Research Initiation: Understanding engineering career fairs as informal professionalization learning spaces

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

This project will investigate engineering career fairs as informal learning spaces that help professionalize engineering students. The scale and widespread prevalence of engineering career fairs suggests a certain degree of importance of career fairs to students, engineering schools, and employers/recruiters - yet little is known about these events. This study aims to capture the goals, expectations, and experiences of students, career services staff, and employers/recruiters who shape and attend career fairs. This project will fill an important knowledge gap in how career fairs inform and shape students’ transformations into engineering professionals, and how career fairs shape the engineering profession as a whole. Insights revealed from this study will be broadly applicable to engineering schools, career services staff, and employers/recruiters across the US, and contribute to our collective understanding of the professional formation of engineers. Our efforts will address two research questions: (1) How do engineering career fairs operate as informal professionalization learning spaces for undergraduate engineering students?, and (2): What implicit and explicit informal professionalization learning intentions do career services staff and employers/recruiters have for undergraduate engineering students at career fairs? We will answer these research questions using thematic and comparative analysis of interview and focus group data gathered from three stakeholder groups attending and/or involved in organizing engineering career fairs—undergraduate students, employers/recruiters, and career services staff—at Arizona State University. We will conduct the research in two phases: a pilot and learning study (Year 1) followed by a refined study (Year 2). This research is potentially transformative in that it will provide the engineering education community with novel understanding and knowledge of how a specific and widespread informal learning space—career fairs—shapes the outlooks and perspectives of those considering engineering careers, and their acculturation to the profession, its standards, and its norms. Our proposed work will examine an important informal learning space that informs students about the diverse pathways to and through engineering, which can greatly impact how students envision themselves working in the profession. We plan to share what we learn with key stakeholders—including engineering companies, academics, professional societies, policy leaders, and career development organizations like the National Association of Colleges and Employers—through our dissemination efforts, which will include a special session at the Engineering Ideas Institute Summit organized by Engineering Change Lab-USA. Emerging research has begun to show (1) why many minoritized students leave engineering, (2) how engineering education reduces students' concerns for public welfare, and (3) the importance of aligning students’ personal and professional values to ensure student satisfaction with their education and future jobs. The intellectual merits of the project are thus purposefully tied to the broader impacts of supporting an innovative and inclusive engineering profession for the 21st century. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.