This study uses a mixed-methods design to investigate students' career decision making at two U.S. undergraduate institutions. The research question was, "To what extent do students who complete undergraduate programs in engineering intend to pursue engineering careers?" We surveyed senior engineering majors about their post-graduate intentions, and later interviewed a subset of the seniors about their career intentions. Only 42 percent of students surveyed reported that they definitely intended to pursue a career in engineering, 44 percent were unsure, and 14 percent were definitely not pursuing engineering. We observed significant institutional differences. Interview data reveal the quixotic nature of many students' decisions about their careers; strikingly, students were vacillating between multiple post-graduate options late into the senior year, even into summer. Implications are discussed for further research and ways engineering departments can influence students' career decisions.

StanfordUniversity, specializing in quantitative and qualitative research methods. His areas of intellectual interest include engineering education, community-based research, and education evaluation and policy. His extensive teaching experience includes courses on qualitative research methods (for graduate students), and on writing and critical thinking (for students ranging from high school to professionals

Within the CAEE, Dr. Loshbaugh has been responsible for developing and maintaining the CSM cohort of students, and collaborating on development of protocols and/or instruments in ethnography, the survey, and structured interviews. She has conducted ethnographic interviews, directly observed students, and collaborated in the development of a codebook for analysis of the ethnographic interview data. Dr. Loshbaugh taught in CSM's EPICS program, for which she developed extensive course and faculty-support materials, and designed and implemented a leadership course and overseas summer field session. She has recently been appointed to develop a diversity plan for CSM, and has experience in international education, corporate training and coaching, and academic editing.