From website to work environment: Exploring minority undergraduate engineering students’ conceptualizations of engineering careers

Acaydia Campbell; Venicia Castro Villatoro; Angel Alexis Lopez; Janice L. Hall; Alexandra Coso Strong

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Conference: 2023 Collaborative Network for Computing and Engineering Diversity (CoNECD)
Location: New Orleans , Louisiana
Publication Date: February 26, 2023
Start Date: February 26, 2023
End Date: February 28, 2023
Conference Session: Session 2 - Track 3: From website to work environment: Exploring minority undergraduate engineering students conceptualizations of engineering careers
Tagged Topics: Diversity and CoNECD Paper Sessions
Page Count: 19
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--44798
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/44798
Download Count: 122

Janice L. Hall is a postdoctoral associate in the School of Universal Computing, Construction, and Engineering Education (SUCCEED) at Florida International University (FIU). Her research focuses on engineering careers and workforce development as it relates to broadening the participation of historically underrepresented groups in engineering. Janice is an ASEE Engineering Postdoctoral Fellow (eFellow) researching engineering career concept development alongside FIU’s Partnership for Research Education Consortium in Ceramics and Polymers (PRE-CCAP) program. She completed her Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Virginia Tech. Janice received her B.S. in Biological Engineering and M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Mississippi State University.

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Alexandra Coso Strong Florida International University orcid.org/0000-0003-4988-361X

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As an assistant professor of engineering education at Florida International University, Dr. Alexandra Coso Strong works and teaches at the intersection of engineering education, faculty development, and complex systems design. Alexandra completed her graduate degrees in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech (PhD) and Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia (UVa).

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Abstract

Within engineering education, there have been rising calls for research on the transitional period students face leading up to graduation (e.g., post-graduation planning) and moving into the next phase of their career. Existing research has focused either on the disconnects between what students learn in school and what constitutes success on the job or graduates’ experiences in their first few years on the job. This study seeks to complement existing research by focusing on the experience leading up to graduation, as students seek to make sense of engineering career pathways and how they pursue and make decisions about engineering positions. As the demand for a demographically diverse and highly skilled engineering workforce continues to grow, talent acquisition is becoming more strategic. The use of workforce data to better understand engineering talent can aid in tailoring their methods to attract the brightest talent to their organizations. By studying the career planning process of engineering students from historically and systemically excluded groups, we can more readily understand their intended career trajectory and how they navigate post-graduation planning.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how minority undergraduate engineering students conceptualize engineering career pathways based on an organization’s website content. Towards this aim, we, a team of minority undergraduate engineering students, led a qualitative analysis of the websites of two national labs: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC). The website content was analyzed using keywords from an on-going systematic literature review on engineering careers. Then we pulled out excerpts from the website that were associated with each keyword and annotated each excerpt with our impression of the company as a potential employer. In collaboration with other researchers, we used an a priori codebook, made from contemporary career frameworks, to assign primary and secondary codes to each of our perceptions, updating code definitions as needed. The results illustrated how we viewed both labs as committed to providing employees with a good work-life balance, as well as opportunities for both personal and professional growth. The difference between our perceptions of the two was in the way KSNSC appeared to appeal to candidates with a deep sense of pride in their standard of work, while LANL to other common ideals such as environmentalism.

Career planning is a long process that can be challenging for all students. The insights from our study can provide organizations and higher education institutions with a deeper understanding of how this generation of engineering graduates makes sense of engineering career pathways. These results can aid engineering programs in helping students navigate post-graduation planning. Organizations may focus their attention on augmenting their approach to talent acquisition and management in a manner that supports the development of a wider range of engineering career trajectories. These changes would provide clarity in a graduate's conceptualization of what an engineering career entails and allow synchrony between their expectations and a company’s potential career opportunities for them.

Citation
Format

Campbell, A., & Castro Villatoro, V., & Lopez, A. A., & Hall, J. L., & Strong, A. C. (2023, February), From website to work environment: Exploring minority undergraduate engineering students’ conceptualizations of engineering careers Paper presented at 2023 Collaborative Network for Computing and Engineering Diversity (CoNECD), New Orleans , Louisiana. 10.18260/1-2--44798

TY - CPAPER
AB - Within engineering education, there have been rising calls for research on the transitional period students face leading up to graduation (e.g., post-graduation planning) and moving into the next phase of their career. Existing research has focused either on the disconnects between what students learn in school and what constitutes success on the job or graduates’ experiences in their first few years on the job. This study seeks to complement existing research by focusing on the experience leading up to graduation, as students seek to make sense of engineering career pathways and how they pursue and make decisions about engineering positions. As the demand for a demographically diverse and highly skilled engineering workforce continues to grow, talent acquisition is becoming more strategic. The use of workforce data to better understand engineering talent can aid in tailoring their methods to attract the brightest talent to their organizations. By studying the career planning process of engineering students from historically and systemically excluded groups, we can more readily understand their intended career trajectory and how they navigate post-graduation planning.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how minority undergraduate engineering students conceptualize engineering career pathways based on an organization’s website content. Towards this aim, we, a team of minority undergraduate engineering students, led a qualitative analysis of the websites of two national labs: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC). The website content was analyzed using keywords from an on-going systematic literature review on engineering careers. Then we pulled out excerpts from the website that were associated with each keyword and annotated each excerpt with our impression of the company as a potential employer. In collaboration with other researchers, we used an a priori codebook, made from contemporary career frameworks, to assign primary and secondary codes to each of our perceptions, updating code definitions as needed. The results illustrated how we viewed both labs as committed to providing employees with a good work-life balance, as well as opportunities for both personal and professional growth. The difference between our perceptions of the two was in the way KSNSC appeared to appeal to candidates with a deep sense of pride in their standard of work, while LANL to other common ideals such as environmentalism.

Career planning is a long process that can be challenging for all students. The insights from our study can provide organizations and higher education institutions with a deeper understanding of how this generation of engineering graduates makes sense of engineering career pathways. These results can aid engineering programs in helping students navigate post-graduation planning. Organizations may focus their attention on augmenting their approach to talent acquisition and management in a manner that supports the development of a wider range of engineering career trajectories. These changes would provide clarity in a graduate&#39;s conceptualization of what an engineering career entails and allow synchrony between their expectations and a company’s potential career opportunities for them.
AU - Acaydia Campbell
AU - Venicia Castro Villatoro
AU - Angel Alexis Lopez
AU - Janice L. Hall
AU - Alexandra Coso Strong
CY - New Orleans , Louisiana
DA - 2023/02/26
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - From website to work environment: Exploring minority undergraduate engineering students’ conceptualizations of engineering careers
UR - https://peer.asee.org/44798
DO - 10.18260/1-2--44798
ER -