colorado Boulder. The undergraduate mentees benefit from exposure to a research community and the process of doing cutting-edge engineerin...

is a doctoral student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, whose work examines and develops initiatives to encourage more students, especially women, into the eld of engineering. Currently, Tsai's research focuses on understanding the dynamics of how status and prestige are constructed among novice engineers. Dr. Daria A Kotys-Schwartz, Universi...

A novel teaching approach, the Body-Based Approach, uses the framework of active learning to structure the implementation of everyday engineering examples in recitations as part of an Engineering Statics course in fall 2012 at a large public university. As the gateway course to many engineering disciplines, Statics is typically the first technical...

While the importance of trust has largely been explored in large business organizations, little attention has been given to the role of trust in one-on-one mentoring relationships between engineers1. Trust has been relatively understudied in academic settings, especially in mentoring relationships between undergraduate and graduate students in rese...

At the University of Colorado Boulder (CU), a research-based undergraduate mentoring program is now in its second year of implementation. The program, Your Own Undergraduate Research Experience (YOU’RE@CU) has three main goals: improve the retention rate of diverse groups in undergraduate engineering, build undergraduate interest in engineering res...

One-on-one mentoring relationships between 1 st or 2 nd year engineering undergraduate students and graduate student mentors were established and monitored during a semester-long formal research mentoring program at a large state university. Each undergraduate student was expected to attend a weekly one hour seminar to learn more about the process...

At the University of Colorado, Boulder, a new program designed to link graduate students with 1st and 2nd year undergraduate students through engineering research projects and mentoring relationships was initiated in Spring 2011. Your Own Undergraduate Research Experience at the University of Colorado (YOU’RE@CU) has three main goals: (1) increase...

Research Proposal introduces "Body-Based" Approach to teaching and learning Engineering Statics.