Fourth-Year Engineering Students' Descriptions of the Importance of Improving Society Through their Engineering Careers

Greg Rulifson; Angela R. Bielefeldt

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Conference: 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Publication Date: June 24, 2017
Start Date: June 24, 2017
End Date: June 28, 2017
Conference Session: Professional Development and Lifelong Learning
Tagged Division: Liberal Education/Engineering & Society
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 18
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--28384
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/28384
Download Count: 557

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Paper Authors

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Greg Rulifson P.E. Colorado School of Mines orcid.org/0000-0002-7691-2247

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Greg currently teaches sustainable community development in Humanitarian Engineering at CSM. He earned his bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering with a minor in Global Poverty and Practice from UC Berkeley where he acquired a passion for using engineering to facilitate developing communities’ capacity for success. He earned his master's degree in Structural Engineering and Risk Analysis from Stanford University. His PhD research at CU Boulder focused on how student's connections of social responsibility and engineering change throughout college as well as how engineering service is valued in employment and supported in the workplace.

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Angela R. Bielefeldt University of Colorado, Boulder

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Angela Bielefeldt is a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering (CEAE), where she serves as the ABET assessment coordinator. She is the faculty director of the Sustainable By Design Residential Academic Program, a living-learning community where interdisciplinary students learn about and practice sustainability. Bielefeldt is also a licensed P.E. Her research interests in engineering education include service-learning, sustainable engineering, social responsibility, ethics, and diversity.

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Abstract

As engineering students graduate and enter the workforce, they gain significant responsibility for individuals and society through their future decisions. Problematically, multiple recent studies have shown that over their time in college, students tend to become more disengaged from the impact of their work and their feelings of social responsibility decrease. The question explored in this research was to determine the extent that fourth year engineering students discuss helping others and society through their careers as an aspect of an ideal job or an aspect that would make their work rewarding. Hour-long, semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty engineering undergraduate students near the end of their fourth year of college. These students were attending five different universities and pursuing six different majors (primarily mechanical and civil engineering). Student responses, while unique to their personal situation, fell into four categories regarding their visions for a future ideal engineering career: (A) helping people and society was the most important component to their future engineering career; (B) helping people and improving society was listed as a component to their ideal career; (C) after being asked what would be rewarding, the student mentioned having a positive impact on society or people, or that their work would naturally help society because that is inherent in engineering; and (D) helping people or improving society was not mentioned as part of their ideal career or an aspect that would be rewarding in their work as an engineer. Students in group A through C described that they would try to work on projects that improved the environment, local communities, and society at large. Group D students would not be looking for a particular engineering job that would help people and did not seem to be concerned with the impact of their job. They prioritized interesting work, location, and sometimes salary over the degree to which their work would help society overall. No obvious differences were evident in the institutions or majors of the students who clustered into the different response categories, but internships and general confidence in their engineering abilities did seem to have an influence. The paper will finally offer an analysis of possible reasons for these outcomes, and how faculty and the engineering profession more broadly can improve graduating engineers’ perceptions of and goals for their future careers.

Citation
Format

Rulifson, G., & Bielefeldt, A. R. (2017, June), Fourth-Year Engineering Students' Descriptions of the Importance of Improving Society Through their Engineering Careers Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--28384

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - As engineering students graduate and enter the workforce, they gain significant responsibility for individuals and society through their future decisions. Problematically, multiple recent studies have shown that over their time in college, students tend to become more disengaged from the impact of their work and their feelings of social responsibility decrease. The question explored in this research was to determine the extent that fourth year engineering students discuss helping others and society through their careers as an aspect of an ideal job or an aspect that would make their work rewarding. Hour-long, semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty engineering undergraduate students near the end of their fourth year of college. These students were attending five different universities and pursuing six different majors (primarily mechanical and civil engineering). Student responses, while unique to their personal situation, fell into four categories regarding their visions for a future ideal engineering career: (A) helping people and society was the most important component to their future engineering career; (B) helping people and improving society was listed as a component to their ideal career; (C) after being asked what would be rewarding, the student mentioned having a positive impact on society or people, or that their work would naturally help society because that is inherent in engineering; and (D) helping people or improving society was not mentioned as part of their ideal career or an aspect that would be rewarding in their work as an engineer. Students in group A through C described that they would try to work on projects that improved the environment, local communities, and society at large. Group D students would not be looking for a particular engineering job that would help people and did not seem to be concerned with the impact of their job. They prioritized interesting work, location, and sometimes salary over the degree to which their work would help society overall. No obvious differences were evident in the institutions or majors of the students who clustered into the different response categories, but internships and general confidence in their engineering abilities did seem to have an influence. The paper will finally offer an analysis of possible reasons for these outcomes, and how faculty and the engineering profession more broadly can improve graduating engineers’ perceptions of and goals for their future careers.
AU  - Greg Rulifson P.E.
AU  - Angela R. Bielefeldt
CY  - Columbus, Ohio
DA  - 2017/06/24
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Fourth-Year Engineering Students' Descriptions of the Importance of Improving Society Through their Engineering Careers
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/28384
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--28384
ER  -