Examining Calling as a Motivator in Career Decisions: A Comparison of Engineering Graduates from Secular and Christian Undergraduate Institutions (original) (raw)
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The Christian Foundations of an Engineering Education
Christian faith is to be like yeast in bread dough, permeating every part of a life. Therefore, it naturally also shapes the teaching, learning, and practice of engineering for Christian engineers. A Christian worldview will influence an engineer, whether or not it is acknowledged. Within a Christian engineering education, it is useful to explicitly delineate some of the ways that faith can and should influence engineering thought and practice. This paper presents some principles upon which a Christian engineering education should be based: 1. Engineers construct models in an attempt to study the mechanisms and systems under which God’s creation operates. 2. A Christian engineering education must shape the character as well as the mind. 3. In order to be effective kingdom servants, Christian engineers must learn professionalism. 4. Redemptive work is needed within the field of engineering. However, even if the ideals are agreed upon, it is not always obvious how to achieve these goals in education. Some practical methods for how to incorporate Christian faith into education, in a yeast-like manner, are presented. While these are developed with a Christian liberal arts college in mind, many of the concepts could be relevant to an educator at a secular school.
Vocation In the Engineering Curriculum: Challenging Students to Recognize Their Values
2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Mark Peters received a Bachelors degree in Economics from Georgetown University and then pursued a business career in New York City, working in many of the major business disciplines. Over the past twenty years, Mark has worked and consulted for large corporations, professional organizations, hospitals, churches, and universities. Dr. Peters earned a Masters Degree from the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry and a Ph.D. in Leadership Studies from the University of San Diego. He has taught in a variety of disciplines including: Business Management, Organizational Leadership, Economics, Ethics, and Leadership Studies, at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Dr. Peters has twice served on the Faculty of Semester at Sea teaching courses in Social Entrepreneurship, Global Development, and International Management. Mark enjoys integrating travel into his teaching and research, most recently designing study abroad courses in Latin America and Africa in sustainable development and social entrepreneurship. After completing his dissertation study on creating a culture of vocational exploration on college campuses, Mark completed a world tour researching micro-finance institutions and visiting universities in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. During previous world travels, Mark has worked in Italy, Mexico, El Salvador, and Costa Rica, and spent a summer traveling through India.
A Catholic and Marianist Engineering Education
2011
boasts large enrollments of 1,300 undergraduate and 350 graduate students out of a total of 7,000 undergraduates and 3,000 graduate students. It also boasts a faculty very active in research, which, under the umbrella of the University of Dayton Research Institute, is funded at a level of $100 million per year. In our region, we are looked at as one of the premier engineering programs in terms of the quality of the graduates we produce. In the last decade, the University of Dayton has sought to better articulate the impact of its Catholic and Marianist traditions, and faculty have been challenged to embody these traditions. University mission statements and unit strategic plans have also evolved to make better connections. In this context, our paper explores the historical and present connections to these traditions, and then more importantly presents a vision for better integration of them into the education of our students. The visioning really represents an early foray into thinking about greater embodiment of mission into the engineering 59
Christian Worldview and the Engineering Context
2012
Baylor University’s recent commitment to “Vision 2012” has created implied imperatives for the faculty to seek ways of using Christian perspectives to shape classroom instruction and encourage the expression of Christian faith in the intellectual life 1 . Teaching from a Christian worldview is part of the University’s charge and Engineering faculty members are investigating how Christian perspectives might interact with various elements of the engineering curriculum. For example, engineering faculty are exploring avenues that incorporate Christian perspectives into engineering design methodology in such a way as to produce uniquely Christian contributions to the engineering design process, especially in terms of responsible and sustainable design. Central to this incorporation is the development of a methodology that creates and exploits meaningful categories and paradigms that are capable of informing and illuminating engineering practice. One example is the “Creation, Fall, Redemp...
Collegiate service engagement correlations with engineering job selection and satisfaction
International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering, Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship
Curricular and co-curricular service programs are becoming more common in engineering education. For some students, these experiences align with preexisting desires to use engineering to help others; for others it instills these expectations for one’s career. There has been a lack of research on the long-term impacts of these service experiences on engineers’ career pathways, including satisfaction with an ability to help others through one’s career. A survey asked engineering alumni to describe characteristics of their most and least satisfying jobs with respect to an ability to help others or society. Results showed that for individuals in their first job since graduation, undergraduate collegiate service weakly correlated with an ability to help others as a motivator for job selection, and graduate level collegiate service moderately correlated with satisfaction with an ability to help others through one’s job. The results point to the formative effect that service can have on ca...
A Christ-centered Dominion Mandate -Reflections on Integration of Faith and Engineering
Proceedings of the 2019 Christian Engineering Conference, 2019
This is the 3rd paper documenting the author’s work on the integration of faith and engineering that began at Geneva College. The other two papers appeared in the proceedings of the CES conferences in 2013 and 2017 (Che, 2013, 2017). This paper starts with a brief review of the dominion mandate as it applies to engineering and analyzes its challenges after men’s fall. Some discussions on sin and its effect on engineering followed. The benefits of God’s common grace and special grace and how these could be applied to engineering are discussed. It was concluded that a Christian higher education is of value to both believers and non-believers. For believers, it is a discerning process of a calling from God that he/she should serve God in the engineering profession. A metaphor from the Old Testament is used to illustrate this calling. For non-believers, it is a gift from God according to His common grace so that men can continue to prosper and flourish in this world. The picture of a Spirit-filled engineer is painted to point to a role model of a Christian engineer. A Christ-centered dominion mandate is proposed that would provide a structure to unite the teachings from both the Old and New Testaments on the integration of faith and engineering.
It is no secret that women are under-represented in engineering schools across the U.S. At Christian colleges, this disparity is even higher. Many programs are in place to attempt to increase the number of women engineers. Is this simply a case of political correctness run amok as policy, or do these programs represent a justifiable attempt to correct a serious problem? The evidence, both biblical and psychological, supports that women are as capable as men of doing engineering work. Thus, from a justice standpoint, Christians should be concerned that there are not barriers preventing women from pursuing an engineering career. However, this is not to say that women and men are identical. In fact, women engineers likely would, on average, make different contributions to the field. Both from a moral standpoint and because of the practical benefits, Christians should be eager to embrace the richness that a more diverse workforce would bring to engineering. In 2004, Ermer surveyed the status of women, both nationally and at Christian colleges. This paper presents updated data regarding the status of women (both students and faculty) at Christian engineering schools. New initiatives being tried at one Christian college in an attempt to improve the gender balance are presented. Reasons for the under-representation of women, both anecdotal and scholarly, are discussed. Some practical suggestions are provided for increasing the number of women graduating with engineering degrees.
“I Became an Engineer by Accident!”: Engineering, Vocation, and Professional Values
Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, 2018
Contrary to many other countries, in France, engineering education remains attractive. Paradoxically, French students do not seem to be motivated by the engineering profession and many graduates seem to have become engineers "by accident". The outcome of our research is that engineering students are "pushed" by an invisible parental and social pressure. The most successful ones end up in a very few prestigious schools, which are supposed to open the doors of the higher management positions in big private companies and public administration, the great majority in a school they have hardly heard about before the "concours", with little motivation for applied science, hardly any vocation for engineering. This work is at the crossroad of two developing approaches within the fields of educational sciences and sociology: the choice to study successful students belonging to the upper or upper middle class which are less investigated than lower classes, and the choice to adopt a qualitative approach, while most researches about orientation are based on wide quantitative surveys. Our aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the construction of the engineers' culture and ethos, through an analysis of the socialization process from the engineering students' point of view.
Professional Engineering Ethics and Christian Values: Overlapping Magisteria
Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 2008
College and has taught there for thirteen years. She is a Calvin alumna who obtained a masters degree in manufacturing systems engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Michigan State University. Her technical specialties are manufacturing systems and machine dynamics. She has written papers on engineering ethics, women in engineering, and Christian perspectives on technology and is a frequent contributor to the biennial Christian Engineering Education Conference. She resides in Hudsonville, MI, with her husband Eric and their three school-age children.