Contact Info

Biography

Research with Rowan

Website: https://therisingdoctoralinstitute.com/

Personal Gender Pronoun: He/Him/His

Education:
Ph.D., Engineering Education, Virginia Tech
M.S., Education, Universidad Javeriana, Colombia
B.S., Electronic Engineering, Universidad Javeriana, Colombia

Impactful Research Areas:
Education
    Advancing Pedagogical Innovation
    Disrupting Inequalities in Engineering 
    Equipping Students for Success

Research Expertise:
Instructional Change; Faculty and Students Motivation; Doctoral Education

My research aims to understand from a systems perspective how academy influences faculty motivation to change and persist, undergraduate students’ motivation to learn, and retention and persistence of doctoral students.

Research on Instructional change and faculty motivation: Engineering education as a field has sustained multiple efforts to change pedagogical approaches in engineering by increasingly embedding research on learning into teaching practices (i.e, Instructional change). With my research I try to understand better why these multiple efforts have yielded low to moderate success or sustainability. My research suggests that this low success is explained because effective instructional change requires a perspective that accounts for the complex nature of academia and its dynamic effect on faculty motivation to change.

Research on Doctoral education and students’ motivation: Underrepresented minorities are finishing the engineering doctorate in lesser rates than their majority peers. A big cause for attrition is that often PhD students’ efforts are not aligned with the best activities for their degree progress. The more time it passes with this misalignment, the harder to refocus and make timely degree progress, which in turn causes students to lose motivation and in some severe cases depart from the doctorate. With a team of researchers, we are aiming to understand how the academic system is impacting 1) the students motivation to engage in activities most likely aligned to a successful doctoral journey, and 2) the students’ motivation to persist. Our research suggests that creating a Rising Doctoral Institute (RDI) that supports URM students transition to the doctorate would have a strong positive impact on students’ persistence and graduation. We aim to influence systemic institutional change by developing a sustainable model for the RDI in different institutions along the nation.

Honors and Awards:
CoNECD project of the year. The Dissertation Institute. (Awarded Feb 2021)
Best paper international conference EIEI ACOFI 2016 (Awarded March 2017)

Professional Memberships:
ASEE (American Society of Engineering Education)

Recent Publications:
Artiles, M.S., Mercado, A.G, Cruz-Bohorquez J.M. (2025). Unprepared Spaces: A Longitudinal Examination of Black and Latiné Students First Year in Doctoral Engineering Programs. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering. 10.1615/JWomenMinorScienEng.2025051386

Cruz-Bohorquez, J. M., Adams, S. G., & Bravo, F. A. (2024). The Academic System Influence on Instructional Change: A Conceptual Systems Dynamics Model of Faculty Motivation to Adopt Research-Based Instructional Strategies (RBIS). Education Sciences, 14(5), 544. https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/14/5/544

Bravo F.A, Cruz-Bohorquez J.M. (2024) Engineering Education in the Age of AI: Analysis of the Impact of Chatbots on Learning in Engineering. Education Sciences; 14(5):484. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14050484

Jackson A.G, Bodnar, C., Barrella, E., Cruz-Bohorquez, J.M., Kecskemtety, K. (2025). Development of a Categorical Scoring Codebook for Entrepreneurial Mindset (EM) Concept Maps. Journal of STEM Education: Innovations and Research, 26(1), Pages 16–31. https://doi.org/1

Pérez-Cerquera, M. R., Hurtado-Londoño, J. A., & Cruz-Bohorquez, J. M. (2022). An Applied Electromagnetics Course with a Conceiving-Designing-Implementing-Operating Approach in Engineering Education. Ingenieria y Universidad, 26, 1-32. https://doi.org/10.11144/javeriana