Thomassie, R. E., & Kirsch, K., & Marsh, E. R., & Jacobs, T. J. (2018, June), High-Enrollment Mechanical Engineering Programs Meeting the Challenge of Career Advising Through a Seminar Course  Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--30574

\bibitem{asee_peer_30574}
  Thomassie, R. E., \& Kirsch, K., \& Marsh, E. R., \& Jacobs, T. J. (2018, June), \emph{High-Enrollment Mechanical Engineering Programs Meeting the Challenge of Career Advising Through a Seminar Course}
  Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah.
  10.18260/1-2--30574

Rachal E Thomassie, Kathryn Kirsch, Eric R Marsh, and Timothy J. Jacobs.  "High-Enrollment Mechanical Engineering Programs Meeting the Challenge of Career Advising Through a Seminar Course".  2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah, 2018, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2018.  https://peer.asee.org/30574 Internet.  30 Nov, 2023

\bibitem{asee_peer_30574}
  Rachal E Thomassie, Kathryn Kirsch, Eric R Marsh, and Timothy J. Jacobs.
  "High-Enrollment Mechanical Engineering Programs Meeting the Challenge of Career Advising Through a Seminar Course".
  \emph{2018 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah, 2018, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2018.
  https://peer.asee.org/30574 Internet.  30 Nov, 2023

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_30574
author = "Rachal E Thomassie, Kathryn Kirsch, Eric R Marsh, and Timothy J. Jacobs"
title = "High-Enrollment Mechanical Engineering Programs Meeting the Challenge of Career Advising Through a Seminar Course"
booktitle = "2018 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition "
year = "2018"
month = "June"
address = "Salt Lake City, Utah"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/30574}
number = {10.18260/1-2--30574}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Engineering programs are continually being enhanced to include learning outcomes peripheral to the discipline-specific domain knowledge. One such outcome is career advisement, also included in ABET Criteria 1 for students.  Ideally, each student would have designated opportunities to discuss his or her subject interests and career aspirations with a faculty member and receive guidance in pursuit of a career area corresponding to their interests and skills. For programs with a significantly high student population (for the purposes of this study, considered to be over 800), this type of individualized career advisement can be challenging to meet with excellence. For two such programs in mechanical engineering, a different approach was taken. Career advisement has been incorporated into a 1 credit hour, semester-long seminar course. 

One of the main elements to career advisement is communication of opportunities. This course is well-structured to guide students through an exploration of various industries and job areas available to graduates of mechanical engineering. In addition to beginning a career immediately upon graduation, the option of continued education in graduate school is also presented. 

The two institutions take different approaches to the course. Each has additional learning objectives in its respective course, such as lifelong learning, communication skills and career preparedness. This course is required at one institution and elective at the other, partially online at one and in-class only at the other. The aim of the authors is to show that career advisement can be effectively conducted in the structure of a seminar course. The outcomes will be measured through a survey administered to students enrolled in each course. 

For institutions with large undergraduate programs, this method of advisement is becoming almost necessary. Utilizing a classroom environment for career advising allows the program to reach a significant portion of the student population at one time (32% in one year at one institution). Including the course as part of the curriculum ensures that each student receives guidance on career matters. Beyond size considerations, however, it is the important feature that such a structure of career advisement ensures mechanical engineering students receive the necessary information of broad career opportunities available to them.

This is a preliminary study to assess the broad impact of curricular-based career advisement in mechanical engineering. This paper provides a background on the importance of including career advisement in a mechanical engineering curriculum, presents the learning outcomes and structure of each seminar course and discusses the results of the student survey. 

AU  - Rachal E Thomassie
AU  - Kathryn Kirsch
AU  - Eric R Marsh
AU  - Timothy J. Jacobs
CY  - Salt Lake City, Utah
DA  - 2018/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - High-Enrollment Mechanical Engineering Programs Meeting the Challenge of Career Advising Through a Seminar Course
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/30574
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--30574
ER  -