In recent years, the preparation of engineering students for professional practice has featured prominently in the engineering education literature. Organizations such as ABET and the National Academy of Engineering have even published lists of skills and characteristics required by graduates to succeed 1-2. What many studies fail to address, however, are the varying experiences of early career engineering graduates employed in different engineering suboccupations. While many engineering graduates go on to become engineering practitioners, others pursue careers in engineering consulting, management, research, and teaching, among other options. This paper aims to better understand differences across engineering suboccupations by comparing them on various personal, experiential, and affective outcomes. Participants for this study come from a survey of engineering bachelor's graduates who earned their degrees from four U.S. institutions in 2007. Funded by the National Science Foundation and deployed in autumn of 2011, the survey received 484 complete responses which were weighted by gender, major, and institutional size to better approximate aggregate responses. Occupational lists on the survey were constructed based on categories in the NSF Science and Engineering Statistical Data System (SESTAT) 3 which itself is adapted from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2000 Standard Occupational Classification 4. We examined three engineering sub-occupations for this paper: engineering practitioners, consultants, and managers. Four years after graduation, 48 percent of survey respondents were employed in one of these three groups. Respondents were compared on survey measures related to their demographics, career experiences, work characteristics, and self-perceptions. Results showed several differences, specifically in graduates' perceptions of their work, current positions, and identities. Engineering managers were more likely to rely on competencies such as business knowledge and leadership in their work and less likely to rely on engineering techniques and tools. Additionally, smaller proportions of engineering managers saw their current positions and identities as being engineering-related. The findings suggest that different engineering suboccupations require different skill sets, which may in turn affect how employees view their jobs and themselves. Determination of these differences can enable new thinking about which skills to emphasize in undergraduate engineering programs, through core courses, electives, and/or extracurricular activities.
This is a pilot study of an instructional technique that teaches important solid mechanics concepts within the context of an entrepreneurship case study and lab. Students were tested preand-post the case study/lab experiences to determine changes in engineering and entrepreneurial content knowledge, entrepreneurial self-efficacy and career intent. Results show that students can increase their knowledge of targeted entrepreneurship concepts without diminishment of learning core engineering concepts. While the case study experience did not significantly change entrepreneurial career intentions it did grow students' perceived entrepreneurial self-efficacy (as measured by confidence in business skills), which can be a precursor to changing career intent. The case study experience also appealed to a broad spectrum of students with career interests ranging from working for a start-up to working for an established global business. The implications of entrepreneurial case study instruction are discussed.
and was one of the students in the first revision of ENGR 14, Introduction to Solid Mechanics. Her research interests include engineering education, robotics in space applications, and using robots to introduce engineering to middle school students. She is passionate about the FIRST Robotics program, in which she coaches teams and volunteers at competitions. She also does wushu and gymnastics.
This research paper describes findings from a qualitative analysis of engineering students' selfreported future career plans on the 2015 Engineering Majors Survey (EMS). The EMS was designed to examine current engineering students' career goals, especially surrounding innovative work, and is based in the theoretical framework of Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT). With the open-ended responses on the EMS, we can develop a deeper understanding of students' plans in their own words, providing insights into how they think about their careers and why they want to go down a particular career path. The primary research questions for the present study are:1. What are the different ways students think about their future plans? 2. What are the motivations that drive students to choose a particular path? 3. Are there significant differences between how men and women think about their futures?The EMS survey was sent to engineering juniors and seniors at 27 schools in the spring of 2015; a total of 7,197 students participated. Included on the questionnaire was the open-ended question, "We have asked a number of questions about your future plans. If you would like to elaborate on what you are planning to do, in the next five years or beyond, please do so here", which elicited 1,848 responses. Responses were varied, and were coded by emergent themes. Ten main emergent themes were identified; examples include whether or not they intended to stay in engineering after graduation, mention of the industry they intended or would like to go into, and explanation of their motivations.Findings point to three main ways that students think about their career plans: by identifying a specific company they want to work for, by identifying a specific industry they want to work for, and by seeking a job with a certain trait. Students' motivations included wanting to help people, a desire to combine engineering with another field, an inherent love of doing engineering, and doing engineering as a means to a secure future. Some motivations varied by gender: men were more likely to discuss a desire to travel, while women more often considered childbearing and family factors in their career plans.These findings have several implications for educational research and practice in engineering. Understanding more about students' motivations helps researchers and practitioners to think more comprehensively about the persistence of different students in engineering post-graduation. Our findings suggest that some students might plan to leave engineering because of wanting to go to medical school, start a family, work for a non-profit, or become a teacher -not because they do not enjoy engineering. These insights can help engineering educators at all levels as they strive to make content relevant and meaningful to their students, ideally helping students connect what they are learning to their future goals. This information also can lead to recommendations for future survey questions that more fully capture the range of students' actual percept...
is a sophomore studying Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. After several education related jobs in the past, he decided to spend the summer after his freshman year working on engineering education, specifically Stanford's Introduction to Solid Mechanics, E14. In addition to the Longboard Lab & Case Study, Mark worked on a series of online vector math tutorials to ease the transition into E14.
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