Exploring How Engineering Internships and Undergraduate Research Experiences Inform and Influence College Students' Career Decisions and Future Plans (original) (raw)
Related papers
Improving Engineering Undergraduate Retention Via Research And Internships
2006 Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
is the Engineering Coop Coordinator for the College of Engineering at Boise State University. She develops and coordinates internships for lower and upper division undergraduates. She earned a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Cal Poly Pomona and has worked professionally in the aerospace and aviation industries.
2020
The Undergrad Only Colleges Mechanical Engineering Department would like to promote students to choose to pursue graduate education. This paper outlines a new program that introduces cadets to the world of graduate education. The core of the program is to partner with existing graduate schools to germinate the seed of future work in graduate engineering education. The goal is to foster the benefits of graduate education and the career enhancement that obtaining the education affords. We also believe that participation in the program makes the undergraduate student a better communicator and logical thinker with the ultimate goal of introducing the students to graduate studies in engineering. In this paper we introduce the conceptual framework of the program and the results of its early implementation. We will also address the future planning for continued longitudinal study of the program. Overview Alexander (1) suggests that the essential features of a successful summer program include: a meaningful research experience, the opportunity to interact with role models and other undergraduate students forming a "community". In the Bauer(2) study researchers surveyed three groups: those who participated in research experience as part of a "university organized" program, those who participated in research on their own with a faculty member or those who did not do research as part of their undergraduate experience. In the first two groups those surveyed were more likely to go on to graduate school, reported a greater satisfaction in their undergraduate experience, and reported increases in intellectual curiosity, research skills and communication skills. A study by Foertsch (3) found that students participating in undergraduate research felt the experience was a necessary and important step in getting into graduate school and the relationship with a mentor was critical to their success. Russell (5) found that undergraduate student researchers said that the research experience clarified their career interests, increased their understanding and their confidence.
2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Though the United States has educated enough students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, thousands of jobs in industry remain vacant each year. Attrition in engineering industry is a persistent problem, threatening national goals related to technological advancement and global competitiveness. As a result, educational institutions are asked to consider practices that ensure both academic success in college, as well as post-graduation outcomes in the workforce. Using survey data from a National Science Foundation funded study, titled Project to Production: Conditions and Processes for Educating the Engineer of 2020 (P2P), this study investigated the relationships between several high impact curricular and co-curricular educational practices, such as undergraduate research and co-curricular design projects, and postgraduation retention in engineering. Results suggest that participation engineering clubs and professional societies might facilitate post-graduation career commitment in engineering. Moreover, results suggest gaps in opportunities in engineering for women persist even after graduation.
A research initiative to close the gap between undergraduate and graduate school in engineering
34th Annual Frontiers in Education, 2004. FIE 2004., 2004
Recent statistics indicate a declining population of undergraduate engineering students that continue toward advanced engineering degrees. This steady downturn in the number of graduate engineering students has fueled fears that the future of the nation's manufacturing and high technology industry will be damaged by a severe shortage of skilled engineers unless urgent steps are taken to halt and reverse the decline. In response, The College of Engineering (CoE) at the University of South Florida implemented an internal Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) initiative designed to provide the student with a valuable research encounter. What has resulted is an important retention in the number of engineering undergraduate students enrolling in our graduate program following their REU experience and a systematic approach to integrate a large number of undergraduate students into the research efforts of the college. In this paper we describe our experience and provide guidance for other interested institutions to implement this initiative. Our initial results show that 64% of our graduates continued toward graduate engineering degrees as a direct result of their research experience.
OMG! That's What an Engineer Does?": Freshmen Developing a Personal Identity as an Engineer
2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Freshman retention is a top priority in nearly all engineering schools. Increased retention optimizes new-student recruitment dollars, decreases students' time to graduation, impacts school rankings, and helps to meet industry's increasing demand for engineers. Most researchers and experts in the field agree on a number of basic tenants in retaining engineering freshmen. Topmost are the tenants of creating community amongst freshmen, bonding freshmen with returning students, creating opportunities for meaningful interaction between freshmen and faculty both in and outside of the classroom, helping freshmen understand and internalize the vision and mission of the school, and helping freshmen develop a personal identify as an Engineer. This paper focuses on this last tenant. Most engineering programs incorporate career exploration as one of the topics in their Introduction to Engineering course or a separate course or seminar. The Introduction to Engineering course is typically taught as either a discipline-specific course or a general course open to all engineering majors. In both cases, the content and delivery of the engineering career exploration topic is heavily influenced by the faculty member teaching the class. In the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, we teach program/major-specific Introduction to Engineering courses, and-in the past-discussion of career exploration had been inconsistent, at best. In the fall of 2010, by piloting a Freshman Engineering Career Exploration event, the Fulton Schools of Engineering made a commitment to help our freshmen develop a personal identity with their chosen degree programs and/or to help them explore other engineering majors. Our Engineering Career Center-already heavily engaged in career services for our students with very successful career fairs, career development programming, and strong industry relationsengaged our freshman students in the Engineering Career Exploration event which introduced them to industry partners and alumni in a career fair-type atmosphere. The Engineering Career Center had invited our 1,100 engineering freshman to attend that pilot Career Exploration Event to provide context to the entry-level courses that they were enrolled in. As pilots are meant to do, our 2010 inaugural event, though a tremendous success, taught us many lessons for planning the event for fall 2011. This paper defines the rationale for conducting the Freshman Career Exploration Event and discusses how we implemented the lessons learned from our pilot event. In doing so, the paper also inspects the desired learning outcomes that governed the redesign of the event and details how the ASU Engineering Career Center partnered with Introduction to Engineering faculty to develop a three-pronged curriculum to create significant impact on our engineering freshmen. The logistics of the event, including strategies for recruiting company participation, are also
Recruitment and retention is a key concern for Australian engineering, with indications that 40% of engineering graduates work in other professions rather than in engineering (Tilli & Trevelyan, 2010) and attrition from Australian engineering degrees standing at around 35% (Godfrey & King, 2011). The attrition of students and graduate engineers has led to concerns that students may enter engineering study without understanding the realities of either their degree programs or engineering work. This study contributes to understanding these issues and explores possible approaches to address them. BACKGROUND This study built on previous research in which potential threshold concepts in an engineering foundation program were identified by engineering educators and students, and negotiated by engineering educators around Australia, and in New Zealand and Europe (Male, 2012; Male & Baillie, 2011; Parkinson, 2011). The project revealed understanding of ‘roles of engineers’, the ‘value of learning’, and ‘self-directed learning’, as threshold concepts. These concepts were found to be transformative and troublesome for many students and they were likely to be linked (Meyer & Land, 2003). Using an innovative pedagogical design we explored how students might be supported to explore and manage these concepts within the existing curricular structures of undergraduate programs. PURPOSE To better understand the three concepts identified above and to determine how teaching staff could support students to negotiate them, the current study drew on research that had successfully enhanced students’ career preview, self-efficacy and identity development in other disciplines (Bennett, 2012) and applied this thinking to engineering. DESIGN/METHOD The study combined three theoretical frameworks. We engaged engineering students in workshops in which they investigated roles and attributes of engineers, the purpose of their studies, and their engineering goals. The workshops were designed to provide valuable learning experiences, and they were structured such that we could add to the existing body of research through data collection and analysis. RESULTS The findings within each framework are consistent and informed each other; however, each framework provided unique insights into why students experienced the previously identified threshold concepts and each framework gave us different terminology to explain the students’ experiences. CONCLUSIONS The three frameworks enriched understanding of the previously identified threshold concepts. The study draws attention to the need and opportunity for engineering educators to help students adopt presage or foundational thinking in relation to their engineering futures.
Strengthening Undergraduate Career Preparedness Through Multidisciplinary Research Projects
2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings, 2015
Growing global and technological demands on industry have led to an increased emphasis on the educational training of undergraduate engineers to better equip them for engineering careers. This increased focus has resulted in a call for changes to the undergraduate engineering curriculum. Clemson University's undergraduate research program, Creative Inquiry (CI), can serve as an example of how to address some of these current educational challenges and create a culture of undergraduate research that benefits both academia and industry. We believe that research opportunities which incorporate hands-on experiences for undergraduates across different disciplines will encourage skill development in areas directly related to current industry needs. The professional benefits for participants of multidisciplinary undergraduate research projects were evaluated through a case study of a project which took place from Fall 2010 to Spring 2012. The project team was comprised of students majoring in mechanical engineering, bioengineering, marketing, and nursing. Interviews with past members of the multidisciplinary team were able to elicit individual's perceptions of the team dynamic as decisions were made throughout the project. All past team members had graduated and many were employed in careers related to their majors at the time of the interviews. This allowed them to offer insights into how their experience on the project has impacted their current careers. Our study shows that multidisciplinary research projects can foster practical experience and encourage skill development in areas of communication and teamwork which directly impact how recent graduates approach their current careers.
Career Plans of Undergraduate Engineering Students: Characteristics and Contexts
Research Papers in Economics, 2017
Each year some 80,000 students graduate from one of over 350 universities and colleges in the United States with a bachelor of science (BS) degree in engineering (American Society for Engineering Education [ASEE] 2015; National Science Foundation [NSF] 2015). This chapter examines how many of these graduates see this degree as leading to engineering work, the types of engineering students who are more likely to go into engineering work, and the experiences that influence their entering the profession or working elsewhere. The chapter builds on findings from the Academic Pathways of People Learning Engineering Survey (APPLES) (Sheppard et al. 2010), 1
2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
When ideas for improving the education and graduation rates of engineering students are presented, one practice often promoted is increasing the number of students performing undergraduate research. Often, the benefits achieved by high-achieving undergraduate students engaged in research activities are cited as evidence of the potential that undergraduate research offers all students. However, relatively little study has been devoted to the impact and benefits of research experiences on ordinary engineering students. Yet, in order to achieve broader participation in undergraduate research experiences, it is these students to whom undergraduate research opportunities need to be provided. Therefore, it is necessary to understand how these experiences can mesh with the career goals of these students, and how they can best meet the students' expectations and needs. The primary purpose of this NSF-sponsored work is to develop definitions of what constitutes a successful undergraduate research experience for a wide range of engineering students. Particular attention is devoted to students whose academic background and performance is solid, but not outstanding. For such students, some of the benefits seen in high-achieving studentssuch as increased likelihood of graduate school attendancemay not be appropriate measures of a successful experience. To develop the definitions, we have surveyed and interviewed students who have been engaged in undergraduate research experiences in engineering, faculty members who have supervised undergraduate students working on research projects, and industrial representatives who have employed recent engineering graduates. In this paper, we present the perspectives of these groups. With the perspectives of the three groups as input, the definitions of a successful undergraduate research experience for non-elite engineering students have been developed and are presented. In addition to these definitions of a successful undergraduate research experience, the paper also presents insights from the faculty and students on how to make the experiences more beneficial for the students. Such information can help other faculty as they design research experiences for their own students.