An Engineer Like Me: How Perceived Similarity and Peer Effects Influence Student Major Choice

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

This Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) project will investigate the factors that influence the under-representation of female and minority students in engineering. Data from the College of Engineering at Purdue University will be used for the analyses, which provides an opportunity to examine a large population of engineering students. The project has the following objectives: (1) to investigate how students' peers and role models, both from the student and faculty populations within each major, can affect students choice of major, (2) to investigate how the messaging and information students receive in the course of choosing their major can affect which field they will enter, and (3) to establish how and why major choices change over time. The analysis will combine methods from economics and education to provide comprehensive mixed-methods analysis of how classroom environments and activities can influence student major choice. The proposed research is aimed at explaining why substantial variations in diversity exist across engineering disciplines as a function of student classroom experiences the demographic composition of students peers and faculty, but also the messages that students receive regarding the values and career prospects of the different disciplines through classroom activities and interventions. The successful completion of the project will significantly complement ongoing efforts to increase recruitment efforts across engineering disciplines. The importance and the role of engineering education in today's economic environment have been receiving growing attention. With the nation's call for a larger and more diverse engineering labor force, it is timely and critical to better understand how multiple factors including classroom environments and peers, messaging from discipline representatives, and departmental-level demographic composition intersect to influence students' academic and career trajectories. This project has the potential to advance knowledge in several fields, notably economics and engineering education. An important contribution of this project will be the additional focus on messaging and information available to students. This research project's interpretive inquiry approach using both inductive and deductive strategies is based on a broad range of interview participants. Findings will generate new insights that have important implications for the development of strategies to recruit more women and underrepresented minorities into the different engineering disciplines. If messaging is shown to be an important avenue by which institutions can affect major choice, this type of intervention will be very scalable and could have significant impacts on the representation of female and minority students within other STEM fields. The project includes efforts to communicate the results of this work to the broader engineering education community.