BOARD # 317: A Qualitative Study of Undergraduate Engineering Students’ Feelings of Being Overwhelmed

Faith Gacheru; Karin Jensen; Jeanne Sanders; Eileen Johnson; Joseph Francis Mirabelli

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Conference: 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Publication Date: June 22, 2025
Start Date: June 22, 2025
End Date: August 15, 2025
Conference Session: NSF Grantees Poster Session II
Tagged Topic: NSF Grantees Poster Session
Page Count: 6
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/55683

Karin Jensen, Ph.D. (she/her) is an assistant professor in biomedical engineering and engineering education research at the University of Michigan. Her research interests include mental health and wellness, engineering student career pathways, and engagement of engineering faculty in engineering education research.

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Jeanne Sanders University of Michigan orcid.org/0000-0002-8865-5444

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Jeanne Sanders (she/her/hers) is a researcher in Engineering Education. She graduated with her Ph.D from North Carolina State University in the Fall of 2020 and works as a staff researcher in the Thrive Lab at the University of Michigan.

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Eileen Johnson University of Michigan orcid.org/0000-0001-8324-0568

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Eileen Johnson received her BS and MS in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She previously worked in tissue engineering and genetic engineering throughout her education. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan. After teaching an online laboratory class, she became interested in engineering education research. Her current research interests are in engineering student mental health & wellness with a focus on undergraduate experiences with stress and engineering culture.

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Joseph Francis Mirabelli University of Michigan orcid.org/0000-0002-2394-1247

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Joseph Mirabelli is a postdoctoral fellow in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor who researches engineering education. He earned his PhD in Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a focus in Engineering Education. His interests are centered around mentorship, mental health, and retention in STEM students and faculty. Additionally, he helps support the development of new engineering education scholars and researches quality in mixed methods research methodologies.

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Abstract

Engineering stress culture is a common phenomenon that many students are aware of but may not know how to verbalize or conceptualize. The culture of engineering has been described as one of stress, heavy workload, and burnout as a method of achieving one's goals. Engineering programs are considered rigorous and require hard work, which may include sacrifices to mental health and well-being. Students in engineering may struggle to understand or conceptualize their feelings of stress, overwhelm, burnout, and anxiety due to a limited range of vocabulary for self expression. Furthermore, the engineering stress culture has become so normalized that students may not even recognize that these are feelings of concern due to this culture being such a common shared experience amongst engineering students.

Over the course of three years, we administered a survey twice per semester to a cohort of undergraduate engineering students, establishing a total of ten time points. The survey sought to examine the perceptions of engineering stress culture and its influence on intention to remain in engineering. Each time point also included one to five open response questions for qualitative analysis. The survey captured over 3,000 engineering student responses over the three year time span. In this NSF Grantees Paper, we preview this data by presenting the open response results for the eighth time point. In the eighth time point we asked students “how do you know when you are feeling overwhelmed?” In order to analyze the open-response data, we used qualitative coding to generate a codebook for thematic analysis.

Results indicated that a majority of students were able to define or conceptualize the feeling of overwhelm and/or identify reactions they associated with being overwhelmed. However, other students struggled to identify the feeling of overwhelm, instead describing a constant state of overwhelm that they believed made it difficult to differentiate specific instances. Students associated feeling overwhelmed with feelings of stress, anxiety, and physical reactions to anxiety. Students attributed feeling overwhelmed to negative impacts on their mental or physical wellbeing. The negative connotation associated with feeling overwhelmed seemed to stem from student perceptions of time, workload, and methods of dealing with stress. Approaches to managing stress (e.g., making a list, taking a break) were inconsistently described as effective, with methods sometimes feeling beneficial, while others felt the methods caused more feelings of overwhelm.

Undergraduate students described intense reactions from feeling overwhelmed and a difficult time managing being overwhelmed. Sharing these understandings of overwhelm with educators with a greater understanding of undergraduate students’ experiences surrounding feeling overwhelmed. This may promote educators changing course structure to promote a more inclusive and supportive environment. This environment would support student well-being and emotional intelligence to allow for greater academic success and reduced stigma surrounding mental health.

Citation
Format

Gacheru, F., & Jensen, K., & Sanders, J., & Johnson, E., & Mirabelli, J. F. (2025, June), BOARD # 317: A Qualitative Study of Undergraduate Engineering Students’ Feelings of Being Overwhelmed Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . https://peer.asee.org/55683

TY - CPAPER
AB - Engineering stress culture is a common phenomenon that many students are aware of but may not know how to verbalize or conceptualize. The culture of engineering has been described as one of stress, heavy workload, and burnout as a method of achieving one&#39;s goals. Engineering programs are considered rigorous and require hard work, which may include sacrifices to mental health and well-being. Students in engineering may struggle to understand or conceptualize their feelings of stress, overwhelm, burnout, and anxiety due to a limited range of vocabulary for self expression. Furthermore, the engineering stress culture has become so normalized that students may not even recognize that these are feelings of concern due to this culture being such a common shared experience amongst engineering students.

Over the course of three years, we administered a survey twice per semester to a cohort of undergraduate engineering students, establishing a total of ten time points. The survey sought to examine the perceptions of engineering stress culture and its influence on intention to remain in engineering. Each time point also included one to five open response questions for qualitative analysis. The survey captured over 3,000 engineering student responses over the three year time span. In this NSF Grantees Paper, we preview this data by presenting the open response results for the eighth time point. In the eighth time point we asked students “how do you know when you are feeling overwhelmed?” In order to analyze the open-response data, we used qualitative coding to generate a codebook for thematic analysis.

Results indicated that a majority of students were able to define or conceptualize the feeling of overwhelm and/or identify reactions they associated with being overwhelmed. However, other students struggled to identify the feeling of overwhelm, instead describing a constant state of overwhelm that they believed made it difficult to differentiate specific instances. Students associated feeling overwhelmed with feelings of stress, anxiety, and physical reactions to anxiety. Students attributed feeling overwhelmed to negative impacts on their mental or physical wellbeing. The negative connotation associated with feeling overwhelmed seemed to stem from student perceptions of time, workload, and methods of dealing with stress. Approaches to managing stress (e.g., making a list, taking a break) were inconsistently described as effective, with methods sometimes feeling beneficial, while others felt the methods caused more feelings of overwhelm.

Undergraduate students described intense reactions from feeling overwhelmed and a difficult time managing being overwhelmed. Sharing these understandings of overwhelm with educators with a greater understanding of undergraduate students’ experiences surrounding feeling overwhelmed. This may promote educators changing course structure to promote a more inclusive and supportive environment. This environment would support student well-being and emotional intelligence to allow for greater academic success and reduced stigma surrounding mental health.
AU - Faith Gacheru
AU - Karin Jensen
AU - Jeanne Sanders
AU - Eileen Johnson
AU - Joseph Francis Mirabelli
CY - Montreal, Quebec, Canada
DA - 2025/06/22
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - BOARD # 317: A Qualitative Study of Undergraduate Engineering Students’ Feelings of Being Overwhelmed
UR - https://peer.asee.org/55683
ER -