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There is an urgent need to recruit, train, and sustain a diverse engineering workforce able to meet the socio-technical challenges of 21st century society. Together, student veterans and service members (SVSM) are a unique yet understudied student group that comprises substantial numbers of those historically underrepresented in engineering (i.e., due to race, ethnicity, gender, ability, orientation, etc.). That, in combination with technical interests and skills, maturity, life experience, and self-discipline, makes SVSM ideal candidates for helping engineering education meet these demands [1,2]. This NSF CAREER project aims to advance full participation of SVSMs within higher engineering education and the engineering workforce by 1) Research Plan: developing deeper understandings about how SVSM participate, persist, and produce professional identities in engineering and 2) Education Plan: putting new assets based understandings of SVSM experiences into practice through collaborative development, implementation and broad dissemination of evidence-based military ally and mentorship programs in engineering and awareness/support trainings for engineering faculty, staff, and administrators. 

The ever-increasing need for engineers to offer innovative solutions to complex interdisciplinary and global-societal issues requires an engineering workforce that is broadly diverse in experience and thought. Along with current efforts being made to increase diversity in engineering education programs and the engineering workforce on national and international scales, U.S. military students are increasingly recognized in the research literature as a potential source of diverse engineers. With the understanding that military students are not a single monolithic group, we frame this review by defining our target population of “military students” as postsecondary undergraduates enrolled at civilian institutions of higher education who a) have completed their service and are now military veterans or b) are concurrently serving in the U.S. Armed Forces, such as in the Reserves or National Guard, while attending college. Generally, this group of military students has served or are serving as enlisted servicemembers and are likely to be first-generation or from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups that have been historically underrepresented in engineering education [1] and the engineering workforce. In addition, both prior and current enlisted military students are widely considered to be those who have developed/will develop key attributes, such as a strong work ethic, maturity, and leadership skills, during their time in service that prepare them for academic success in engineering education and for impact in engineering careers [2]. 

This theory paper considers prominent critical social theories from the education research literature to conceptualize a critical theoretical space to understand individual theory affordances, gaps and potential ways moving forward to examine military student experience in engineering education.