Background: Noncognitive and affective (NCA) factors (e.g., belonging, engineering identity, motivation, mindset, personality, etc.) are important to undergraduate student success. However, few studies have considered how these factors coexist and act in concert. Purpose/Hypothesis: We hypothesize that students cluster into several distinct…

Background: Supporting undergraduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has been a persistent need. However, assessing the impact of support efforts can prove challenging as it is difficult to operationalize student support and subsequently monitor the combined impacts of the various supports to which students…

Civil engineers will face increasing challenges in their careers due to climate change. The infrastructure they design and construct will directly contribute to or mitigate it. Action to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change requires both a belief in human-caused global warming and a basic understanding of climate science.…

The evolving challenges and demands of engineering require future professionals to have a broad skillset. To be adequately prepared for industry, undergraduate engineering students need to recognize the importance of professional competencies and develop their leadership identities. This sequential explanatory mixed-methods study investigated the…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the differences in first-year and senior engineering students' engineering agency beliefs and career goals related to sustainable development. The authors also sought to understand how topics related to sustainable development in engineering courses affect senior engineering students' goals to address these…

Background: Research in engineering education has highlighted the importance of identity and motivation for a number of student outcomes, including persistence. However, these constructs have often been studied separately, despite theorized and demonstrated connections between students' identity and motivation in other fields. Purpose/Hypothesis:…

More engineering students are needed to address climate change in their careers. These students are necessary because engineering includes designing and building machines, structures, and components that contribute large portions of society's carbon emissions. We surveyed a national sample of undergraduate engineering students (n = 4605) in their…

Civil engineers and architects are both trained in design thinking, but they approach the process of design from differing perspectives largely due to the divergence in their educational curriculums. With an interest in the effect of differing educational perspectives on design thinking outcomes, comparisons were made between the self-identified…

Background: Prior researchers developed an instrument to measure perceived design thinking ability of first-year students interested in engineering, and they validated the instrument through exploratory factor analysis. Purpose/Hypothesis: Our study uses the previously developed instrument to evaluate perceived design thinking ability of senior…

This sequential, explanatory mixed-methods study examined students' intentions to stay in or leave engineering industry careers upon graduation. We gathered survey data from 128 second-year engineering students about their intentions and attitudes. The participants were enrolled in a two-week interdisciplinary engineering summer course at…

Due to globalization trends, engineers are increasingly expected to work effectively across national and cultural boundaries. However, there remains a lack of valid and reliable measures of global engineering competency. To address this gap, the research team has undertaken a large-scale research project to develop a suite of instruments to…

The expectations for engineers to solve complex, global issues are growing at rates that exceed current curricula in engineering education. Studies show that early career engineering students are not confident in their ability to innovate. In this paper, the authors investigated the innovation self-efficacy beliefs (i.e., questioning, observing,…

This paper seeks to understand factors that influence how first-generation college students identify as engineers now and in the future. Data used in this study came from four U.S. institutions obtaining a total first-generation college student sample of 596 participants. We used future possible selves as a lens to understand how first-generation…

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted, exacerbated, and caused many challenges within engineering education. At the same time, the pandemic provided opportunities for engineering educators to learn from forced change to promote strategic efforts to improve classroom engagement and connection to better support engineering students.…

An introductory sophomore-level chemical engineering course was redesigned, and this redesign included cyber-assisted learning through online videos, team formation, and team evaluation software. We compared the traditional 2018 course (n = 48) with the redesigned 2019 course (n = 67) on student persistence (DFW rates), motivation, and course…