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The population of nontraditional engineering students (NTES) is increasing across campuses as more students are returning from the workforce to complete their education and students who need to take on part-time or full-time jobs to support their education. Nontraditional students (NTS) are defined as students who satisfy at least one of the seven criteria provided by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) or are older than 24 years of age in an undergraduate program. Research into NTES generally focused on their demographics, the challenges they faced and educational outcomes, and specific methods of teaching NTES. Existing studies on NTES focus on NTES’ deficiencies and methods to improve the outcomes of NTES in engineering programs. None of the existing studies in NTES are asset-based that focus on their strengths such as their lived experiences or leveraging their strengths to increase engaged student learning for all students. The objective of this study is to identify the characteristics of NTES lived experience that can be incorporated into engineering classrooms to increase engagement for all students. Interviews with NTES were conducted to identify the characteristics of NTES past experience that were of interest to traditional engineering students in their engineering courses and classrooms. Interviews were transcribed and coded for analysis.