Research Initiation: Assessing the Effectiveness of the Professional Formation of Engineering Students at The College of New Jersey

The College Of New Jersey, Ewing NJ

Investigators

Abstract

Creating and retaining a robust workforce of highly-skilled engineers is very important for sustaining and improving the United States and global economies, which are increasingly reliant on technical innovation that comes from the field of engineering. Equally important is the development of highly ethical and professional standards within this group of innovative practitioners. The School of Engineering at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) has formulated a well-balanced liberal arts core integrated with a solid and robust engineering curricular sequence that promises to: (1) improve the retention of engineering students, (2) instill highly ethical and professional standards throughout the four years of the engineering curriculum, and (3) for alumni: a) inspire and strongly encourage them to enhance their engineering knowledge and skills, and b) strive for setting challenging professional goals and achieving them in a timely manner. The architects of this curriculum model have joined forces with faculty from the Department of Sociology to construct the necessary surveying tools and procedures for a comprehensive examination of the degree of effectiveness and the timing of the different interventions and reinforcements built into this promising model. The findings from these evaluations would enable this multi-disciplinary research team to develop a much deeper understanding for further calibration of this curriculum for optimal results. The techniques, surveying tools, and procedures used for conducting this two-year study, along with a summary of the results, will be made available at the national level for potential adoption, examination of similar models, and future collaborations. The School of Engineering at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), in close collaboration with faculty from the Department of Sociology, has initiated a research program that assesses the effectiveness of a liberal arts core program combined with a strong vertical engineering professional sequence on the professional formation of engineering students. In this study, the multi-disciplinary team examines the influence of a number of curricular and extracurricular education interventions such as engineering-specific ethics case studies, lessons on professional licensure, interaction with alumni through a formal mentoring program, liberal arts coursework, solving open-ended design problems, internships, and/or undergraduate research experiences. The project consists of two phases: (1) creation of the instruments based on existing measures and development of new measures using qualitative methods in Year 1, and (2) pilot studies in Year 2 that are designed to validate the created instruments. Formative evaluation during these phases allows for modification of measures and timing, and may influence the delivery interventions, based on early analysis of data collected. Summative evaluation provides the validity of the instruments that can then be applied to larger populations. The objective of this initial study is to create and validate instruments that can be used to assess the effectiveness of this promising model. The instruments may be used in future research programs to evaluate the effectiveness of various factors postulated to influence professional development in engineering students. An additional area of interest focuses on how professional formation is influenced by demographic factors, and how professional formation is related to persistence and post-graduation success. Results of the planned research program provides insight into the connection between professional formation and individual characteristics that have been demonstrated elsewhere to predict persistence and post-graduation success in populations underrepresented due to gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The assessment instruments developed in this study enable professional formation within these cohorts to be better understood, potentially leading to specific interventions that strengthen professional identity for these special populations. Dissemination of the results to the engineering education community will spread the impact of the results nationally.