An official website of the United States government
This research to practice full paper presents the work of an academic-industry research partnership to explore the internship experiences of summer interns at a large global engineering company. Engineering internships give students the opportunity to apply the engineering skills they have been learning to real products and can have a high impact on innovation and engineering task self-efficacy. The relationship between internships and innovation and engineering task selfefficacy matters because self-efficacy is an important predictor of major and career choice. Innovation interests is another measure that measures the individual’s interest in innovative behaviors, unlike ISE which measures their confidence in practicing these behaviors. This paper focuses on understanding the relationship between internship work assignment and supervisor interaction and innovation interests. Furthermore, the relationship between the internship experience and the intern’s likelihood of accepting a job offer from the same company is explored. A survey administered to engineering interns (N = 115) at the end of their summer 2017 internship at a large global engineering company forms the main dataset for this work. Keywords—Engineering Education Research, Industrial Partnerships and Collaborations, Engineering Education Research, Innovation and Creativity
more »
« less
This content will become publicly available on November 12, 2026
Internships for First-Year Building Pathways Engineering Students: Building Engineering Identity and Belonging to Foster Persistence
This mixed-methods study examined a 10-week internship program for first-year undergraduate Civil and Architectural Engineering students. Results showed significant increases in engineering identity and sense of belonging. Practical experiences and mentoring fostered resilience, supporting persistence and highlighting the value of early internship opportunities for student retention and success.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2225157
- PAR ID:
- 10659534
- Publisher / Repository:
- Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE)
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
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.more » « less
-
High-impact academic experiences, particularly research and internship experiences, have positive impacts for engineering students on engineering task self-efficacy (ETSE), a measure of students’ perception of their ability to perform technical engineering tasks. However, under- represented racial/ethnic minority students (URM) and women in engineering are found to have relatively lower self-perceptions across several academic and professional self-efficacy measures. Previous studies examined the impact of research and internship experiences on ETSE for students categorized by gender and URM status separately. The current study explores the impact of these experiences on ETSE for the intersection between these two identity categories. This study found that both non-URM and URM women that participated in research and internship experiences had lower ETSE scores than non-URM and URM men, respectively. However, URM women that participated in both research and internship experiences had a statistically similar ETSE score to non-URM men that had not participated in either. This study uses multiple linear regression to measure the association between engineering internships and student’s reported ETSE (effects of participating in research were not found to be significant across identities). Preliminary findings indicate that differences in ETSE between internship participants and non-participants are highest for URM women when compared to their counterparts. Consistent with the literature, this research finds that there is a greater positive effect in ETSE scores, as a result of participation in both research and internship experiences, for URM women than their majority counterparts. These preliminary results provide a foundation for further studies to causally investigate the link between academic experiences and self-efficacy levels for students who are underrepresented in engineering programs. Future implications of this work include the creation of targeted intervention efforts to increase support for all URM students’ access and participation in research and internship experiences. Additionally, this work seeks to challenge the bias towards monolithic interpretations of women and URM engineering students as separate categories and encourage intersectional perspectives when analyzing data to produce more inclusive results. Key Concepts: intersectionality, self-efficacy, engineering task self-efficacy, learning outcomes, academic pathways, inclusion, engineering experiences, research, internshipsmore » « less
-
This paper describes an NSF ITEST project that addresses the need to attract, motivate, prepare and support a more diverse engineering workforce. The Build a Better Book (BBB) project (award no. 2049109) engages teens in an engineering design experience grounded in principles of universal design and focused on engineering for accessibility. From 2022-2024, the project team facilitated eight teen internship programs at four sites around the country, including a university, public library, high school, and science center. Regardless of location or format, all programs incorporated several key elements, based on the project’s underlying theoretical framework, including: authentic engineering projects developed in collaboration with community clients that center empathy and accessible design; settings and processes that simulated real-world work environments, including an emphasis on intern agency, collaboration, and accountability; and mentorship, training and support provided throughout the experience. Internship sites strived to engage a diverse cohort of interns who came to the program with varied levels of interest in engineering. Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, including pre-post surveys, audio reflections, and focus group discussions, the team assessed teens’ motivations to participate in the program and measured the impact of the internship program on teens’ perceptions of engineering, their confidence and competence in an array of technical and general workplace skills, and their awareness of disabilities and the importance of universal design. Over the three-year period, 184 teens across the four sites participated in the internship program and of these, 152 participated in the research study. Results suggest that the human-centered focus of the internship motivated youth to participate, and the experience expanded their perceptions of engineering, increased their confidence and competency with technical and general workplace skills, and significantly increased their awareness of accessibility issues. Ongoing and future analyses will examine the relative impacts of different educational environments and program formats on intended outcomes and assess the longer-term impacts of the BBB teen internship experience by surveying program alumni one to three years after their participation.more » « less
-
Within engineering, internship experiences are upheld as a high-impact practice for students to increase practical knowledge and gain workforce preparation. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of participating in an engineering internship on the career development of racially minoritized students. We used a quasi-experimental research design to examine the experiences of racially minoritized students who participated in an internship program, titled Corporate Scholars, hosted by the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME), during the Summer of 2022. We conducted a one-group pretest-posttest design followed by semi- structured interviews with a subset of the participants. Pre-and post-survey responses were collected for 33 students, and interviews were conducted with 10 of the 33 students. We found that students had a range of experiences with their company that influenced their perceptions of their internship, their company, and the field of engineering. The internship experience appeared to impact vocational identity and building occupational interest. Additionally, we found tensions in students’ perceptions of engineering as a result of their internship and found that their perceptions of their company were dependent on mentor’s and workplace support. The results of this work could provide useful insight into how to better support engineering students, inform program practices, and increase retention in the field of engineering.more » « less
