The manuscripts in this dissertation enhance the research on the psychology of the undergraduate student experience in laboratory courses, those that typify collaborative practical work. For science and engineering fields in higher education, persistence of students who identify as female and/or as a member of an underrepresented ethnic minority (URM) is a major issue. In seeking to attend to this issue of equity, I explored methodologies for evaluating the experiences of different groups of students to better understand known, and identify unknown, barriers to persistence for engineering majors. This collection focuses on a career-forward curriculum for undergraduate chemistry laboratory, a problem-based learning intervention based in the context of career support and advancement. These manuscripts explored how the constructs of identity as an engineer (Identity), engineering self-efficacy (Self-Efficacy), and teamwork self-efficacy (Teamwork) influenced students' long-term commitment to their major and future career (Commitment). They are envisioned to build upon each other to identify the efficacy of the career-forward curriculum, identify areas of need and explore ways to better understand those areas. The first manuscript tests a path model based upon the Mediation Model of Research Experience (MMRE) that explains the relationships among the constructs. The results show that the only significant association for URM participants was between Identity and Commitment. Notably, Teamwork was a negative predictor of Commitment. This adds support for professional identity as a key predictive variable for URM students and indicates that a laboratory curriculum that emphasizes applied professional practice can support persistence. The second manuscript further explored the negative relationship between teamwork self-efficacy and commitment to an engineering career using the theory of Organizational Justice (Justice) with the MMRE. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated validity and bivariate correlations provided initial evidence for a combined model, showing that the experience of URM students was different than that of their non-URM peers. Identity was more strongly correlated to aspects of Justice, which was playing a role in students' views on teamwork. This supported my hypothesis that the negative relationship between Teamwork and Commitment for URM participants may have been related to issues of marginalization within their groups. The final manuscript validated a new combined model called the Mediation Model of Organizational Justice in Research Experiences (MMOJRE) using structural equation modeling. As a higher-order latent variable, justice predicted all three psychological process variables. However, Teamwork did not mediate the relationship to the outcome variable as Justice did not predict commitment to an engineering career. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]