Choosing Between Undergraduate Engineering and Engineering Technology Academic Programs for Student Veterans
- Conference
- Location
-
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
- Publication Date
-
June 22, 2025
- Start Date
-
June 22, 2025
- End Date
-
August 15, 2025
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
-
Engineering Technology Division (ETD)
- Page Count
-
10
- Permanent URL
-
https://peer.asee.org/56089
Paper Authors
Bradley Joseph Sottile
The Pennsylvania State University
orcid.org/0000-0002-8391-2974
Brad Sottile is Associate Teaching Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, and Aerospace Engineering in The Pennsylvania State University's College of Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Robert J. Rabb P.E. The Pennsylvania State University
Robert Rabb is the associate dean for education in the College of Engineering at Penn State. He previously served as a professor and the Mechanical Engineering Department Chair at The Citadel. He previously taught mechanical engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the United Military Academy and his M.S. and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. His research and teaching interests are in mechatronics, regenerative power, and multidisciplinary engineering.
Abstract
Student veterans have a unique opportunity to pursue higher education post-discharge via successive offerings of the G.I. Bill program. Academic program preferences for veteran students have important implications across an organizational field where attention has sharpened on student matriculation, persistence, and retention. Some student veterans may pursue an engineering degree while others may earn a two- or four-year engineering technology degree. Student veterans should be aware of differences in these degrees and the career opportunities in each. Some may put their technical military experience to use in higher education, while others may pursue a radically different educational path. There are numerous activities and processes employed both before student veterans arrive and during their time on campus to ensure they are part of the campus community and to ensure they graduate with an engineering or engineering technology degree within their timeline. These efforts can create a culture of open communication with student veterans and increase engagement of these students with faculty, engineering professionals, and peers to matriculate them into the campus engineering community.
Sottile, B. J., & Rabb, R. J. (2025, June), Choosing Between Undergraduate Engineering and Engineering Technology Academic Programs for Student Veterans Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . https://peer.asee.org/56089
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: © 2025 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