Research Initiation: Engineering a Culture of Engagement

Montana State University, Bozeman MT

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to change the value system of college students to view engineering as a profession that serves the public good. It has been shown that underrepresented minorities, especially women and first generation college students gravitate toward professions that are viewed as serving their communities and helping others. While engineering certainly does serve public good, the common perception of the engineering profession is one that promotes self-oriented values such as wealth and personal success. This perception has a far reaching impact when trying to understand how students choose to become engineers, limiting the number of incoming college students that see engineering as a viable career. It also decreases the motivation of existing students to persist to graduation once in a degree program. And ultimately, it limits the number of underrepresented minorities that choose to stay in the engineering profession once in the workforce. By changing the culture surrounding engineering to one that promotes how engineering serves the public good, a larger and more diverse engineering workforce can be formed. In this project the research team focuses on a specific cultural phenomenon in which existing engineering students have less concern over time about how important it is that engineering serves the public good. This research explores the unique approach of "adding value" to engineering through targeted interventions to reverse the phenomenon of disengagement to create a culture that views engineering as a profession that helps others. The overall objective of this project is to initiate boundary-spanning research on how to transform a culture of disengagement into a culture of engagement that ultimately enhances the professional formation of engineers. This research will produce original data to understand why engineering students show less and less concern over time for how engineering contributes to public welfare. This project is the first to initiate a comprehensive research project specifically on Utility Value Theory with the long-term goal of changing the value system surrounding engineering to one that has prosocial, communal value. Creating a culture that considers engineering as a profession that serves the public good will attract a diverse population to engineering, fostering increased innovation for the next century. To accomplish the primary project objective, this project has two aims: 1) facilitate the professional development of an engineering faculty through collaborations with a social psychological scientist in order to 2) change the value system of engineering to include prosocial "engagement". The long term plan for this research (5 years) is to design and test the effectiveness of a large scale intervention guided by Utility Value Theory to contribute to a long lasting culture of engagement within engineering. The focus of this research initiation project (2 years) is to train an engineering faculty member in the process of social science by focusing on specific research questions testing the scope and process of the culture of disengagement within electrical engineering at Montana State University. The broader impact of this research includes advancing the understanding of how Utility Value Theory motivates the professional formation of engineers while simultaneously promoting the training of an engineering faculty. This research has the potential for great benefit to society by producing engineering graduates that are concerned with the ways in which engineering serves the public good. Students from this culture of engagement will serve as role models that promote engineering as a profession that has prosocial value. By changing the culture surrounding engineering, a more diverse group of students will be attracted to engineering and retained in the workforce, particularly women and 1st generation college students, which will ultimately broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in engineering.