Introduction

The MIDFIELD Institute is a hands-on workshop that helps participants explore using the Multiple-Institution Database for Investigating Longitudinal Development (MIDFIELD). In August 2022, the Institute will be an all-virtual meeting over several days.

About MIDFIELD

MIDFIELD is a partnership of higher education institutions with engineering programs. Begun in 2004 as an extension of the SUCCEED Longitudinal Database, MIDFIELD contains Student Unit Record (SUR) data for all undergraduate, degree-seeking students at the partner institutions.

As of June 1, 2022, MIDFIELD contains SUR data for 1.7 M undergraduates at 19 US institutions.

Facilitators

Susan Lord

Director of the MIDFIELD Institute and Professor and Chair of Integrated Engineering at the University of San Diego. She is a Fellow of the IEEE and the ASEE. Dr. Lord has considerable experience facilitating workshops including the National Effective Teaching Institute (NETI) and special sessions at FIE. (slord@sandiego.edu)

Matthew Ohland

MIDFIELD Director and Principal Investigator. He is Professor and Associate Head of Engineering Education at Purdue University and a Fellow of IEEE, ASEE, and AAAS. Dr. Ohland has considerable experience facilitating workshops including the NETI and CATME training. (ohland@purdue.edu)

Marisa Orr

MIDFIELD Associate Director and Associate Professor in Engineering and Science Education with a joint appointment in Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University. She received the 2009 Helen Plants Award for the best nontraditional session at FIE, “Enhancing Student Learning Using SCALE-UP Format.” (marisak@clemson.edu)

Russell Long

MIDFIELD Managing Director and Data Steward. He developed the stratified data sample for the R packages used in this workshop. Mr. Long is a SAS expert with over twenty years of experience in institutional research and assessment. (ralong@purdue.edu)

Richard Layton

MIDFIELD Data Visualization Specialist and Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. He is the lead developer of the R packages used with the MIDFIELD practice data sets and the associated tutorials and workshop activities. (graphdoctor@gmail.com)

Hayaam Osman

Graduate Research Assistant and PhD student in Engineering Education at Purdue University. She focused on utilizing and applying quantitative approaches to multi-institutional data using R. (hmosman@purdue.edu)

David Waller

PhD candidate in Engineering Education at Purdue University. David has extensive experience working with institutional data in R and his research focuses on measuring organizational features of engineering majors. (wallerd@purdue.edu)

Publications

The MIDFIELD team has been exploring and presenting the stories in the MIDFIELD data for over 10 years. To see a sample of our work, you can follow these links:

Link to a comprehensive list of publications by researchers using MIDFIELD.

Acknowledgements

Funding provided by the National Science Foundation Grant 1545667 “Expanding Access to and Participation in the Multiple-Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development.”