Background Engineering practice is meant to advance the human condition, yet curricula do not appear to fully promote the human‐centered philosophy of engineering in implementation. The educational system may inadvertently signal to students that engineering is a career choice better suited for those preferring to work with things rather than people. This framing of the profession prompts questions regarding student interests when compared to those of practicing engineers and how such interests become concrete through education and introduction into the profession. Purpose/Hypothesis We compare engineering students' and practitioners' interest in working with people or things in their environment. We examine gender differences for each sample. Design/Methods Multiple analysis of variance was used to examine the samples of practicing engineers (n = 339) and first‐year engineering students (n= 383). A multiple‐group confirmatory factor analysis provides evidence of measurement invariance and justifies the use of the person–thing orientation (PO–TO) scale structure for both samples. Results Detailed PO values reveal that students' PO scores (n = 383, M = 3.313) are more than one and a half points lower than practicing engineer counterparts examined (n = 339, M = 4.836). However, no significant difference between practicing engineers and students was found for TO. Further, statistically significant differences in PO and TO were found between male and female participants within both samples, students and practicing engineers. Conclusions Differences detected in PO and TO across the samples suggest possible environmental factors influencing student perspectives of the engineering profession. This condition may inadvertently discourage more diverse students from pursuing engineering.

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The emphasis on Outcome-Based Education (OBE) and student-centered learning is an enormous advance in engineering education. The authors argue in this chapter that an essential element of OBE is aligning content, assessment, and delivery. The objective of this chapter is to provide a model for aligning course content with assessment and delivery that practitioners can use to inform the design or re-design of engineering courses. The purpose of this chapter is to help the reader build a foundation of knowledge, skills, and habits of mind or modes of thinking that facilitate the integration of content (or curriculum), assessment, and delivery (or instruction or pedagogy) for course, or program design. Rather than treat each of these areas separately, the authors strive to help the reader consider all three together in systematic way (Pellegrino, 2006). The approach is essentially an engineering design approach. That is, the chapter starts with requirements or specifications, emphasizes metrics, and then prepares prototypes that meet the requirements. It embraces the argument that “faculty members of the twenty-first-century college or university will find it necessary to set aside their roles as teachers and instead become designers of learning experiences, processes, and environments” (Duderstadt, 2008).

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I n 2006, a two-credit hour projects course was developed at the Krannert School of Management, Purdue University, in partnership with a manufacturer in India. The course was designed to provide experience of working on consulting projects with industry while exposing them to global best practices. A select group of undergraduate engineering and management, Masters in Human Resources, Masters/PhD's in engineering, and MBA students begin the five-month course in January each year to converge on the client facility in India in May for three weeks of fieldwork. The course ends about the middle of June after students have presented the results and recommendations to the company managers and have submitted the final reports. Year after year, improvements have been made to enrich students' experiences, which have lead to a well-structured program. In its fifth year of operation, the program has proved to be a win-win for both the students and the industrial partner. In this paper, we present key details of the design and delivery of these projects. We discuss the feedback mechanisms used to improve the course. We believe that the global setup of this projects course is unique and that our experience provides useful insights to those interested in developing such a course.