Background Socially engaged engineering activities such as community development have grown rapidly in popularity. The engineers who participate in these activities seem more diverse and more broadly interested than the larger population of engineers in the United States.Purpose/Hypothesis This article compares the personal attributes, specifically personality traits and motivations to study engineering, of members of a prominent engineering service organization, Engineers Without Borders (EWB-USA), with the attributes of engineers who were not members.Design/Method Using an exploratory, sequential mixed methods approach that combined variable-oriented analysis of interviews and focus groups with multiple logistic regression models from responses to a national survey, we compared engineers' personality traits and motivations to study engineering.Results Results indicate that both EWB-USA members and nonmembers exhibit strong personality traits for conscientiousness and emotional stability. Both members and nonmembers have similar intrinsic engineering interests and motivations. EWB-USA members have significantly stronger personality traits for openness to experience and agreeableness, stronger motivations for social good, and broader interests than do nonmembers.Conclusions EWB-USA members have personal attributes that match those of other engineers, but they have broader interests and motivations than do other engineers. These differences suggest including socially engaged engineering activities in engineering may increase the number and broaden the diversity of engineering students and practitioners.

Background Engineers must acquire increasing technical and professional skills to meet pressing global challenges, but fitting training for these skills into already crowded curricula is difficult. Engineering service may provide opportunities to gain such skills; however, prior research about learning outcomes from such activities has been primarily small-scale, anecdotal, or lacking a comparison group.Purpose/Hypothesis We aim to understand whether self-reported learning outcomes differ between engineers involved and not involved with engineering service activities. Specifically, do the two groups experience and learn different technical and professional skills in their engineering activities?Design/Method We used a sequential mixed methods approach that began with interviews and focus groups with 165 participants and continued with a questionnaire administered to over 2,500 engineering students and practicing engineers both involved and not involved with engineering service. Analyses included variable-oriented qualitative analysis and multiple linear regression models to compare perceived technical and professional skills.Results Quantitative results show that engineers involved and not involved with engineering service report comparable perceived technical skills, and that those involved in engineering service report significantly higher perceived professional skills, even when controlling for age, gender, and grade point average. Qualitative results indicate that higher professional skills can be partially attributed to the realistic, complex, and contextualized learning experiences within engineering service activities.Conclusions Engineers involved with engineering service may gain strong professional engineering skills that do not compromise their technical skills. Thus, engineering service may help educate the type of engineers the field needs to confront pressing global challenges.

Engineers Without Borders USA has been operating and evolving since 2002. As an organization with many student and professional chapters working around the world, EWB-USA has put in place structures to review proposed community programs as well as specific engineering projects. The Application Review Committee, or ARC, considers new program proposals put forward by communities, while Technical Advisory Committees, or TACs, evaluate implementation plans for infrastructure projects. ARC and TAC members are volunteers with relevant technical knowledge and experience, many of whom are also EWB-USA chapter members. EWB-USA technical and chapter relations staff review progress at key points in the project cycle; however, this paper reviews the mainly volunteer efforts at two important moments in the project process. The Application Review Committee (ARC) The Application Review Committee is made up of volunteer members and EWB-USA staff with relevant experience in engineering, international development or both. Each new application from a community seeking assistance is assigned to an ARC team consisting of three persons: a volunteer ARC lead with extensive experience reviewing new applications, a volunteer member of EWB-USA, and an EWB-USA staff member. The team receives the program application, provides guidance on specific aspects of the application, and decides whether to approve or decline each application. Over time, the application process itself has shifted from project-oriented to program-centered. The difference is crucial; rather than soliciting applications for specific engineered projects such as road building, water supply or solar power, EWB-USA is seeking to establish relationships with developing communities, and to collaborate with those communities to determine how the engineering skills of a chapter might be applied to address local needs. An EWB-USA chapter is expected to make a minimum five-year commitment to a community to enhance the likelihood that any specific intervention will have met its objectives and be durable and useful over time. Each chapter will make several visits to its partner community over the course of its engagement; first assessing problems, then implementing solutions, and finally monitoring project outcomes. Because the focus has shifted to community-identified needs rather than specific infrastructure projects, the application and review process is now directed towards establishing the capacity of an applicant community, in conjunction with its NGO or governmental partners, to communicate with a chapter and provide logistical support for visits, as well as the local and regional availability of material, labor support,