Students’ Attitudes And Concepts About Engineering As An Environmental Career: A Survey

Abstract

The overall purpose of the research is to determine students' attitudes towards environmental and ecological issues in the context of choosing engineering as a career. We report the results of a survey of 1700 first-year engineering students at Purdue University, West Lafayette campus. The survey tested student knowledge of environmental issues, their prioritization of sustainable development in various contexts, and also explored student attitude toward change. The results of this survey are combined with high school academic performance data and demographic data to determine how formal curricula and other factors such as personal experience influence a student's environmental knowledge. We observed positive correlations between the high school science courses or high school environmental education, and the average environmental knowledge scores. There is no difference in average knowledge scores when comparing male and female students, or when comparing students from the United States (U.S.) with non-U.S. students. We observed a negative correlation between the number of high school math courses and the average knowledge score. In addition, the authors investigated how the students' tolerance to change affected their prioritization of environmental issues and environmental knowledge. High resistance to change scores indicate low perceived importance of environmental engineering and low levels of understanding of environmental engineering issues, with the exception of issues related to policy/legislature where the relationship is positively correlated. To translate the findings into practice, this research recommends to focus on students' transformations in attitude towards and knowledge of: (a) the natural environment (as something to be concerned about) and (b) engineering (as a profession which has a large impact on the natural environment) as well as their overall 'resistance to change'. Literature review, theoretical framework and foundations National surveys such as the College Student Survey conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) are designed to capture student attitudes about academic and nonacademic goals, and include questions about the "environment" in a much broader context than curriculum or professional goals 9. Surveys of college-level engineering students in the United

First-Year Engineering Students’ Environmental Awareness and Conceptual Understanding through a Pilot Sustainable Development Module

“…Baseline Survey: Used in previous work 17 , the baseline survey included demographic information, environmental awareness and understanding of sustainable development 16 in four subscales (issues, policy, tools, development), perceived importance of sustainable development (developed by the research team), and environmental knowledge 30 . For more information on the baseline instrument, see the full survey in previous research 31 . Page 22.721.7…”

Environmentally and Socially Responsible Engineering - Assessing Student Empowerment

“…The surveys were deployed near the end of each of the semesters online and according to IRB specifications and approval requirements. During the survey creation process, the team of instructors used current literature to get ideas for possible questions (K. Skamp et al (2013), Bielefeldt et al (2016), T. Shealy (2018), Shillaber et al (2017), Strobel et al (2009), Bielefeldt (2015)). The team decided on questions that would measure both students' perceptions and students' actions.…”