Portland, Oregon
June 23, 2024
June 23, 2024
June 26, 2024
Community Engagement and Humanitarian Engineering: Creating Inclusive Engineers
Community Engagement Division (COMMENG)
Diversity
12
10.18260/1-2--46540
https://peer.asee.org/46540
87
Paul A. Leidig works in learning and organizational development within the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. He received his B.S. in Architectural Engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Purdue University. Dr. Leidig is licensed as a Professional Engineer in the state of Colorado and has focused on community-engaged design for over fifteen years.
William (Bill) Oakes is the Assistant Dean for Experiential Learning, a 150th Anniversary Professor, Director of the EPICS Program, Professor of Engineering Education at Purdue University, and a registered professional engineer. He is one of the founding faculty in the School of Engineering Education having courtesy appointments in Mechanical, Environmental and Ecological Engineering and Curriculum and Instruction. He was the first engineer to receive the U.S. Campus Compact Thomas Ehrlich Faculty Award for Service-Learning and a co-recipient of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering’s Bernard Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education. He is a fellow of NSPE and ASEE and elected to the ASEE Hall of Fame.
Community-engaged learning has grown rapidly in the past decades within the engineering disciplines as a promising approach to prepare students more wholistically to address wicked socio-technical problems as well as positively contribute as professionals and citizens. The largest U.S.-based program in this space is Engineers Without Borders USA (EWB-USA), with 5,600 student participants spread across 165 university/college chapters. Studies have shown positive impacts on student motivation and learning while participating these types of programs. However, previous studies have not specifically presented the views of the program’s alums. As part of a larger QUAN QUAL explanatory sequential mixed-methods study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-nine alums of EWB-USA. Alums were defined for this study as people who participated in EWB-USA as an undergraduate, completed their undergraduate degree, and have worked in professional practice after graduation. This paper focuses on the results found from inductive thematic analysis on the interview transcripts related to the changes in perspectives the alums experienced between their time as a student and that of their interview while in professional practice. The findings report a greater perception of benefits accrued by the alums, specific elements of the EWB-USA experience that they value differently now, some increased concerns related to models of international development, and a few thoughts on white saviorism. This work illustrates the importance of gathering alumni perspectives for more comprehensive educational program assessments. Such investigations can help researchers and practitioners better optimize programs to more closely meet their full potential to support students’ professional preparation.
Leidig, P. A., & Oakes, W. C. (2024, June), Alum Perspective Changes on Engineering Community-Engagement Experiences in EWB-USA Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--46540
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2024 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015