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Leaders in industry and government are calling for increasing innovation in STEM fields to maintain the nation's economic competitiveness [15]. Solving today's complex challenges will require cooperation among experts from many fields. Successful leaders must harness the diverse capabilities of teams composed of these experts and be technically skilled. Undergraduate engineering students can fill this need by learning how to be effective leaders during their formation as engineers. Unfortunately, many engineering students graduate with little development of leadership skills; engineering educators do not currently have a sufficient understanding of how engineering students develop into leaders. This NSF ECE supported project seeks to improve educators’ understanding of the interaction between leadership and engineering identities in the formation of undergraduate engineers. This work postulates that a cohesive engineering leadership identity should exist at the intersection of engineering and leadership identities. Now entering its second year the project is wrapping up its quantitative phase and is beginning the qualitative phase of investigation. This paper discusses the process of developing the qualitative research protocols used to explore identity formation in groups of undergraduate engineers at three different campuses. The discussion shows the formation of the protocol using prior work in leadership and engineering identity constructs from both this project and the literature. The protocol development, methods, and findings from early interviews are presented. Initial findings suggest several factors are important to engineering educators interested in developing engineers who are ready to lead. The findings include evidence of some level of conflict between engineering identity and leadership identity as well as further evidence of engineering students’ compartmentalization of leadership as outside of engineering. In addition, this paper includes the learning outcomes of three REU students who joined the project to assist with the development of the qualitative protocol. The REU students made significant contributions to initial data collection as participants and observers. The REU students were the lead authors of this paper.
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How Do Engineering Undergraduates Define Engineering Identity?
Identity is central to learning in engineering, and development of an engineering identity is a core aspect of the education and training process for engineers. Identification with engineering has been shown to assist in the recruitment of diverse students into the field and improve student retention among all groups. For these reasons, engineering educators should consider the formation of professional identity as they make decisions about how to best prepare graduates to enter their chosen fields. In order to utilize professional identity, these educators must understand how their students conceptualize engineering identity. This work seeks to promote that understanding by investigating conceptualizations undergraduate engineers hold of engineering identity, their self-view as engineers, and the sources of these views. Using data collected from pilot focus groups of ten undergraduate students at two different U.S. engineering schools, we applied a grounded theory approach to explore these topics. This exploration found many elements consistent with prior work in engineering identity (e.g. a focus on technical knowledge defining engineering) while adding new elements, such as students’ surprise at the breadth of engineering and desire to use their engineering education as a vehicle to positively impact the world.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1664231
- PAR ID:
- 10167746
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- American Society for Engineering Management
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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The ways in which students encounter school can markedly shape how they form professional identities and continue into the engineering workforce. This is particularly true for those students who experience a variety of disabilities, as they must simultaneously manage and navigate disability-related cultural, academic, physical, and bureaucratic university structures and form professional identities. In this paper, we describe the evolution of an ongoing NSF-sponsored project exploring professional identity formation in undergraduate civil engineering students with disabilities as they experience their undergraduate careers and move into the workforce. To provide context for this ongoing work, we summarize the background, sensitizing concepts, and updated research procedures underpinning this study. We then focus our discussion on our emergent findings to-date, which includes the identification of a sub-process referred to as Establishing Definitions of Self. Overall, these findings begin to highlight the nuance and fluidity of disability identity as students form professional identities as civil engineers.more » « less
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