ASPIRE Research
Team

Dr. Justin C. Major (they/them)

Personal Website: www.justincmajor.com
Rowan: https://engineering.rowan.edu/faculty_staff/listing/justin-major.html

Office Phone: (856) 256-5776

Address: Engineering Hall 127,
401 N. Campus Drive,
Glassboro, NJ, 08106

Dr. Justin C. Major is an Assistant Professor of Experiential Engineering Education at Rowan University, where he leads ASPIRE Lab (Advancing Student Pathways through Inequality Research in Engineering). Justin’s research focuses on low-income students, engineering belonging, and adverse childhood experiences, and connects these topics to broader understandings of student success in engineering. Justin is a previous NSF Graduate Research Fellow and has won over a dozen awards for research, service, and activism, including the 2020 ASEE ERM Division Best Diversity Paper for his work on test anxiety. As a previous homeless and food-insecure student, Justin is eager to challenge and change engineering education to be a pathway for socioeconomic mobility and broader systemic improvement rather than an additional barrier.

Curriculum Vitae

Positions:
Assistant Professor; Experiential Engineering Education; Rowan University
Faculty Fellow; Division of Student Access & Pathways; Rowan University
Associate Editor; Journal of Women & Minorities in Science & Engineering
Guest Editor; "Special Issue: From Classroom to Career: Mental Health and Psychological Well-Being Across Engineering Education Communities;" Educational Sciences
Faculty Advisor; Society for Low-Income and First-Generation Engineers (S-LiFE)

Education:

Ph.D., Engineering Education, Purdue University (2022)

Certificate of Inclusive Excellence, Purdue University (2021)

M.S., Aeronautics & Astronautics, Purdue University (2021)

B.S., Secondary Education (Mathematics), University of Nevada, Reno (2017)
B.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno (2017)

Professional Memberships:

American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE)

American Educational Research Association (AERA)

Association for Training on Trauma and Attachment in Children (ATTACh)

Honors and Awards:

Fellow; Loughborough University, Institute of Advanced Studies
Fellow; Quantitative Ethnography Institute (2025)
Rowan University Frances S. Johnson Junior Faculty Innovation Teaching Award (2025)
Fellow; Learning Analytics for STEM Education Research (2025)
Fellow; Engineering Unleashed (2024)
Scholar; National Science Foundation (NSF) Institute in Critical Quantitative, Computational, and Mixed Methodologies (ICQCM; 2024)
Outstanding Graduate Student Service Scholarship & Award; Purdue University, College of Engineering (2022)
Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship; Purdue University (2022)
American Society for Engineering Education Educational Research and Methods Division Best Diversity Paper (2020)
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2017)
Henry Albert Senior Public Service Award; University of Nevada, Reno (2017)