Research: Workplace Preparation in the Aerospace Engineering Profession

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Every year newly graduated engineers enter the workforce to begin their engineering careers. Although they may be well trained in technical matters, they still have significant learning to do in order to participate effectively in the workforce, such as understanding their roles and responsibilities, determining their companies' culture and norms, and developing relationships with coworkers. They must adjust to the workplace, which is a critically important developmental task. Failure to adjust may lead to struggles with the work environment, leaving workforce, and even to leaving the profession. This study aims to examine how recently hired engineering graduates enter and adjust to their engineering profession. In particular, this study focuses on new engineers in aerospace field for four key reasons: (1) there is a mismatch between traditional methods for training aerospace engineers and the needs of the modern engineering workplace, (2) the profession needs to increase retention of women and members of underrepresented minorities, (3) current higher education programs and company training in aerospace need to be modified to more fully open the profession to diverse groups of engineers, and (4) a large supply of diverse new engineers will be needed to fill the positions that will open in ever-increasing numbers with the coming retirement of baby boomers from the aerospace field. These make it urgent for aerospace engineering programs to graduate engineers who are prepared for the challenges of entering the workplace. The purpose of this project is to (1) identify how recently graduated aerospace engineers accomplish tasks that govern their adjustment to working at engineering companies, (2) determine their experiences, challenges, and supportive mechanisms during socialization, (3) determine how engineering students can prepare during their college years to succeed at workplace tasks, and (4) identify how engineering education programs and engineering companies can train diverse groups of engineers to accomplish those tasks. The theoretical framework for this study involves the four socialization task domains, defined by the socialization literature: task mastery, role clarification, acculturation, and social integration. Using a multiple-case research design, this study will interview a diverse group of recently hired new engineering graduates (N = 30) who are working full-time in preeminent U.S.-based aerospace companies. The findings are expected to expand engineering educators' knowledge about how to prepare engineers for the workforce by uncovering key socialization factors for demographically diverse groups of engineers. Dissemination of the study findings via websites, online learning modules, and peer-reviewed publications will help recent engineering graduates to improve their entry into their workplaces and enable universities to better prepare students for the workforce. Additionally, study findings will inform companies to help diverse new engineers get up to speed quickly and launch themselves into successful career paths.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.