CAREER: Becoming Boundary Spanners: Investigating, Enhancing, and Assessing the Experiences of Early Career Engineers

这一由职业计划支持的工程教育研究项目将使早期职业研究人员能够调查工程学位课程如何将学生培养成能够跨越组织、学科、地理、人口、利益相关者和其他边界进行沟通、协作和协调的边界扳手。这些技能对于工程师在全球化的劳动力中有效发挥作用越来越必要。该项目将调查学位课程和劳动力中跨越国界的能力的性质，并探索学位课程如何增强这些能力。这项研究采用顺序混合方法设计，并将开发一种测量方法来评估工程实践中跨越边界能力的关键维度。该项目的更广泛的意义和重要性源于该项目试图将一系列21世纪的技能整合到一个可测量的能力中，然后开发评估和教授这种能力的方法。这样的尝试可能会产生系统性的影响，告诉学位课程如何缩短完成学位的时间，同时保持让工程师毕业时掌握当今劳动力所需技能的能力。该项目与NSF的战略目标重叠，即通过培养一支具有新能力和专业知识的工程队伍来改造边境。此外，NSF为社会创新的目标是通过支持创新学习系统的发展而实现的。

This engineering education research project supported by the CAREER program will enable an early career researcher to investigate how engineering degree programs can develop students to act as boundary spanners who can communicate, collaborate, and coordinate across organizational, disciplinary, geographic, demographic, stakeholder, and other boundaries. Such skills are increasing necessary for engineers to function effectively in a globalized workforce. The project will investigate the nature of boundary-spanning competencies both in degree programs and the workforce, as well as explore how degree programs can enhance these competencies. The study uses a sequential mixed-methods design and will develop a measure to assess key dimensions of boundary spanning competence in engineering practice.The broader significance and importance of this project arises from the project's attempt to integrate a range of 21st Century skills into one measurable competency, then develop ways to assess and teach this competency. Such attempts can have systemic impact by informing degree programs about ways to reduce time to degree while maintaining the ability to graduate engineers with skills needed by today's workforce. This project overlaps with NSF's strategic goals of transforming the frontiers through preparation of an engineering workforce with new capabilities and expertise. Additionally NSF's goal of innovating for society is enabled by supporting the development of innovative learning systems.