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Engineering industry internships provide significant benefits for undergraduate engineering students’ careers. First-generation and low-income students (FGLI) are one group of marginalized students who access internships at lower rates compared to their non-FGLI peers; however, the reasons for this gap have not yet been explored in the literature. In this paper, we investigate the internship acquisition experiences of FGLI engineering undergraduate students at a mid-sized private university in the western United States. We conducted ten semi-structured interviews to capture FGLI engineering students’ experiences encountering and navigating the process of obtaining an internship. Our findings highlight the ways in which much of the knowledges surrounding the internship search and recruitment process are implicit and how this implicit hidden curriculum and technocratic culture create structural barriers to internship access for FGLI engineering students. We present a structural critique of internship recruitment through the framework of hidden curriculum and propose that companies and engineering education institutions work together toward transparent modes of evaluation for internship recruitment.
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The Role of Mentorship in Student Preparation for Impactful Internships
Engineering students are particularly interested in attaining internships prior to completing their undergraduate studies. It is generally acknowledged that internships provide critical insight into the nature and demands of engineering roles. However, pre-internship students tend to be apprehensive about how to prepare for the internship opportunity and how to excel when in the position. Students enrolled in a Scholarships in STEM (S-STEM) program have both a faculty mentor and an industry mentor, that are important components of a process to infuse intrapreneurial competencies (i.e., entrepreneurship within established firms), in addition to the discipline-specific knowledge and skills provided by an engineering education. The research presented in this paper analyzes data from the students’ perspectives as well as mentors’ perspectives to better understand how the mentoring experience shapes readiness for internships, as well as readiness for employment or further education. Our findings suggest that both students and mentors perceive the mentorship process to be highly beneficial.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1834137
- PAR ID:
- 10392514
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
- Volume:
- https://peer.asee.org/40636
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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