Sheri D. Sheppard

Spanning knowledge group boundaries is both a source of and barrier to design performance and innovation. Objects—from prototypes to kanban boards—are frequently used in cross-functional design practice, but their associated outcomes appear varied and dependent not only on the objects themselves but on how, when, and by whom they are used. We conducted a two-year ethnography within a turbomachinery design company to understand how professional engineering designers span knowledge group boundaries to advance their designs and design processes. Our findings identify three roles of objects of collaboration: routinizing cross-boundary interaction, translating information across boundaries, and motivating joint negotiation or discovery. We illustrate two prominent outcomes—the co-discovery of a design risk, opportunity, or bottleneck and the co-design of a joint integrated solution—and describe two object role sequences from which these outcomes seem to follow. These findings are significant because they suggest ways for designers to effectively use objects to span knowledge group boundaries.

Purpose: Internships play an important role in the choices engineering students make about future career pathways though there is little research about the messaging students receive regarding internships from academics. This messaging is important because it can contribute to the expectations students set for internships which in turn influences the interpretation of the experience and sense of appropriateness of that particular career pathway. Situated in Expectancy X Value theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the beliefs and behaviors of the academics with whom engineering students interact as related to internship experiences.Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted and analyzed interviews with 13 career center employees and 14 academic advisers/faculty members across six demographically and geographically diverse schools. Interviews were coded, and within and across case patterns developed.Findings: Across all six schools, interview participants believe internships are important for students with regard to three areas: enabling career discovery, providing opportunities for development of career skills and helping students with full-time job acquisition. However, participants describe few direct actions associated with these beliefs. The lack of recommended actions for making the most of the internship experience, despite a strong belief in their importance, is a major finding of this paper.Originality/value: This study is original in that it examines an important perspective that is not often a focus of research related to internships: academic advisors, faculty or career center personnel. The multi-institution sample enhances the value of the study as commonalities were seen despite variation in schools, enabling recommendations useful to a variety of contexts.

Background: In recent years, technological innovation and entrepreneurship have been emphasized in engineering education. There is a need to better understand which individual‐ and contextual‐level factors are related to engineering students' entrepreneurial intentions.Purpose/Hypothesis: This study explores individual and contextual predictors of entrepreneurial intent among undergraduate women and men in engineering and business majors. Entrepreneurial intent is defined as the personal importance that students ascribe to starting a new business or organization.Design/Method: The participants included 518 engineering and 471 business undergraduates from 51 U.S. colleges and universities. We examined relationships first by discipline and then by gender in each discipline using regression models with interaction terms.Results: Innovation orientation and participation in entrepreneurship activities tied to intent more strongly for engineering students than for business students; in contrast, being at a research institution and selection of novel goals tied to intent more strongly for business students than for their engineering peers. Among engineering students only, being able to switch gears and apply alternative means for reaching one's goal in the face of setbacks was positively related with women's entrepreneurial intent but not with men's.Conclusions: Entrepreneurial intent is a function of individual‐level characteristics and academic and social contexts, with some degree of discipline‐specific effects. Diversifying the community of aspiring engineering entrepreneurs is a critical issue that merits attention by the engineering education community.

BackgroundUnderstanding more about student decisions to leave engineering may lead to higher retention. This study builds on the literature and focuses on the experiences of a cohort of students who aimed to complete their undergraduate work in 2007.Purpose (Hypothesis)This paper presents the outcomes of the longitudinal administration of the Persistence in Engineering survey. The goal was to identify correlates of persistence in undergraduate engineering education and professional engineering practice.Design/MethodThe survey was administered seven times over four years to a cohort of students who had expressed interest in studying engineering. At the end of the study, the participants were categorized as persisters or non‐persisters. Repeated measures analysis of variance was used, in conjunction with other approaches, to test for differences between the groups.ResultsPersisters and non‐persisters did not differ significantly according to the majority of the constructs. Nevertheless, parental and high school mentor influences as a motivation to study engineering, as well as confidence in math and science skills, were identified as correlates of persistence. Intention to complete an engineering major was also a correlate of persistence; it appears to decline sharply at least two semesters prior to students leaving engineering. The findings also suggest that there might be differences among non‐persisters when they are further grouped by when they leave engineering.ConclusionsFacilitating higher levels of mentor involvement before college might increase student motivation to study engineering, and also constitute a mechanism for fostering confidence in math and science skills. Since the intention to complete an engineering degree decreases well before students act, there may be opportunities for institutions to develop targeted interventions for students, and help them make informed decisions.

Records from the Multiple‐Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development indicate that engineering students are typical of students in other majors with respect to: persistence in major; persistence by gender and ethnicity; racial/ethnic distribution; and grade distribution. Data from the National Survey of Student Engagement show that this similarity extends to engagement outcomes including course challenge, faculty interaction, satisfaction with institution, and overall satisfaction. Engineering differs from other majors most notably by a dearth of female students and a low rate of migration into the major. Noting the similarity of students of engineering and other majors with respect to persistence and engagement, we propose that engagement is a precursor to persistence. We explore this hypothesis using data from the Academic Pathways Study of the Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education. Further exploration reveals that although persistence and engagement do not vary as much as expected by discipline, there is significant institutional variation, and we assert a need to address persistence and engagement at the institutional level and throughout higher education. Finally, our findings highlight the potential of making the study of engineering more attractive to qualified students. Our findings suggest that a two‐pronged approach holds the greatest potential for increasing the number of students graduating with engineering degrees: identify programming that retains the students who come to college committed to an engineering major, and develop programming and policies that allow other students to migrate in. There is already considerable discourse on persistence, so our findings suggest that more research focus is needed on the pathways into engineering, including pathways from other majors.