Research Initiation: Faculty, Student, and Employer Understanding of Holistic Engineers in the Energy Sector

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Engineering students receive much of their education and training from engineering professors, peers, internship (or similar) experiences, student organizations, and the structure of the curricula in their departments. However, it is not clear how well-aligned students? education and training are with what they will be expected to do in the workplace after they graduate. While there have been investigations into what skills and knowledge are valued in the workplace, there has been minimal investigation into what engineering professors and students think these skills and knowledge are. For example, many engineering professors have not worked in the types of workplaces where most engineering graduates begin their careers, and this difference in training and experience between academics and industry professionals may influence how and what professors teach. Students who have never worked in engineering jobs may have incomplete or incorrect knowledge about what will be required of them or useful in the workplace. To help better connect engineering teaching to outcomes (useful skills and knowledge for engineering graduates), this project aims to gather the experiences, perceptions, and values of faculty, students, and working professionals. The project will focus specifically on the energy sector because this sector is a critical component of the nation's economy, and there is growing demand for STEM professionals in the energy field.The goal of this project is to deepen research on the professional formation of engineers and expand the community of researchers in this field. While there has been extensive research on the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required of engineers in the workplace, there is limited awareness about engineering professors' and students' perspectives and their perceptions of workplace competencies. This project aims to close that knowledge gap by connecting workplace competencies, as perceived by energy engineering professionals in the workplace, to the perceptions of professional competencies of engineering students who will enter the workplace, as well as the faculty who prepare those students. The objectives of the project are to: (1) provide a holistic model of competencies required for engineers entering the workforce, (2) compare this model to the competencies guiding academic engineering programs and practitioners, (3) train engineering professors in engineering education and social science research methods, and (4) provide a foundation for future research in the formation of engineers. The study will focus on the energy sector by investigating energy engineering programs and partnering with an industry collaborator. The methods involve two rounds of interviews of professors, students, and industry professionals. The proposed project will provide knowledge about the skills and competencies required in engineering careers as well as discrepancies or concurrences between engineering educators' and students' perceptions about the relevant skills and competencies. Its comprehensive approach to simultaneously studying industry professionals, faculty, and students is unique, and the knowledge created will enable the comparison of competency models reflecting a more holistic view of how engineers are formed within the energy field and beyond.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.