What Does It Mean to Be an Engineer? A Comparison of Adult Students at Three Institutions

Abstract

Our work is motivated by the need to cultivate a diverse group of talented future engineers. Adult undergraduate students age 25 and over are an important source of engineers, with life experience that can enhance student experience, but not much is understood yet about this specific group. Adult students face challenges specific to their demographic due to responsibilities in other aspects of their life as employees, parents, spouses, and more. This paper examines adult engineering students' conceptions of what an engineer is, across three distinct academic environments: a community college, a small private undergraduate university, and a large public research university. A semistructured interview approach was used to collect data from adult students with prior engineeringrelated work experience. These data reveal strong similarities among the conception of what it means to be an engineer, despite differences in the demographic background and institutional context of the participants. There are differences in courseload, employment status, and number of dependents among the sample populations at the three institutions. Participants from all institutions identified with occupational respect, application of knowledge to find solutions, benefiting society, and problem solving as important aspects of the engineering occupation. This work suggests opportunities to enhance professional identity development at institutions of multiple types through industrial collaboration and mentorship, policies and programs to support studentparents, and cooperative work opportunities that marry engineering education with engineering practice.

Board # 17 : A Three-Year Study of Adult Undergraduate Engineering Students

“…The desire to have a diverse student population that leads to a diverse workforce has brought attention within engineering programs to the adult students. However, as discussed in prior papers [15,16,17], the literature shows that adult learners and nontraditional students, in general, face different challenges including different stressors, roles, and appraisal styles [8,9,10].…”

“…Analysis of the semistructured interviews and demographic data has revealed several important findings which has led to several publications [14,15,16,17]. First, data revealed key differences in the identity trends of students at each academic institution.…”