About

Dr. Sindia Rivera-Jiménez is an assistant professor at the Department of Engineering Education and an affiliate faculty member of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on understanding the role of engineering communities while enacting their agency in participatory and transformational change. She is particularly interested in understanding how professional development influences organizational cultures and promotes wider engagement in engineering. As an education practitioner, she also explores evidence-based practices to integrate teamwork, ethical awareness, and effective collaboration into the curriculum. Dr. Rivera-Jiménez graduated from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez with a B.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering. She earned an NSF RIEF award recognizing her effort in transitioning from a meaningful ten-year teaching faculty career into engineering education research. Before her current role, she taught STEM courses at many institutions, such as Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs), community colleges, and R1 public universities.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Nanotechnology
• Materials science
• Physics
• Engineering
• Engineering management
• Artificial Intelligence
• Nuclear magnetic resonance
• Data science
• Optics
• Medicine
• Bioinformatics
• Engineering ethics
• Knowledge management
• Radiology
• Condensed matter physics

Selected publications

• Bridging Transfer Shock: Design and Early Outcomes of the ELITE Program

  2026-03-31

  article
  PublisherDOI

• An Instructor-Friendly, Template-Based Workflow for the Development of GUI Software for Arduino Lab Kits: Applications for Engineering Lab Courses

  2026-03-31

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Hands-on and experiential learning activities are essential in chemical engineering education, yet the software used to operate educational lab kits is often limited to basic, text-based outputs and multi-step configuration procedures.These constraints can reduce kit usability, increase troubleshooting time, and limit broader adoption by instructors who face schedule, space, and support limitations.This project addresses these challenges by developing and piloting a graphical user interface (GUI) software for Arduino-based, desk-scale lab kits used in fluid and energy transfer experiments in a junior unit operations laboratory course.The work had two goals: (1) to define key design elements for a software development template that supports adaptable, visually organized, and instructionally useful GUI software for lab kits, and (2) to evaluate the extent to which a newly developed GUI improves student-perceived ease of use, data readability/visualization, and overall usability when implemented in a course setting.The GUI was developed using Python and open-source packages following an iterative process that included design planning, separate backend/frontend development, and student testing across iterations.Student feedback guided improvements such as enhanced data organization, graphical visualization with adjustable axes, and improved layout and usability.Preliminary pilot results indicate that the GUI improves usability and student engagement with experimental data compared to the prior PuTTY-based workflow, and that visual elements such as graphs and streamlined connectivity support more intuitive interaction with the kits.Beyond the specific chemical engineering application, this paper contributes a template-based, instructorfriendly development workflow that can be adapted for other Arduino-based experiential learning modules across engineering and STEM courses.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Adjustment Experiences Among Engineering Transfer Students: A Pilot Study at a Four-Year Institution in Florida

  2025-08-21

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Exploring the potential landscape of chemical engineering science

  Nature Chemical Engineering · 2025-01-28 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Work in Progress: Early Exploration of Engineering Students' Perspectives about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in an Introductory Materials Science and Engineering Course

  2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings · 2024-02-20

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Work in Progress: Early Exploration of Engineering Students' Perspectives about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in an Introductory Materials Science and Engineering Course Aroba Saleem1,2, Sindia Rivera-Jimenez1, Idalis Villanueva1 1Department of Engineering Education, University of Florida 2Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Florida Despite numerous efforts made by the engineering community, maintaining a diverse, equitable, and inclusive education environment still seems a distant goal. Persistently, nationwide reports and studies continue to point to the severe underrepresentation of marginalized and minoritized groups, especially women and African American students in engineering. Discrimination due to gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and other forms of identities, impedes the development and sustaining of diverse and inclusive educational environments, which affects student retention and graduation/completion rates. Providing equitable access to education and supporting tolerance and acceptance of those who are different can positively enhance student learning. This Work in Progress paper examines engineering student perspectives about diversity, inclusion, equity, and access at a Southeastern university in the United States. In this exploratory study, two questions around students' notion of diversity and inclusion and its challenges in their learning, were developed. The survey was conducted among 300 undergraduate students (69% male and 31% female) in an Introductory Materials Science and Engineering course that consists of students from different fields of engineering. The class was a mix of Freshman (3%), Sophomore (8%), Juniors (43%), and Seniors (46%). The response rate of the survey was 83%. Preliminary findings suggest that while some commonalities were observed, students' perspectives about the state of diversity and inclusion on their campus differed significantly. The majority of respondents were comfortable with the overall climate in the university and felt no or minimal need for any intervention, however, the other group of respondents shared a contradictory perspective and expressed a dire need for change. For example, many students commended the ethnic diversity among the student population whereas 4% of respondents expressed grave concerns about the lack of African American students on Campus. Interestingly, the demographic distribution of students revealed that African American students consisted of only 7% of the total students in the course. This indicates that the demographic distribution of students could explain the divergent views of students on diversity and inclusion. The findings from this study support the idea that students with different ethnic and social identities can have different views and experiences regarding diversity, inclusion, and equity in their campus. This study can help identify the challenges that need to be overcome in order to create a diverse, inclusive, and equitable environment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Vertical Transfer Student Pathways into Engineering: A 20-Year Benchmarking Analysis at a Large Public Research-intensive Institution in Florida

  2024-08-04

  articleOpen access

  Her research focuses on understanding the role of engineering communities while enacting their agency in participatory and transformational change.She is particularly interested in broadening the participation of minoritized communities by studying the role of professional development in shaping organizational cultures.As an education practitioner, she also looks at evidence-based practices

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Exploring the Role of Self-Efficacy in Entrepreneurial Decision-Making: An Action Research Study [WIP]

  2024-08-04

  articleOpen access

  Her research focuses on understanding the role of engineering communities while enacting their agency in participatory and transformational change.She is particularly interested in broadening the participation of minoritized communities by studying the role of professional development in shaping organizational cultures.As an education practitioner, she also looks

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Community Perspectives on Chemical Engineering Education

  2024-02-07

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Her research focuses on how identity, among other affective factors, influences diverse students to choose engineering and persist

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Methods for Conducting a Scoping Literature Review on Institutional Culture and Transformational Change in Engineering Education

  2024-02-07 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract There are a variety of urgent calls for institutional initiatives and actions to transform engineering education. For a transformational change to occur, the initiatives must alter the culture of the institutions (Eckel, Hill, and Green, 1998). In this work in progress, we detail the methods used to conduct a scoping literature review (ScR) concerning the current state of the literature surrounding institutional culture and transformational change in engineering education at institutions of higher learning in the United States. As institutional culture and transformational change are currently underexplored topics in the engineering education literature, we investigated the larger body of computer science and engineering literature in the United States. Once completed, this study aims to reveal the current trends, theories, and potential gaps in the literature regarding these topics. Arksey and O'Malley's methodology for conducting scoping reviews informed the development of our scoping review protocol, which similarly includes five stages: (1) identify the research questions, (2) identify relevant studies, (3) select relevant studies, (4) chart the data, and (5) collate, summarize, and report results (Arksey and O'Malley, 2005). University librarians who specialize in conducting systematic reviews aided in the refinement of this protocol. From the research question and aim of the study, three main inclusion criteria were created: (1) the literature must discuss both organizational culture and transformational change, (2) discussion of transformational change must describe the institution where the change happened, and (3) the literature must emphasize the agents of transformational change. Additional inclusion and exclusion criteria were created in collaboration with both the librarians and reviewers. These criteria guided the search for existing literature in the following online databases: Elsevier (Engineering Village – Compendex and Engineering Village – INSPEC), ProQuest (ERIC and Education Database), Scopus, and Web of Science. These six databases were selected as they often include publications relevant to the field of engineering education. After the search was conducted, the inclusion and exclusion criteria were turned into questions to inform a three-step screening process (title, abstract, and full text) used by reviewers to determine whether a publication was eligible for the study. Reviewers were assigned to review papers through Covidence, a cloud-based systematic literature review management platform. There are currently two primary reviewers and a third additional reviewer to resolve any conflicts or disagreements if they should arise. Before each review cycle, the inclusion and exclusion criteria are revisited, revised, and agreed upon by the three reviewers. This screening process is performed iteratively, allowing for critical reflection at each stage to drive the resulting findings by the reviewers in consultation with content matter experts. We are currently conducting our first round of screening in the study selection (third stage) of the scoping review protocol. After the removal of duplicates, 999 publications were found by searching in the six selected databases. This number is expected to be further reduced with each step of the screening process. When this scoping review is complete, the resulting publication will contain an analysis of the literature and synthesis of our findings, and present the prominent themes, theories, and potential gaps in the literature. This publication is expected to unite disparate lines of research on institutional culture and transformational change, challenge the assumptions in the field, and change the way engineering education views transformational change.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Social responsibility views in science and engineering: An exploratory study among engineering undergraduate researchers

  2024-02-07 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  I school in Homestead, Florida and as an adjunct professor of Microbiology at a Hispanic-serving community college in Miami, Florida. As an educator, they utilized equitable teaching practices and encouraged student agency to ensure positive learning outcomes. Their doctoral research focuses on social

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Courtney Pfluger

  Northeastern University

  65 shared

• Gisella Rossana Lamas Samanamud

  Missouri University of Science and Technology

  49 shared

• Katie Cadwell

  Syracuse University

  49 shared

• Alysa Lozano

  Syracuse University

  49 shared

• Betul Bilgin

  University of Colorado System

  49 shared

• Tim Ransom

  Clemson University

  49 shared

• Anastasia K. Hauser

  University of Kentucky

  16 shared

• Aroba Saleem

  6 shared

Awards & honors

• NSF RIEF Award