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

本项目将调查作为非正式学习空间的工程招聘会，以帮助工科学生专业化。工程招聘会的规模和广泛流行表明，招聘会对学生、工程学校和雇主/招聘人员有一定程度的重要性，但人们对这些活动知之甚少。本研究旨在捕捉学生、就业服务人员、雇主/招聘人员塑造和参加招聘会的目标、期望和经验。该项目将填补一个重要的知识缺口，即招聘会如何告知和塑造学生向工程专业人士的转变，以及招聘会如何塑造整个工程专业。本研究揭示的见解将广泛适用于美国各地的工程学院、职业服务人员和雇主/招聘人员，并有助于我们对工程师专业形成的集体理解。我们的努力将解决两个研究问题：(1)工程招聘会如何作为本科工程学生的非正式专业化学习空间运作？(2)就业服务人员和雇主/招聘人员在招聘会上对本科工程专业学生有哪些隐性和显性的非正式专业化学习意图？我们将使用专题和比较分析访谈和焦点小组数据来回答这些研究问题，这些数据来自亚利桑那州立大学参加和/或参与组织工程招聘会的三个利益相关者群体——本科生、雇主/招聘人员和就业服务人员。我们将分两个阶段进行研究：试点和学习研究（第一年级），然后是细化研究（第二年级）。这项研究具有潜在的变革性，因为它将为工程教育界提供一种新的理解和知识，即一个特定的、广泛的非正式学习空间——职业招聘会——如何塑造那些考虑工程职业的人的前景和观点，以及他们对职业、标准和规范的文化适应。我们提出的工作将研究一个重要的非正式学习空间，告诉学生学习工程和通过工程的各种途径，这将极大地影响学生对自己在该专业工作的设想。我们计划通过我们的传播工作，与主要利益相关者——包括工程公司、学术界、专业协会、政策领导者和职业发展组织（如美国大学和雇主协会）——分享我们的研究成果，其中包括在由美国工程变革实验室组织的工程理念研究所峰会上举行的特别会议。新兴研究已经开始显示(1)为什么许多少数族裔学生离开工程专业；(2)工程教育如何降低学生对公共福利的关注；(3)调整学生的个人和专业价值观以确保学生对教育和未来工作的满意度的重要性。因此，该项目的智力价值被有意地与支持21世纪创新和包容性工程专业的更广泛影响联系在一起。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.