About

Professor Molly Hathaway Goldstein leads the Product Design Lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she focuses on providing students with hands-on experience in engineering education research and design education research. Her lab engages undergraduate and graduate students in various research projects that emphasize collaboration, generative design, and broadening participation in engineering and STEM fields. She encourages motivated students with good academic standing to join her team, emphasizing the importance of matching students' skills with well-defined project roles and fostering both independent and team-based work environments. Professor Goldstein's research interests include collaboration in engineering design teams, persistence and participation in STEM, and the role of generative design in undergraduate design thinking. Through her mentorship, students explore topics such as social good hackathons, peer mentoring effects, and the application of design tools in engineering contexts.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Psychology
• Medicine
• Engineering
• Knowledge management
• Management science
• Simulation
• Medical emergency
• Process management
• Emergency medicine
• Mathematics education
• Systems engineering
• Anesthesia
• Human–computer interaction

Selected publications

• CHIPS, Science, & Secondary Engineering Technology Education (Resource Exchange)

  2025-08-21

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Discourse of Middle School Girls in Collaborative Microelectronics Lessons

  2025-08-21

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  PublisherDOI

• Pre-College Microelectronics Curriculum Units Developed Using an Integrated Microelectronics Framework (Resource Exchange)

  2025-08-21

  article
  PublisherDOI

• BOARD # 263: IUSE: Research on Generative Design Thinking: Design Cognition, Tools, andEducation

  2025-08-21

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  PublisherDOI

• Benchmarking Usage of Quality Indicators in Qualitative Human Subjects Design Theory and Methods Research

  2025-08-17

  article

  Abstract The purpose of this paper is to benchmark current practices in how qualitative research in Design Theory and Methods fields is presented. Given that qualitative research methods are often viewed as “subjective,” and that most traditionally-trained engineering researchers have not been educated in intensive qualitative research methodologies, it is important to assess whether and how the extant literature seeks to establish credibility. Using a variety of qualitative quality indicators from other long-established traditions that regularly enforce high standards in qualitative research, we performed a content analysis of a systematically-curated corpus of publications published in ASME Journal of Mechanical Design between the years 2010-2025 in order to identify opportunities for the field to better employ and defend the use of qualitative methods. Findings from this work show that more recent papers show a higher attendance to quality concerns and employment of qualitative standards for quality, perhaps due to cross-disciplinary influence from developing peripheral fields like engineering education, and emergent researchers who have interdisciplinary training in these domains. This work also highlights the opportunity for researchers seeking to employ qualitative data in their research work by providing a more credible and legitimized way to establish quality in their methods. In addition, we hope that this work will guide reviewers of qualitative human subjects work to better assess quality of qualitative research designs and the communication of valuable qualitative research findings.

  PublisherDOI

• Impact of International Short-Term Faculty-Led Programs on Pedagogical Techniques in Engineering

  2025-08-21

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  PublisherDOI

• A Study on Generative Design Reasoning and Students' Divergent and Convergent Thinking

  Journal of Mechanical Design · 2024-01-24 · 13 citations

  article

  Abstract Computer-aided design (CAD) is a standard design tool used in engineering practice and by students. CAD has become increasingly analytic and inventive in incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) approaches to design, e.g., generative design (GD), to help expand designers' divergent thinking. However, generative design technologies are relatively new, we know little about generative design thinking in students. This research aims to advance our understanding of the relationship between aspects of generative design thinking and traditional design thinking. This study was set in an introductory graphics and design course where student designers used Fusion 360 to optimize a bicycle wheel frame. We collected the following data from the sample: divergent and convergent psychological tests and an open-ended response to a generative design prompt (called the generative design reasoning elicitation problem). A Spearman's rank correlation showed no statistically significant relationship between generative design reasoning and divergent thinking. However, an analysis of variance found a significant difference in generative design reasoning and convergent thinking between groups with moderate GD reasoning and low GD reasoning. This study shows that new computational tools might present the same challenges to beginning designers as conventional tools. Instructors should be aware of informed design practices and encourage students to grow into informed designers by introducing them to new technology, such as generative design.

  PublisherDOI

• Modeling in a University-Industry Collaboration: Deep and Surface Approaches

  2024-02-06

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Engagement in Practice: Social Performance and Harm in Civic Hackathons

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

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Engagement in Practice: Social Performance and Harm in Civic HackathonsCivic hackathons are time-bound events where participants develop prototypes and ideas to tackle a social issue.Hackathons are practical tools for experiential learning and can provide opportunities to learn technical skills, network, and generate interest in a topic.While organizers adjust formats to democratize similar events, issue-based hackathons are largely inaccessible to relevant stakeholders and failures to make actionable change in the topic reinforce underinvestment of the populations impacted.Hackathons prize technological solutionism over reinvestment into existing systems, and historical harm is perpetuated by not designing technology with those most disadvantaged.We analyzed multiple attempts to improve hackathons and suggest mindsets and practices for minimizing harm.Organizers should only conduct civic hacks if they have sufficient financial resources and support to create an inclusive event that fosters discourse and tackles systems.Outcomes should be explicit reinvestment into relevant communities.Organizer goals should be better defined to assess whether series of targeted workshops may be more appropriate than a hackathon.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Uncovering pre-college students reflection strategies for solving complex engineering design problems

  International Journal of Technology and Design Education · 2024-09-22 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Worldwide, engineering design is seeing an increase in pre-college settings due to changing educational policies and standards. Additionally, these projects can help students develop critical skills for a broad range of problem settings, such as design thinking and reflection. In design and other contexts, reflection is a mental process where someone returns to previous experience and uses this revisiting to aid in new actions. While there is substantial research studying design practices at the collegiate or professional level, the design practices of younger students remain understudied. Moreover, past research on reflection has tended to focus on how to support reflection or what impact reflection has and not how students engage in reflection strategies. We had 105 middle school students in the Midwestern United States design a green-energy home using a computer-aided design (CAD) tool, Energy3D. Students were instructed to use Energy3D’s design journal to reflect on their design process throughout the project, enabling students to employ different reflection strategies. Energy3D unobtrusively captures students’ design actions, including journal interactions; these were used to identify students' reflection strategies. Three features of journal interaction were developed, i.e., frequency of interaction across sessions, intensity of interaction, and relative frequency of journal use over other actions. We used k-means cluster analysis on these features and discovered four groups representing different strategies. Regression was used to understand the relationship between reflection strategies and design outcomes. Finally, we draw out implications for supporting pre-college students' productive beginnings of engagement in reflection and future study directions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Şenay Purzer

  Purdue University West Lafayette

  64 shared

• Robin Adams

  Purdue University West Lafayette

  54 shared

• Corey Schimpf

  University at Buffalo, State University of New York

  31 shared

• Charles Xie

  28 shared

• Justin L. Hess

  Purdue University West Lafayette

  25 shared

• Elizabeth A. Sanders

  University of Washington

  25 shared

• Brian Woodard

  Purdue University System

  21 shared

• Gretchen Forman

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  19 shared

Education

• PhD, Engineering Education

  Purdue University

  2018

• MS Systems & Entrepreneurial Engineering, Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  2006

• BS General Engineering (Systems Engineering & Design), Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  2004