By Chubin, Daryl Donaldson, Krista; Olds, Barbara; Fleming, Lorraine
ABSTRACT U.S. engineering education needs to evolve if the country is to maintain its preeminence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. This paper, building on both national engineering student data and findings from the Academic Pathways Study, conjectures and reports on analyses of what matters to future generations of engineers. The paper compares the current generation of college students, Generation Net, with previous generations, explores motivations and choices along the engineering pathway (pre-college to the workforce), examines students’ knowledge and skills relative to faculty practices, and concludes with three scenarios of engineering education and the workforce, including the consequences of stasis or change.
Keywords: Gen Net, recruitment, workforce
I. WHAT IS AT STAKE (BEYOND ENGINEERING)?
Generations matter. However, they make more sense when viewed retrospectively than when one participates in the first-person. As U.S. higher education transitions to a new clientele, the “Gen Net,” many college freshmen today have Gen-X parents (born 1961-81). Are the educational values of Baby Boomer faculty consistent with those of these new students and their parents? Why is it important to consider the values and motivations of both the Gen Net (born 1982- 2002) and their Gen-X parents (Strauss and Howe, 2007)? Because the historic link between expectations and later pursuits-what to study, education and degrees earned, career choice-may determine how engineering as a broad field (with specific disciplinary variations) fares in the competition for student talent. The composition and quality of the future engineering workforce hangs in the balance.
There appear to be two distinct schools of thought regarding the global nature of engineering into the foreseeable future. One school focuses on the issue of global competitiveness and argues for the need to produce more “home grown” engineers to maintain a global competitive edge. Alarmists who fear globalization see U.S. innovation as the preeminent economic challenge of the twenty-first century (Wadhwa et al., 2007) and argue that the burden of leadership requires that our knowledge and inventiveness dominate the technological landscape. A key component of that leadership is the education and training of engineers in U.S. colleges and universities. Proponents cite statistics about the huge number of engineers graduating annually from Chinese and Indian universities as well as the declining number of U.S. citizens who are earning engineering degrees:
Even if the nation did everything that is needed, it will probably take 10 to 15 years before major benefits become apparent. Given the pace at which globalization is happening, by that time the United States would have lost its global competitive edge. The nation cannot wait for education to set matters right (Wadhwa et al., 2007).
A recent widely-discussed publication of the National Research Council, Rising Above the Gathering Storm (Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, 2007), for example, warns that “Although the U.S. economy is doing well today, current trends in each of those [competitiveness] criteria indicate that the United States may not fare as well in the future without government intervention. This nation must prepare with great urgency to preserve its strategic and economic security” (Augustine, 2005). The America Competes Act (Public Law 110-69, authorized Aug. 9, 2007) which was built on Above the Gathering Storm, encompasses the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative, and proposes incentives to increase the number of U.S. citizen science, technology, engineering, and madiematics (STEM) students and teachers (Carney, Chubin, andMalcom, 2007).
A different approach is taken by those who see the world as “flatter” and who argue for more international collaborations, often through the use of technology, as the way to maintain the U.S. edge in the global arena. Proponents of this view often argue that Americans are uniquely innovative and creative, our graduate programs are the best in the world, and that these qualities will preserve U.S. status in the global market through an endless flow of talent to our shores (Friedman, 2005). They cite a distinct qualitative difference in graduates of U.S. engineering programs and see a global picture more collaborative than competitive (Friedman, 2005).
On this the two groups converge: American engineering education needs to evolve if the country is to maintain its preeminence in STEM fields (Clough, 2004). Of approximately four million American high school students who graduate each year, less than two percent will earn an engineering degree from a U.S. engineering school (Orsak 2003). ABET, Inc., the accreditor for college and university programs in applied science, computing, engineering, and technology, has recognized the importance of a globallyaware engineering workforce, too-ABET Engineering Criterion 3h calls for “the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental and societal context.” Many engineering programs have followed suit, developing international programs for their students ranging from brief overseas experiences to year-long exchanges and research opportunities (Downey, 2006).
If the Net Generation (also called the Digital Generation, Digital Natives, Millennials and the synonym we favor, Generation Net or Gen Net, for short) compose the pool of future engineers, then what “bait” should engineering institutions use to land needed and diverse talent (Howe and Strauss, 2000; Prensky, 2001)? If, as the evidence discussed in this special issue suggests, Gen Net students are more comfortable than their predecessors in interacting with diverse populations and with virtual communities, we predict that they will continue to work both formally and informally, with colleagues around the globe-but they need to be well-prepared through their engineering programs to do so. In traditional terms, how can engineering anticipate labor market “demand” and shape “supply” to ensure a better fit between what is learned in the classroom and what skills are sought for the workplace? What do we know about the Gen Net relative to our national and global competitiveness and collaborative needs?
Such questions are at once timeless, pragmatic, and vexing. Recognizing student propensities should give a competitive advantage to institutions who not only “fish smart,” but fill out their nets with a variety of “smart fish”-not just those traditionally attracted to engineering. This paper, building on both national engineering student data and findings from the Academic Pathways Study, casts about (theoretically) and seeks knowledge (empirically) of what matters to our future generations of engineers. Before we report what our sampled students thiruc, say, and do, we examine what previous generational analyses suggest about the specimens we covet.
II. GENERATION NET
Generational analyses are largely impressionistic-and therefore perilous. While contradictions in generalizations can always be found, we should not be perplexed by individuals who show few of the generational tendencies described (Ambrose, 2007; Hoover, 2007). The experiences of student affairs deans plus attitudinal data found in the 2007 National Survey of Student Engagement (Kuh, 2007) help paint a picture of current undergraduates and their parents. The defining characteristic of Generation Net is that they have never known life without the Internet and “can’t imagine life without it” (Oblinger and Oblinger, 2005). Gen Nets tend to be abundantly socially-connected, embrace new technologies, place value in immediacy and speed, and are ethnically diverse and involved in their community. In a learning environment, Gen Net students also differ from earlier generations: they prefer learning that is experiential (“learning by doing rather than being told what to do”), highly visual (as compared to text-based), fast-paced, and interactive (Roberts, 2005).
Universities are the frontline in attracting tomorrow’s engineers, and to do so, they must also attract their parents. The dynamic between parent and child differs by generation. Gen X, the parents of Gen Net, has been described as follows:
To get ahead, Gen Xers have had to work longer hours, take extra jobs, become dual-income families, go into business for themselves, or find new ways to economize. As a result, many Gen Xers have taken a pragmatic approach to the education of their children . . . demanded accountability from elementary and secondary schools, as well as bottomline cash value – the confidence that, in the end, what has been provided has been worth the investment of time and money (Strauss and Howe, 2007).
Gen Nets have been found to welcome the involvement of their parents in their lives, including their career planning. So-called “helicopter parents” hover and micromanage, often to their children’s delight (Andom, 2007; Merriman, 2007; Powers, 2007). Gen Net’s high expectations regarding overlapping boundaries of personal and professional life extend to future employers as well: they seek work-life balance, protection against risk, fairness, and the opportunity for teamwork Successful recruitment and retention on the job for this generation will have to focus not only on salary, but also on the importance of the work, the relations with colleagues (e.g., their preference for consultative decisionmaking), and the provision of appropriate supervision and mentoring. Corporate employers will have to manage Gen Net’s expectations for advancement, encourage them to take leadership roles, and cultivate responsible risk-taking. A need for structure will require a delicate balance with employers’ need for highly-motivated and committed self-starters. In universities, Gen Net’s characteristic approaches to learning are often not complementary with traditional teaching methods more aligned with those of earlier generations of faculty. Today’s students perceive technology, omnipresent in their Uves, not as hardware or software, but rather as the means to a desired end (Kvavlik 2005). Nevertheless, Slaughter (2007), of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, identified a disconnect:
It seems counter-intuitive to me that with all the technological artifacts in our lives, young people are not more interested in science, engineering, and technology what with cell phones, digital cameras, MP-3 players, IPODs, PCs, CDs, PDAs, DDRs, VCRs, and TlVOs everywhere. Those of us in positions to help share much of the blame for not conveying to young people the excitement, satisfaction, and rewards to be found in science and engineering, and for not providing in some comprehensive manner, the outreach that will encourage and inspire more youth to prepare themselves for the opportunities that will be available to them.
In an interview, Charles Vest, the President of the National Academy of Engineering and President Emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, similarly observed:
… this current generation of young people is actually very idealistic. They very much want to make the world a better place and very few of them see or understand engineering as a mechanism for doing that (Science and Government Report, 2007).
As Table 1 suggests, generational differences have been perceived throughout the twentieth century. While anecdotal, these comparisons do highlight some of the potential challenges of teaching, learning, and promoting student engagement. American faculty are adapting, but at a pace that appears to be too slow for many students who have been exposed to interactive, technologically-integrated curricula since elementary school (Clayton-Pedersen and O’Neill, 2005).
More technology does not necessarily enhance the learning environment. Research shows that technology, whether employing use of digital data-collection tools or computer simulations, must be integrated into an existing curriculum, rather than become the central feature of a course (Kvavlik, 2005). Getting immediate feedback on students’ basic understanding of concepts, for example using hand-held “clickers” in classrooms, improves the engagement of all types of learners (Davis, 2007; Chen, Lattuca, and Hamilton, 2008). Different styles of learning and processing information are here to stay. Indeed, the generation following Gen Net, composed of 8-18 year olds and sometimes called “Generation M(edia),” spends an average of nearly 6.5 hours a day with digital media (Rideout, Roberts, and Foehr, 2005).
The good news for university instructors, however, is that students still think that faculty expertise and passion are the keys to their learning (Roberts, 2005). That means the faculty role in engaging students remains unparalleled. As Chen et al. explore in this issue, certain institutional practices lead to high levels of student engagement. It is incumbent on faculty to organize learning opportunities on behalf of the institution (Chen, Lattuca, and Hamilton, 2008). In engineering education, they remind us, “systems thinking is . . . paramount; understanding . . . more conceptually driven . . . and the manipulation of ideas within design and odier problem-solving contexts is crucial.” Indeed, they find that satisfaction with instructors is significandy related to intent to major in engineering and their overall satisfaction with their collegiate experience. For example, engagement in undergraduate research is one way students can establish a personal relationship with faculty outside the classroom (Fortenberry, 2007). Yet evidence is lacking that institutions value-in deed if not in word-faculty commitment that takes curricular stewardship and student interactions seriously.
As engineering faculty are asked to better prepare their students to enter and thrive in the early twenty-first century workforce, the academic community must hope that institutions will invest in the pedagogy, technology, and professional development that supports engagement-teaching as well as learning.
III. THE ENGINEERING PATHWAY
A. Historical Trends on Choice of Major
Over the past 40 years, data on students enrolling in U.S. institutions of higher education present a moving picture of growth in number and diversity. Demographic pluralism has combined with policies to reduce inequities of race, ethnicity, gender, and disability, but the cost of attending college continues to rise. Meanwhile, the undergraduate student body, now represented in the aggregate by Gen Net, comes to college less academically prepared (needing remedial work especially in mathematics), but more socially accustomed to, if not adept in, living with “visible difference” (Hurtado and Pryor, 2007). Two in three say they have been “socialized with another race,” yet only one in five considers “racial discrimination no longer a major problem.”
What about those students in the STEM disciplines, and particularly those inclined to engineering? STEM degrees still represented only a third of all U.S. bachelors degrees awarded in 2004, the same proportion that they represented in 1966 (Babeo and Ellis, 2007). These percentages are remarkably stable, although gender ratios continue to be most imbalanced for engineering (as a whole) and computer science.
Whereas long-time trends of women’s high participation at the bachelors’ level approach parity in life and social/behavior sciences (Babeo and Ellis, 2007), The American Freshman (Pryor, 2007a) profiles show a continuing gender imbalance in interest among first-time, full-time freshmen in science and engineering majors- nine to one male in computer science and six to one in engineering. Today, five out of six engineering students and nine out often engineering professors are male. The vast majority are also white. These numbers are essentially unchanged over the last 30 years (Pryor, 2007a).
Contradictions and quandaries abound: in the total U.S. civilian workforce, STEM represents barely over 5 percent of the workers (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2006). Yet science- and engineeringtrained personnel are suffused throughout all sectors of the economy, from manufacturing to service to health care and sales. Engineers may be part of a stealth technology and science workforce. Describing them as “stealth” attests to their capability of doing what employers value, now and in the future projected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to 2030. Indeed, those with computer and mathematical science skills are among occupations with the lowest anticipated obsolescence in the U.S. (Cech, 2007). But how much of this luminous reality is communicated to undergraduates? Shouldn’t a technologicallyintensive and -savvy society be attracting more of its citizens to these opportunities? Why has there been no dramatic growth in STEM interest and degrees? Why is engineering attracting the students it gets? What is turning some on and turning others off? We start to consider these questions by looking at how American students might learn about engineering before arriving at college.
B. Pre-College Outreach: Laying an Engineering Foundation Before College
Pre-college engineering outreach programs largely aim to improve overall enrollment in undergraduate engineering, especially among women and underrepresented minorities (Orsak, 2003). Such programs started as early as 1956, and today over 300 operate nationally and locally (Douglas, Iversen, and Kalyandurg, 2004; Kimmel et al., 2006). Most American K-12 engineering programs target high school students and teachers, as compared to younger students: 77 percent focus on high school students and 46 percent on high school teachers (Project Lead The Way, 2007). Many universities, e.g., Maryland, Purdue, and MIT, also offer summer engineering programs where students attend classes on campus. Brophy et al. (2008) present several promising models in this issue for integrating engineering into P (pre-kindergarten)-12 curricula.
Programs in high schools generally introduce engineering concepts and fundamentals through one of two approaches: (1) as a “stand- alone” subject or program, or (2) integrated with related curriculum topics in math and science (Douglas, Iversen, and Kalyandurg, 2004). Project Lead the Way is an example of a standalone program that offers engineering fundamentals courses in over 1,500 U.S. schools in partnership with over 30 university affiliates. Summer programs at universities also tend to be “stand-alone,” and like their high school counterparts, tend to attract students already interested in engineering. Engineering Pathway, a digital library that resulted from the merging of the National Engineering Education Delivery System (NEEDS) and TeachEngineering, is an example of a program that integrates engineering topics and examples into related math and science curricula in K-12 institutions. Another example is The INFINITY Project, which partners engineering colleges with school districts in 34 states, and aims at increasing early exposure to engineering and improving students’ preparedness in math and science. This approach has the potential to reach all students in the classroom, not just those taking pre-engineering programs. Central to all of these efforts is the “teachability” of the curriculum by existing high school educators. Pre-engineering outreach programs tend to share many elements in recruiting and preparing students, particularly Gen Net, for majoring in engineering at the college level (Yoder et al., 2001; Schaefer, Sullivan, and Yowell, 2003):
* hands-on learning to promote discovery through inquirybased activities;
* lessons that bridge theory to reality (answering “Why is this important?”) and promoting preparedness in math and science;
* illustrations of the social relevance of engineering; and
* support for high school teachers teaching K-12, including training and mapping of curriculum to state standards.
However, evaluation of pre-engineering programs has largely focused on implementation and the process of engagement rather than on outcomes, including other professional experiences and degree attainment. In other words, the impact of any particular intervention and its contribution, in concert with other subsequent engineering experiences, to increasing the number of students enrolling in engineering programs is difficult to gauge. FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, 2007), a stand-alone robotics competition with the vision to “create a world where science and technology are celebrated . . . where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes,” may be an exception in that it reports outcomes based on longitudinal tracking of participants.
IV. GEN NET AT COLLEGE: DATA FROM THE ACADEMIC PATHWAYS STUDY
Adelman (1998), in his study of student pathways into and out of engineering, noted that curricular momentum can reinforce students’ trajectories within engineering and preferred pathways for students leaving engineering. His data are extensive: 11 years of college transcripts from the High School and Beyond/Sophomore Cohort Longitudinal Study, high school transcripts, standardized test scores, and surveys of undergraduate students. He found that an individual’s decision to study engineering was related to taking advanced mathematics and science classes in high school. Engineering students not only took higher level classes in high school, but also tended to be higher achieving there than their classmates. Once getting to college, however, for those who left engineering the “perception of overload” was found to be a factor in many students’ decisions to do so (Adelman, 1998).
Other papers in this special issue consider the multifaceted nature of the pathways of today’s students. For example, Ohland (2008) looks at choosing a major (asking how similar or different an engineering major is relative to other majors). Stevens (2008) examines how navigating an academic pathway involves matters of identity and knowledge acquisition (along with institutional opportunities and barriers). In this paper we look at four dimensions of the pathways to becoming an engineer:
* Knowledge of engineering prior to coming to college.
* Motivation to study engineering.
* Perceptions of needed knowledge and skills, and what is gained in undergraduate education.
* Post-baccalaureate plans.
Examining these four dimensions reveals the complexity of an engineering student’s life, and reinforces that there will be no “one size fits all” solution to excite more students about engineering. We use data from the Academic Pathways Study (APS) (described below) to address these dimensions. While we attempt to characterize Gen Net students largely in the aggregate, they are far from a monolithic group.
How do students identify career paths that genuinely fit their motivations, interests, and skills? The APS, part of the NSF-funded Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education, addresses questions about undergraduate student experiences and decisions to pursue an engineering degree relative to the development of their skills and knowledge, their self-perceptions, and needed skills as they enter the U.S. workforce (Sheppard et al., 2004). We present data from two cohorts of students who participated in the APS. The first cohort, the Longitudinal Cohort, is comprised of 160 students, 40 from each of the four core institutions (three had Carnegie 2000 classifications of Doctoral Research-Extensive, and one was Specialized Institution-Engineering). These students were followed from freshmen through senior years and participated in surveys, engineering activities, and interviews. The second cohort, the Broader Core Sample, is comprised of students from the larger population at the same four core APS institutions. Data of the Broader Core Sample come from their participation in the first deployment of the Academic Pathways for People Learning Engineering Survey (APPLES) in spring 2007. The goal of APPLES is to corroborate and generalize the Longitudinal Cohort findings to their broader population. The Academic Pathways Study and APPLES are described in greater detail in Sheppard et al. (2004), Donaldson et al. (2007), and Clark et al. (2008).
The students who participated in APS are quintessential Gen Net, born in the mid- to late-1980s. The year of birth for many in the Longitudinal Cohort, 1985, saw the introduction of Windows 1.0, Nokia’s 11-pound Talkman cell phone, the Commodore 128 (“with a whopping 128 KB RAM”), the Tandy 600 laptop, and Sony Discman D-50 MK2 (Rojas, 2005). Our data from the Longitudinal Cohort come from structured interviews in their first (freshmen) and second (sophomore) years; 128 subjects participated in their freshmen year and 91 subjects participated in their sophomore year. The structured interviews were approximately one hour in duration and conducted with subjects once a year for the first three years of the study at each of the four core APS institutions. These interviews were intended to collect specific information related to subjects’ engineering education experiences and their development of an identity as an engineer.
The Broader Core Sample is cross-sectional in that all undergraduate academic levels (freshmen through fifth-year+ seniors) are represented in the APPLES data. Specifically recruited were undergraduate students majoring in engineering, students thinking about majoring in engineering, and students who had intended to study engineering but decided to pursue a non-engineering major (“non-persisters”). Outreach to or over-sampling of women, ethnic minority, transfer, and internal students assured adequate statistical representation for analysis. The primary mode of subject recruitment was an e-mail solicitation from an engineering dean to students asking them to participate (Donaldson et al., 2007).
A. Gen Net’s Knowledge of Engineering Prior to Coming to College
Are the pre-college outreach programs that aim to expose students to engineering having an impact? The Broader Core Sample suggests, yes, but on a small scale. When asked “How did you gain your knowledge about the engineering profession?,” freshmen most commonly cited family members followed by (in order) having been a visitor and from a close friend. Figure 1 displays these and other sources of exposure to freshmen: intemship(s), university experiences (e.g., classes, activities, interaction with peers and faculty), “being an employee,” other (e.g., pre-college experiences, internet), and co- ops. “Other” experiences, which included K-12 programs such as Project Lead the Way, were cited by 6 percent of subjects in the Broader Core Sample.
Students who study engineering very often have parents who also studied engineering: one-third (33 percent) of the Broader Core Sample has an immediate family member who earned an engineering degree. Women students were more likely than their male counterparts (p
B. Gen Net’s Motivation to Study Engineering
Using data from the Broader Core Sample and the APPLE Survey, we looked at four different types of motivation that might spur Gen Net students to study engineering: financial, family, social good, and influence of a mentor. The survey asked students to rate whether they agree with several statements regarding each of the motivations. From these, an average variable score was computed for each of the four variables for all of the respondents who intended to complete an undergraduate engineering degree. Figure 2 shows how these four motivations compare for the Broader Core Sample: the strongest motivations were social good and financial, followed by mentor, and family. These motivations varied very little over time (as can be seen in Figure 2) and by institution. Gender differences were small: women showed a slightly higher level of mentor motivation than men, although there were no notable significant differences except for junior men (p
Given the reported influence of Gen Net’s parents in their children’s lives, we were surprised by the relative low level of motivation they provided in the APPLES data. However, this is consistent with findings by Pryor et al. (2007b) who found that while many American college students are happy with their parents’ involvement in their lives, significant percentages of students report “too little” parental involvement in their college decisions.
Table 2 shows what would be expected of those Gen Net students with an engineer as immediate family: they were likely to have higher family motivation to study engineering than other students. Having an immediate family member who is an engineer is also weakly correlated with social good and mentor motivations, but not financial motivation.
Structured interview data from the Longitudinal Cohort allowed us to explore motivations outside of the four focused on by the APPLE Survey. When freshmen and sophomores were asked what experiences have had a positive impact on their desire to become an engineer, they most frequently mentioned interaction with professors and teaching assistants, team projects, internships and extracurricular activities. These results complement findings by Chen et al. (2008) that student engagement in class and in extracurricular activities is tied to interaction and satisfaction with instructors. C. Gen Net’s Perceptions of Needed and Gained Knowledge and Skills
What is communicated to Gen Net engineering students at American universities in terms of their needed knowledge and skills? How are they gaining the knowledge they need? Table 3 summarizes Longitudinal Cohort and Broader Core Sample data on how undergraduate engineering students in the U.S. believe they gain their knowledge and skills. Taken together, these findings indicate that Gen Net students perceive their formal engineering education experience (for example, courses and interactions with faculty) as a primary source of their acquisition of engineering-related skills and knowledge. In contrast, they report that their understanding of engineering as a profession comes from more informal means (e.g., close relatives who have engineering degrees) and extracurricular activities (including internships and co-op experiences). We are relieved to see that seniors report knowing more about the engineering profession than freshmen. The fact that seniors report knowing less than freshmen about the engineering profession prior to matriculating may be due to seniors having a more realistic assessment of their prior knowledge anchored by their deeper understanding about engineering.
To understand students’ perceptions of their own skills, the Longitudinal Cohort was also asked: “What are the particular skills that you would say are important for an engineer to have?” Respondents (unsurprisingly) said that they needed “technical” skills-mathematics, science, and critical problem-solving-to be engineers. The students’ focus on technical skills parallels those of the larger engineering education community (Shuman, BesterfieldSacre, and McGourty, 2005, p. 43). However, Shuman et al. point to more than a century’s worth of reports on engineering education diat call for additional focus on what Shuman calls the “professional skills.” They cite the Accreditation Process Review Committee, which reported that “Employers were now emphasizing that success as an engineer required more than simply strong technical capabilities; also needed were skills in communication and persuasion, the ability to lead and work effectively as a team member, and an understanding of the non-technical forces that affected engineering decisions.” Industry and ABET recognize the need for these professional skills, but the engineering students as yet do not: less than 12 percent of 91 second-year Longitudinal Cohort students responded that it is important for engineers to possess the non-technical skills, such as communication skills, good work habits, and the ability to design, create, and build.
National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) data analyzed as part of APS reveal that engineering undergraduates participate as much as their non-engineering peers in extracurricular activities (despite spending more time studying), and 80 percent have had a practicum experience such as an internship and/or coop by their senior year (Puma and Lichtenstein, 2007). Puma and Lichtenstein’s findings on practicum experience are consistent with those from the Broader Core Sample. More than three out of four seniors had “real world experience”; they participated in an internship (52.2 percent), had been an employee (18 percent), or had participated in a co-op (7.8 percent). Gen Net seems particularly cognizant of the skills they develop while interning and participating in extracurricular activities, and they realize that they can serve to help focus their post-graduation plans. Almost three out of four engineering Broader Core Sample seniors who had participated in an internship program said they were “absolutely sure” or “pretty sure” about their plans after college.
“Ben,” a Longitudinal Cohort sophomore, interned for six months with an international engineering and architectural firm, working in the air conditioning and refrigeration department. He told APS researchers that he appreciated the problem-solving skills he acquired abroad, and greatly valued observing first-hand the commitment engineers displayed in completing their tasks in the field. He said that “people had passion for what they were doing and they stuck to it … , and it was the kind of thing that I was always looking forward to.” This student’s remark exemplifies the sense of purpose in Gen Net’s approach to learning.
Astin’s surveys of first- and fourth-year students over a twentyyear period led him to conclude that the degree to which a student is involved in his or her academic experience (typically on- campus) is directly proportional to his or her learning (1993). Similarly, we believe engagement in classes, as well as in campus Ufe, is pivotal to engineering students becoming engineers. Creating a balance between students’ in-class and out-of-class experiences enables them to develop the diverse skills needed to become engineers. Out-of-class experiences, extracurricular activities, and internships further assist students with an academic deficit or ambivalence about career goals by clarifying perceptions of the discipline and profession. Students are doing this, although not perhaps at the levels or in the areas we might expect.
Within the Broader Core Sample majoring in engineering or intending to major in engineering, two-thirds (66.5 percent) think it is “essential” or “very important” to be involved in non- engineering activities. Less than one-third (27.4 percent) of the same subjects are “extensively” or “moderately” involved in extracurricular engineering activities. The combination of such activities depicts a quality of life, both personally and professionally, that a future engineer may have and exposes them to mentors. Indeed, Felder and Brent (2005) posit that a balance between professional and technical skills correlates with the way students formulate goals and envision career pathways. Chen et al. (2008) show that extracurricular engineering involvement is positively tied to motivation to study engineering supplied by a mentor.
D. Gen Net’s Post-baccalaureate Plans
On the post-baccalaureate transition, national data are also instructive. NSF reports that one-half (51 percent) of all bachelor’s graduates of engineering programs did not pursue a graduate degree (National Science Foundation, 2006). Only one in eight engineering bachelor’s degree holders received an advanced degree in their field of study, 4 percent went on to earn doctorates.
Approximately 40 percent of the Broader Core Sample seniors majoring in engineering stated they were “absolutely sure” or “pretty sure” they would attend graduate school in engineering within three years following graduation. Another 5 percent stated they were “pretty sure” they would attend a wow-engineering graduate program in the next three years (none was “absolutely sure”). The APS data suggest the need to continue probing for changes in student perceptions of career opportunities, particularly relative to gender differences, skills to be learned, and possible career paths (Sheppard and Silva, 2001).
V. ENGAGING GEN NET
A. Gen Net Students and Baby Boomer Faculty
All teaching and learning combine content and pedagogy. How they mix, stylistically and otherwise, determines their effectiveness. If Gen Net’s learning style is not complemented by traditional teaching methods favored by earlier generations of faculty, then the advantages of active learning, where students learn more and more deeply, will be lost (Smith et al., 2005; Prince and Felder, 2007). Learning defies the neat compartments higher education has tended to make of disciplines, courses, credits, and semesters, and yet most STEM faculty persist in teaching as they were taught, wedded primarily to a lecture format (National Science Board, 2008, pp. 2- 4). This old formula is arguably counter-productive, stymieing more students in the pursuit of engineering because the packaging and delivery are mismatched to the audience (Tobias, 1990; Seymour and Hewitt, 1997).
Some are rethinking the meaning of learning and the faculty role in a digital age (Bourne, Harris, and Mayadas, 2005). While many professors remain “the sage on the stage,” others are inventing and adapting clever and effective ways of tapping into the interests of Gen Net students through such activities as simulations, modeling, digital libraries, and “serious games.” These latter, called “social impact games,” entertain but have non-entertainment goals (Social Impact Games, 2007).
In late 2004 and early 2005, the Computing Research Association (CRA) and the International Society of the Learning Sciences held a series of workshops to “explore where we are in the application of pervasive computing power to education, and where we need to be [Foreword].” In the resulting cyberinfrastructure for education and learning for the future, or CELF report (CRA, 2005), the authors assert that “Cyberinfrastructure has significant potential to radically influence educational practice,” though they also caution “it is common to overestimate the near-term effects of technology and to underestimate its long-term consequences.” Implementing their recommendations would necessitate significant changes in faculty roles and our familiar conceptions of education. How likely is change to occur, even despite repeated calls for reform from many quarters, including the influential National Academy of Engineering?
Although most new faculty have had at least rudimentary training in teaching if they were once teaching assistants, most engineering faculty are unaware of key research on how students learn engineering. Curriculum content “coverage” is still the operative paradigm in most engineering programs. Our hope is that this special issue of JEE will raise awareness about current research on the learning of engineering. Indeed, we believe every successful engineer can point to faculty members whose skill in teaching and/ or mentoring encouraged or inspired them. Knowledge of Gen Net students, how they think and how they learn, coupled with the APS research presented here, has the potential to profoundly alter the learning landscape, not just for learners, but for educators as well: Tn the higher education realm, new instructors, who often have little formal preparation as teachers, can become part of online communities where they can consult mentors, other instructors, practicing professionals, and others to find high-quality learning resources for their classes” (CRA 2005, p. 27).
Educators’ methods are not the only things that would help adapt to Gen Net. According to creativity researcher R. Keith Sawyer (2006), leading thinkers in a variety of fields believe that schools have to be redesigned for the new economy, and that the learning sciences are pointing the way to this new kind of school. In his concluding chapter of The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, Sawyer offers some possibilities for such “new schools,” and while his focus is K-12, many of the suggestions have ramifications for higher education. If nothing else, the schools he describes will be radically different from the “old schools” that college students will attend if changes are not implemented (see Duderstadt, 2008).
B. Classroom Practices: What Matters
To “woo” talented students, many engineering educators are re- evaluating classroom practices and assessing the impact of outof- class programs on student learning (Fink, Ambrose, and Wheeler, 2005; Smith et al., 2005). They are supplementing or replacing traditional classroom lectures with activities such as Problem- based Learning (PBL) and cooperative learning experiences. More and more engineering curricula require that students participate in problem-solving teams, which often include a variety of individual assignments and team presentations (Froyd and Ohland, 2005). Some engineering educators are also moving beyond the standard technical disciplinary courses to create theme-based, and/or integrated curricula. These courses and curricula are characterized by a combination of non-technical courses, business, communication, ethics, culture, biology, and so on, with engineering coursework. By engaging diverse students with their unique intellectual perspectives and interests, educators are hoping to create engineers capable of devising holistic solutions to engineering problems dirough a dynamic learning process.
As students progress in their engineering programs, they encounter obstacles to and catalysts of learning. Satisfaction with instructors, as we know from Chen et al.’s (2008) analysis of the Broader Core Sample, is highly correlated with Gen Net’s overall satisfaction with their collegiate experience. Students’ frustration with professors’ teaching mirrors the dilemma facing engineering educators: how to convey critical engineering knowledge without unwittingly pushing talented students out of the field (a fundamental finding of Hewitt and Seymour 1997 a decade ago). Stevens et al. (2008) argue that what they call “navigation” (of the curriculum, of a program) is an important element in a student’s decision to stick with engineering. They describe both “unofficial” and “official” routes that students use, citing the example of a student taking a “required physics course at a nearby state university in order to avoid taking the class with a physics professor who had a very bad reputation among engineering students.””Navigational flexibility,” they found, however, differed markedly among the four institutions they studied.
The teaching quandary places engineering educators at a critical impasse. Not only do faculty members have the task of developing Gen Net’s skills and abilities as professional engineers, but they also have to shape them as life-long learners. What does that entail? Unlike previous generations, these Gen Nets are more self-directed learners, more technologically-sawy, more socially- aware, and more used to learning outside of die classroom. They enjoy the process of discovery. To complement this generation’s learning styles, educators must find other ways to utilize out-of-classroom resources inside the classroom.
VI. WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN?
Students gain fundamental knowledge from a variety of sources. While the influence of educators is largely classroom-bound, we know that the Gen Net students are self-directed learners who also seek enriching and compensatory experiences outside of the classroom. To retain talented students in engineering programs, educators must develop innovative ways to engage students and expose them to skills and knowledge beyond the university setting. While the days of lectures and rote are numbered, no one advocates that engineering classes consisting primarily of lectures and seminars be abandoned altogether. Research on the benefits of integrated curricula for engineering students suggests that traditional lectures coupled with hands-on opportunities represents a broader, more active (and satisfying) learning approach (Froyd and Ohland, 2005).
As the recent evaluation of the effectiveness of the EC2000 criteria commissioned by ABET concluded:
Finally, students’ undergraduate program experiences, both in- and outside-the-classroom, are clearly linked to what and how much students learn. Nine of 10 measures of their in- and out-of-class experiences have statistically significant, positive, and sometimes substantial influences on graduates’ reports of their ability levels on all nine of EC2000’s a-k learning outcome measures. The clarity of the instruction received, die amount of interaction widi and feedback from instructors, and the exposure to active and collaborative learning experiences are consistently die most powerful influences on learning of any factors in the study, all having a positive influence on learning. Out-of-class experiences, however, also shape student learning. . . cooperative education experiences, participation in design competitions, and … in a student chapter of a professional society or association. These experiences significantly and positively affect learning in six or more of the nine skill areas measured. The magnitudes of these effects, however, were smaller than those of students’ in-class experiences (Lattuca, Terenzini, and Volkwein, 2006).
Who will do engineering in the next generation and how will they differ, in style, interests, and career aspirations, from those who populate the current workforce? The Academic Pathways Study has provided some clues. Extrapolating from APS data and other research, we offer conjectures about alternative futures for engineering education. Some are more sobering than others.
Scenario 1-A Status Quo Culture and Workforce Erosion: In 2003, almost three out of four science and engineering workers with just a bachelor’s degree reported having a job related to their degree. Those who majored in engineering, mathematics, or computer sciences were the most likely to report a job related to their degree (Regets, 2006). If fewer than one in five science and engineering bachelor’s recipients go on to earn an advanced degree in science or engineering, what do they do with their deep knowledge? The main choices are research and development or management. Will these choices continue to suffice as career options, or will students gravitate to other disciplines and professions where their academic preparation and interests, for example, more readily connect with clearer opportunities for social good?
As a business systems manager in Virginia Beach, VA, recently wrote:
Every call that you make to the tech vendors is answered by someone in Bangalore. I don’t recommend that my kids go into IT, and I’ve been in it for 20 years and am paid well. If you scare them away from a career, you can’t blame them for not coming back (Stern, 2007).
While medical and law schools are now at gender parity, stereotypes, glass walls and ceilings, and old boys’ networks persist in engineering (Frehill, 2007). With 90 percent of the full- time engineering faculty male, retirements alone will not noticeably change this gender composition. Like it or not, a mostly-male, overwhelmingly white faculty is not a winning advertisement to an increasingly diverse undergraduate pool. And mass media coverage, which underscores the invisibility of engineers and technologists (especially women), does not help (Clark and Illman, 2006). More of the same will not attract a diverse talent pool to engineering. That is why ABET, which accredits 2,700 programs at more than 550 colleges and universities, revised its criteria at the turn of this century to make them less restrictive and more compatible with liberal arts curricula (Associated Press, 2007).
Scenario 2-An Influx of Women and A Resurgent Appeal of Engineering: Could engineering disciplines follow the lead of veterinary medicine (Maines, 2007)? Veterinary medicine has been highly successful in attracting women (three out of four doctoral “vet-med” students are women, despite only one out of eight vet college deans being a woman and a majority of the vet college faculty being male). But we do not know why with no organized efforts to diversify vet med, unlike programs in STEM to recruit those from underrepresented groups, the attraction of women remains unexplained. Such gender anomalies warrant research, especially in male-dominated fields. Surely engineering colleges that attract and graduate large fractions of women, for example, Yale and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, have created a welcoming culture and connected with female students still in high school who see engineering as solving social problems and impacting lives (Newsome, 2006). This is not just a matter of improving work-life balance or removing barriers to women’s advancement. It goes deeper than that, as an ongoing project devoted to intergenerational differences in STEM career development shows (Rayman, 2007). Women tend to gravitate to social, community, and global issues, as reflected in the choice of engineering discipline that current women engineering students make. Biomedical and environmental engineering, for example, tend to have greater percentages of women than other engineering disciplines (CPST, 2006). Clearly, engineering programs, either curricular or co-curricular, that promote a service ethic appear to attract female students. Examples of university programs include the Gordon Prize-winning EPICS program at Purdue and the Humanitarian Engineering Program at the Colorado School of Mines. To spur an influx, engineering programs must expand to address social, community, and global issues.
It is not just the women who will come. Gen Net in general appears to be much more outwardly oriented than previous generations. From their perspective, many may consider engineering with the question “How can I make a positive impact on the world?” There is no ready answer from the engineering profession or academia, though the APS interview data suggest that a “service ethic” runs deep with Gen Net, be it medicine (save/care for people), veterinary medicine (save/care for animals), or law (change inequality, fight injustice). Reconnecting engineering with the broader community, making explicit how technology enriches lives, could stimulate a surge of interest in engineering careers.
Scenario 3-Change the Curriculum and Diverse Students Will Come: Engineering has a storied history of curricular change (see the reports known eponymously as Mann, Wickenden, and Grinter) and today such an approach is favored by some. That is, the content of engineering education will lure more students to the profession for different reasons. But pedagogy and faculty attitudes must evolve as to who can do engineering, what represents excellence, and how classroom experiences reflect real-world problems and workplaces. Encouraging multiculturalism through project-based experiences in foreign countries could become the centerpiece of today’s “global engineering.” Current figures suggest that five percent of all undergraduates study abroad, but less than three percent of engineering students do, despite ABET’s endorsement of it as part of its accreditation criteria (Carlson, 2007).
One ongoing and noteworthy nation-wide effort to promote diversity in the student body in U.S. universities, through industrial partnerships, academic services, and the establishment of social networks, has produced modest gains. Since the early 1990s, NSF’s Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) have attracted underrepresented students to STEM majors and supported them through the completion of their baccalaureates. As an institutional program, however, LSAMP benefits all students by increasing diversity, though its impact has been uneven within and across the national set of alliances. Likewise, private scholarship programs such as the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) University Block Grant Program, based on two decades of direct engineering student grants, supports cohorts of students, including transfers, in engineering. But these funds are targeted at 20 universities that have developed the social and intellectual infrastructure to fill pedagogical and cultural gaps inside and outside the classroom. Recent evaluations of both LSAMP and NACME’s Block Grant indicate that investing in academically- prepared students through a range of financial, peer tutoring, internship, and mentoring activities builds both community and students’ engineering identity (Clewell et al., 2006; Educational Policy Institute, 2007).
The engineering faculty as a collective body, rather than a few committed outliers, holds the key to transforming the recruitment and retention of students. Advocates for change see rebuilding the undergraduate engineering curriculum, as opposed to boosting students’ performance in the existing curriculum, as the road to retaining salient technical material while enhancing the link between fundamentals and applications. The objective is to reduce critical path lengths in the course sequence, introduce team experiences into all courses, and create a climate of inclusion rather than exclusion, a process that “will require trial, assessment, and revision before it is ready for adoption” (Busch- Vishniac and Jarosz, 2004). This faculty-intensive approach must first demonstrate better learning outcomes, especially among a broader array of students, in some engineering disciplines and departments before we begin to harbor visions of wider buy-in. Early efforts look promising: a cadre of early-adopters is developing and testing the new courses in the core engineering curriculum.
An Invitation: Knowing Better and Doing Better: Chubin, May, and Babeo (2005) called for a research agenda in engineering education that informed “not only what we do, but more importantly, how we know what to do.” Through the Academic Pathways Study and related efforts, we have insight as to how to enhance the teaching and learning of engineering. These enhancements hold the promise to educate Generation Net, and to ultimately woo and win the competition for U.S. talent. Nevertheless, knowing better does not mean doing better.
Make no mistake about it: the future of the engineering workforce, both domestically and globally, remains in the hands of engineering educators. To attract the diverse and talented student needed for tomorrow’s technical leadership, educators must be savvy, flexible, and impassioned to engage a generation of learners with expectations and demands unlike those that preceded them. This is a test-not merely of technical knowledge or ingenuity, but of marketing, pedagogy, role models, and product development. Harnessing the gifts of Generation Net will become the legacy of the engineering educator pre-2020.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Academic Pathways Study is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ESI-0227558, which funds the Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education (CAEE). The authors gratefully acknowledge the input and assistance of Sheri Sheppard, Jim Pelligrino, Helen Chen, Mia Clark, Micah Lande, Janice McCain, Sabira Mohamed, and Andrene Taylor. We are also very thankful to the students, faculty and administrators who supported and/or participated in the Academic Pathways Study.
1 Mentor motivation as discussed in this paper differs from that discussed in Chen et al. (2008); in our paper we include mentoring by university and non-university mentors, whereas Chen et al. look largely at impacts of university mentors.
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