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1. Future of Work Issues for Florida Two-Year Engineering Technology Program

   Barger, Marilyn Gilbert ( July 2022 , ASEE annual conference exposition proceedings)

   Manufacturing Division Program Committee of ASEE (Ed.)

   The two-year (60 semester credit hour) Engineering Technology (ET) Associate of Science (AS) degree program is available to students in 23 of the 25 Florida State Colleges that offer technician preparation degrees. As of 2020 there were over 2,000 students enrolled in this course of study. The degree has a Core set of courses completed in the first year followed by a set of specialized courses in year 2. The program has a high percentage of students working in industry during their course of study and enjoys an over 90% industry employment placement of its graduates. Graduates can also seamlessly articulate into an B.S. program offered in the Florida State College System as well as pursue a B.S. Engineering Technology degree that also leads to a Professional Engineers License. To maintain this rewarding ET career path, the Florida Advanced Technological Education Center (FLATE) with support from the Florida Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST, supported Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) interacts directly with manufacturers, college technical faculty, and college upper administration to assure the ET degree program focus is manufacturing industry impact within each college service region. 

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2. What Early Career Civil Engineers Wish They Had Done Differently: Lessons For Students and Faculty

   Grajdura, Sarah Allison ; Beddoes, Kacey ( January 2022 , American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference)

   That the school-to-work transition can be challenging for many recent engineering graduates is well known [1]–[7]. However, current students and faculty rarely get an opportunity to learn directly from the mistakes, regrets, and hindsight of recent graduates during their first few years in the workplace. In order to help make students’ transition to engineering practice easier, and, relatedly, to help faculty prepare them in salient ways, this paper addresses the following research questions: 1) What do newcomer civil engineers believe are the biggest mistakes they made in their first few years on the job? and 2) If they could go back to when they began their jobs, what would they have done differently? As part of a mixed-methods, longitudinal study that aims to explore organizational socialization in engineering practice, sixteen early career civil engineers who worked in different firms around the country were asked about their work experiences, including their biggest mistakes and what they would have done differently at work knowing what they know now. Participants said their biggest mistakes related to not asking enough questions, undervaluing/not advocating for oneself, and staying in a position they dislike. Less mentioned issues included specific personal habits, attitudes, and unrealistic expectations from university education. When asked what they would have done differently from the first day at work until now, most responses related to having more confidence, networking and socializing more, and other specific personal behaviors, such as better organization. Less mentioned themes included requesting a higher salary, asking more questions, learning more material, and advocating for their own interests. The results have important implications for successfully preparing civil engineering students to begin their careers. By identifying these gaps in preparation, the paper points to recommendations for the civil engineering community. 

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3. Exploring Alignment Between Engineering Students’ Job Plans and Post-Graduation Outcomes. Paper presented at

   Rüde, L ; Harris, A ; Gilmartin, S ; Sheppard, S. ( October 2018 , IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), San Jose, CA, USA, 2018. IEEE)

   This Research-to-Practice Full Paper investigates engineering students’ career goals and intentions regarding organizational settings, and how their goals and intentions relate to their background, learning and contextual measures. Moreover, despite vocational choice and turnover having been heavily studied in the literature, few studies have examined how students’ career goals relate to change in their organizational settings over time and how these perceptions then influence their turnover intentions. To fill in this research gap, this paper explores how organizational setting and respondent aspiration to be in that setting relate to turnover intentions. The paper is based on the nationally-representative, longitudinal Engineering Majors Survey and has a sample size of 350 respondents, characterized as employed and recently graduated (<2y) from an undergraduate engineering program. Respondents are categorized in three different alignment groups (Aligned, Fluid, Unaligned) according to their career goal achievement. Respondents who are currently employed in the type of organization, they had imagined being employed at a year earlier are called Aligned. Respondents who are actually employed in the type of organization (e.g., small versus large firm) to which they stated “Might or might not” be employed a year earlier are classified as Fluid. Finally, respondents, who work in the organizational setting, which they did not want to work in one year prior, are called Unaligned. The paper also determines respondents turnover intentions (Stay, Flexible, Go) related to organizational settings, such as small companies or medium and large companies. Alignment and turnover groups were then compared with each other in relation to background, learning, and contextual measures. Background measures are gender, underrepresented minority status, and first generation to college status. Learning measures are internship experience, and contextual measures are job satisfaction and grade point average. The findings suggest that most of these recent graduates are Aligned and want to Stay in their organizational setting. Employees in small companies are relatively less Aligned and are more likely to Go and leave the organizational setting than are employees in large companies. Respondents who have done an internship are more often Aligned and less likely want to Go and leave their organizational setting than those who have not done an internship. These results suggest that many respondents decide before graduation on an organizational setting and continue to desire the same organizational setting after being employed for some time. Future longitudinal research should compare organizational settings-based turnover intentions with turnover intentions related to specific companies, -as a complement to much of the in literature on turnover intentions mostly refers to leaving specific organizations. Keywords: career decisions, labor turnover intentions, organizational setting, engineering graduates, alignment 

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4. Exploring Alignment Between Engineering Students’ Job Plans and Post-Graduation Outcomes

   Rude, L. ; Harris, A. ; Gilmartin, S. ; Sheppard, S. ( January 2018 , Proceedings of the 48th Annual Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference, October 3-6, 2018. San Jose, California.)

   This Research-to-Practice Full Paper investigates engineering students’ career goals and intentions regarding organizational settings, and how their goals and intentions relate to their background, learning and contextual measures. Moreover, despite vocational choice and turnover having been heavily studied in the literature, few studies have examined how students’ career goals relate to change in their organizational settings over time and how these perceptions then influence their turnover intentions. To fill in this research gap, this paper explores how organizational setting and respondent aspiration to be in that setting relate to turnover intentions. The paper is based on the nationally-representative, longitudinal Engineering Majors Survey and has a sample size of 350 respondents, characterized as employed and recently graduated (<2y) from an undergraduate engineering program. Respondents are categorized in three different alignment groups (Aligned, Fluid, Unaligned) according to their career goal achievement. Respondents who are currently employed in the type of organization, they had imagined being employed at a year earlier are called Aligned. Respondents who are actually employed in the type of organization (e.g., small versus large firm) to which they stated “Might or might not” be employed a year earlier are classified as Fluid. Finally, respondents, who work in the organizational setting, which they did not want to work in one year prior, are called Unaligned. The paper also determines respondents turnover intentions (Stay, Flexible, Go) related to organizational settings, such as small companies or medium and large companies. Alignment and turnover groups were then compared with each other in relation to background, learning, and contextual measures. Background measures are gender, underrepresented minority status, and first generation to college status. Learning measures are internship experience, and contextual measures are job satisfaction and grade point average. The findings suggest that most of these recent graduates are Aligned and want to Stay in their organizational setting. Employees in small companies are relatively less Aligned and are more likely to Go and leave the organizational setting than are employees in large companies. Respondents who have done an internship are more often Aligned and less likely want to Go and leave their organizational setting than those who have not done an internship. These results suggest that many respondents decide before graduation on an organizational setting and continue to desire the same organizational setting after being employed for some time. Future longitudinal research should compare organizational settings-based turnover intentions with turnover intentions related to specific companies, -as a complement to much of the in literature on turnover intentions mostly refers to leaving specific organizations. Keywords: career decisions, labor turnover intentions, organizational setting, engineering graduates, alignment 

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5. Accounting for Occupational Identity Work in the Attrition of Newcomer Civil Engineers: Theoretical Model

   Beddoes, Kacey ( January 2023 , Journal of civil engineering education)

   Early-career engineers leave the profession at high rates, and much remains unknown about why that is so. Consequently, there have been calls for more research to better understand newcomer engineers’ experiences and attrition. The purpose of this article is therefore to examine the experiences of newcomer engineers from different universities and engineering firms around the US. The research questions addressed are as follows: (1) How do newcomer engineers characterize engineering work? and (2) What insights can their characterizations provide about newcomer attrition from engineering careers? A longitudinal study was conducted with recent civil engineering graduates in the US. Three sets of semistructured interviews were conducted in 2019 and 2020. Open coding methods were used to answer the first research question. Based on those emergent findings, the data was then analyzed through the lens of expectancy-value theory to answer the second research question. Misalignments between subjective task values created and/or reinforced in school were a prevalent source of dissatisfaction. There was a need for participants to engage in occupational identity work to reconcile the meanings of engineering and align their identities as engineers with workplace realities. Implications for future research and the engineering education system are discussed. 

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