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1. Board 120: Development of an Engineering Identity and Career Aspirations Survey for Use with Elementary Students

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--32210  

   Paul, Kelli; Maltese, Adam; Miel, Karen; Portsmore, Merredith; Sung, Euisuk (June 2019, ASEE Conferences)

   nterest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) begins as early as elementary and middle school. As youth enter adolescence, they begin to shape their personal identities and start making decisions about who they are and could be in the future. Students form their career aspirations and interests related to STEM in elementary school, long before they choose STEM coursework in high school or college. Much of the literature examines either science or STEM identity and career aspirations without separating out individual sub-disciplines. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a survey instrument to specifically measure engineering identity and career aspirations in adolescents and preadolescents. When possible, we utilized existing measures of STEM identity and career aspirations, adapting them when necessary to the elementary school level and to fit the engineering context. The instrument was developed within the context of a multi-year, NSF-funded research project examining the dynamics between undergraduate outreach providers and elementary students to understand the impact of the program on students’ engineering identity and career aspirations. Three phases of survey development were conducted that involved 492 elementary students from diverse communities in the United States. Three sets of items were developed and/or adapted throughout the four phases. The first set of items assessed Engineering Identity. Recent research suggests that identity consists of three components: recognition, interest, and performance/competence. Items assessing each of these constructs were included in the survey. The second and third sets of items reflected Career Interests and Aspirations. Because elementary and middle school students often have a limited or nascent awareness of what engineers do or misconceptions about what a job in science or engineering entails, it is problematic to measure their engineering identity or career aspirations by directly asking them whether they want to be a scientist/engineer or by using a checklist of broad career categories. Therefore, similar to other researchers, the second set of items assessed the types of activities that students are interested in doing as part of a future career, including both non-STEM and STEM (general and engineering-specific) activities. These items were created by the research team or adapted from activity lists used in existing research. The third set of items drew from career counseling measures relying on Holland’s Career Codes. We adapted the format of these instruments by asking students to choose the activity they liked the most from a list of six activities that reflected each of the codes rather than responding to their interest about each activity. Preliminary findings for each set of items will be discussed. Results from the survey contribute to our understanding of engineering identities and career aspirations in preadolescent and adolescent youth. However, our instrument has the potential for broader application in non-engineering STEM environments (e.g., computer science) with minor wording changes to reflect the relevant science subject area. More research is needed in determining its usefulness in this capacity. 

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2. Skills geoscience employers look for in bachelors-level geoscientists

   Shafer, Gregory; Viskupic, Karen; Egger, Anne (July 2021, Earth Educators' Rendezvous)

   Preparing graduates to enter the workforce is a common goal of undergraduate geoscience degree programs. Determining what skills are necessary for new graduates to succeed in the workforce requires knowledge of the skills sought by employers of bachelors-level geoscientists. To investigate skills desired by employers, we systematically analyzed job advertisements retrieved from 4 search engines between May and November 2020. We used 15 search words derived from the 2018 Status of the Geoscience Workforce (AGI) report to select job advertisements that required or preferred a geoscience-based bachelor's degree. Additionally, we categorized each advertisement by industry sector based on definitions in the 2018 AGI report. Each job advertisement (n=1214) was coded to identify skills sought by the employer. An initial set of codes was based on skills identified by the Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education project and additional emergent codes were identified during the coding process. We generated a final set of 34 codes, with definitions and examples, through an iterative coding process, checking for inter-rater reliability. Advertisements were not coded for geoscience content knowledge. The most common skills sought by employers were the ability to conduct field work, teamwork, work with computers, collect, process and interpret data, and communicate effectively, however, the desirability of skills varied across industry sectors. For example, teamwork skills were sought in 60% of mining sector advertisements but only 22% of oil and gas sector advertisements. Our results provide insight into the expectations of potential employers for recent graduates seeking a career in geoscience. Additionally, our results provide geoscience degree programs with critical information required to prepare undergraduates with the necessary skills to be successful in the current job market. 

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3. Rising to the challenge: adult student perceptions of institutional supports to increase access to careers in biotechnology

   https://doi.org/10.1108/HESWBL-06-2022-0128  

   Portnoy, Lindsay; Sadler, Ash; Zulick, Elizabeth (March 2023, Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning)

   Purpose Amidst continued calls for the democratization of access to higher education for historically underrepresented populations alongside the first global health crisis in a century lies the opportunity to address persistent societal needs: increasing access for underrepresented minority students to educational pathways that lead to careers in lucrative fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Design/methodology/approach Student participants enrolled in the biotechnology pathway Associates, Bachelors and Masters programs share programmatic experience in an accelerated biotechnology program through a bi-annual survey grounded in the central tenets of social-cognitive career theory aimed at understanding requisite academic, social and financial support for student success. Findings The pathway program described in this paper emerged to address the need to support underrepresented students in degree attainment and taking on roles in the growing field of biotechnology through a novel, multi-degree, multi-institutional pathway to STEM degree attainment and career success. Social implications This work has advanced understanding about how to effectively align higher education institutions with each other and with evolving STEM labor market demands while documenting the impact of essential academic, career and social supports recognized in the literature as high impact practices in broadening participation and increasing retention of underrepresented minority students in lucrative STEM careers. Originality/value Pathway programs which best support student success include robust mentoring, experiential learning and robust student scholarship support, part of the design of this unique pathway program. The authors share how this program utilizes high impact practices to provide low-income, underrepresented minority students with supportive, accelerated biotechnology degrees in preparation for success in the job market. What's more, of all our BS-level graduates thus far, 100% are employed and 93% within the biotechnology field. For many, the opportunity to raise their family out of poverty via a stable, high paying job is directly tied to their successes within this program. 

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4. Exploring the challenges and assistive technology for autistic job seekers across employment pathways

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2025.105155  

   Garrison, Elizabeth; MacNeil, Stephen; Hantula, Donald A; West, Michael; Dragut, Eduard; Tincani, Matt; Vucetic, Slobodan (December 2025, Research in Developmental Disabilities)

   Background When transitioning from high school, autistic job seekers often navigate three different pathways to employment: University, Job Coaching, and Self-Directed (defined as those job seekers who independently complete the job search process, without formal support). Assistive technology may aid job seekers throughout the job seeking process. The aim of this study is to learn more about the challenges and assistive technology that autistic job seekers encounter while navigating these three different employment pathways. Methods Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with fifteen stakeholders in the United States, autistic job seekers and support personnel, within each pathway of the hiring process to gather information regarding the challenges autistic job seekers encounter, and the assistive technology they use to address those challenges. Results From a thematic analysis of these interviews, we found that autistic job seekers along each pathway commonly move through the following, phases of the hiring process or “checkpoints”: resume building, networking, job search, job application, and interviews. Autistic job seekers also face challenges within each checkpoint, such as knowing when and what to disclose; self-efficacy, anxiety, and communication challenges; and a lack of communication from potential employers. We also learned that some self-directed autistic job seekers, when compared to those in the University and Job Coaching pathways, may not be using assistive technologies available in the job search process. From our interviews, we also learned the types of assistive technology that autistic job seekers and assistants use in the job seeking process which can be classified as organizational tools, connectivity tools, and visual media tools. Conclusion and implications Our findings revealed a necessity to connect self-directed autistic job seekers to assistive technology available. Based on these results, we present suggestions for future research and design suggestions for developing assistive technology for autistic job seekers. What this paper adds? We define three career pathways for autistic job seekers: University, Job Coaching and Self Directed. To learn more about the hiring process for autistic job seekers and the assistive technology used within each pathway, we conducted a need-finding study. As a contribution of this study, we discovered challenges along each checkpoint in the hiring process, as well as various forms of assistive technology used to support autistic job seekers when encountering those challenges. For our second contribution, we use the information from these interviews to provide suggestions for the design of future assistive technology within the hiring process, potentially supporting the self-efficacy of autistic job seekers, during this process. 

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5. Compositional safety rules for inter-triggering hybrid automata

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3447928.3456659  

   Rutledge, Kwesi J.; Chou, Glen; Ozay, Necmiye (May 2021, Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control)

   null (Ed.)

   In this paper, we present a compositional condition for ensuring safety of a collection of interacting systems modeled by inter-triggering hybrid automata (ITHA). ITHA is a modeling formalism for representing multi-agent systems in which each agent is governed by individual dynamics but can also interact with other agents through triggering actions. These triggering actions result in a jump/reset in the state of other agents according to a global resolution function. A sufficient condition for safety of the collection, inspired by responsibility-sensitive safety, is developed in two parts: self-safety relating to the individual dynamics, and responsibility relating to the triggering actions. The condition relies on having an over-approximation method for the resolution function. We further show how such over-approximations can be obtained and improved via communication. We use two examples, a job scheduling task on parallel processors and a highway driving example, throughout the paper to illustrate the concepts. Finally, we provide a comprehensive evaluation on how the proposed condition can be leveraged for several multi-agent control and supervision examples. 

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