Paige, Pablo, and Shehan complete the Summer Program for Undergraduate Research (SPUR)
Three undergraduate students completed the SPUR program this summer in the Burleson Global Design Group supporting various ongoing projects!
Paige (left), Pablo (middle), and Shehan (right) at their final SPUR Presentations.
Pablo Altares joined the research team through the SPUR program after completing a year as an international student at CU Boulder. He is currently studying Industrial Engineering at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. This summer, he has been supporting a research project examining how Mechanical Engineering students understand and develop career-readiness competencies. His work has included cleaning and analyzing survey data, conducting and reviewing interviews, and organizing qualitative findings through directed content analysis. He has especially enjoyed working in a welcoming and collaborative environment, where he has been able to learn from other researchers, exchange ideas, and receive support throughout the research process. Through this project he has gained a deeper understanding of engineering education and professional development.
Paige Walker joined the lab as a SPUR undergraduate researcher this summer. She is a Mechanical Engineering student with a minor in Leadership and will be a junior this fall. Over the summer, Paige collaborated with Shehan to develop an empathy-focused engineering workshop that encourages engineering students to consider the intended and unintended consequences of design decisions and their impacts on diverse stakeholder groups. She also conducted thematic analysis and qualitative coding of 43 interviews conducted by MS student Zach Schaad at last year’s IEEE GHTC conference, examining how engineers define “context” in engineering. This fall, she will continue her research by exploring how virtual reality can support perspective-taking in engineering while launching the empathy workshop. Paige had especially enjoyed being mentored by the graduate students un the lab and seeing how different research projects intersect to advance more thoughtful, human-centered engineering.
Shehan Rajapakse is a senior pursuing a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering with minors in Music and Electrical Engineering. This summer, she collaborated with Paige under the mentorship of PhD student Julianne Attai to develop empathy and perspective-taking workshops for engineering students as well as VR-based immersive experiences to foster deeper perspective-taking. In addition, Shehan conducted a thematic analysis of student interviews who participated in an industry mentor program in first-year engineering project courses. Through this work, she explored how engineers can better understand and prioritize the human dimensions of design decisions. She is passionate about creating more inclusive spaces in engineering and believes that people must be at the center of all engineering design.