Fulton Schools of Engineering Education Seminars (SEEdS) – Building and Maintaining Chosen Family to Support Student Outcomes in Engineering with Justin C. Major

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SEEdS

Fulton Schools of Engineering Education Seminars (SEEdS) 

Building and maintaining chosen family to support student outcomes in engineering

Guest Speaker: Justin C. Major

Date: November 21, 2025 | 12:00 – 1:00pm MST

Location: Zoom

 

Seminar Description: Recruiting and retaining students is critical to the future of engineering. However, doing so is no easy task. In this presentation, I will discuss the concept of “chosen family,” a type of family students choose (Weston, 1997), that emerged from my research on low-income engineering students, and describe its pertinence to recruitment and retention efforts. I will describe what chosen family are in depth, describe how to build and maintain students’ chosen family, and explain the implications for doing so. This conversation follows my four years of research on the topic using parallel quantitative and narrative strands of research.

 

Dr. Justin C. Major (they/them) is an Assistant Professor of Experiential Engineering Education at Rowan University where they leads ASPIRE Lab (Advancing Student Pathways through Inequality Research in Engineering). Justin’s research focuses on low-income students, engineering belonging and marginalization mechanisms, adverse childhood experiences, and feminist approaches to EER, and connects these topics to broader understandings of student success in engineering. Justin completed their Ph.D. in Engineering Education (’22) and M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics (’21) at Purdue University, and two B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Secondary Mathematics Education at the University of Nevada, Reno (’17). Atop their education, Justin is a previous NSF Graduate Research Fellow and has won over a dozen awards for research, service, and activism related to marginalized communities, including the 2020 ASEE ERM Division Best Diversity Paper for their work on test anxiety. As a previous homeless and food-insecure student, Justin is eager to challenge and change engineering engineering education to be a pathway for socioeconomic mobility and broader systemic improvement rather than an additional barrier.

 

More about Fulton Schools of Engineering Education Seminars (SEEdS)

LTH will continue to host monthly guest speaker seminars for the community to regularly learn about and discuss topics related to Engineering Education. The seminars, formerly known as the Teaching Community of Practice (TCP), are open to anyone interested in the FSE community.

Third Fridays | 12pm-1pm MST | via Zoom