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The process of becoming an engineer is fundamentally an identity development process and students who identify as engineers are more likely both to graduate and to enter the field upon graduation. Therefore an opportunity in engineering education is providing undergraduates experiences that bolster their sense of identity as engineers. In particular, experiences that offer authentic engagement in engineering work should be expected to promote engineering identity. This paper tests the relationship between collegiate experiences expected to promote engineering identity formation with change in engineering identity in a national sample of 918 engineering students using data from the 2013 College Senior Survey (CSS). The CSS is administered by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA to college students at the end of their fourth year of college; data from the CSS are then matched to students’ prior responses on the 2009 Freshman Survey (TFS) to create a longitudinal sample. Engineering identity is measured using a composite of items available in both surveys to assess change in engineering identity over four years, and intention to pursue an engineering career is also tested. Results show participation in undergraduate research appears to increase engineering identity, while participation in an internship increases likelihood of pursuing an engineering career. 

The literature in both Engineering Management (EM) and the nascent field of Engineering Leadership (EL) periodically discusses the relative importance of industry experience for faculty engaged in these areas. Recent work in both fields found that EM / EL faculty appear to have considerable industry experience. However, this finding runs counter to the commonly accepted knowledge summarized by former leaders of the National Academy of Engineering Wulf and Fischer as “Present engineering faculty tend to be very capable researchers, but too many are unfamiliar with the worldly issues of ‘design under constraint’ simply because they’ve never actually practiced engineering.” While this knowledge is commonly accepted, prior reviews of the literature were unable to identify any studies that quantified this lack of practice experience among engineering faculty. A finding further supported by discussions with engineering education programs officers at the NAE. This work seeks to close that gap through examination of the backgrounds of a representative national sample of engineering faculty. The collection looked at faculty from fifteen different universities representing each of the three Carnegie research classifications. For each university, faculty backgrounds from three different programs were collected and examined using faculty’s publicly available curriculum vita and professional social media identity (i.e. LinkedIn). Through this analysis a composite profile is created that shows the differences in practice backgrounds of faculty, considering type of appointment (level, tenurable vs. non-tenurable) and engineering field. Significant differences are found in many categories, supporting some aspects of the commonly held beliefs.