Educational Objectives And Expectations For Post Graduation Achievement

This paper describes the evaluation of survey data collected from almost 1,300 Penn State engineering alumni who graduated in the years 1995 to 2000. Analyses were conducted to determine if there are differences in the respondents’ perceptions of their education based on the initial career path chosen, namely, full-time employment versus entry directly into graduate study; and within these two categories, whether perceptions vary depending on graduates’ decisions to pursue primarily technical or business/management tracks. Examination of the data provides evidence to suggest that their impression of the importance of various competencies and abilities is related to their choice of post-graduation activities. Depending on the selected career path, they rate the importance of these abilities differently, but tend to rate their preparedness in these areas similarly. These findings are particularly relevant and valuable, given the definition of program educational objectives proposed by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, Inc., for the 200405 Engineering Criteria. This proposal defines the educational objectives as “statements that describe the expected accomplishments of graduates during the first few years after graduation.” The survey responses for Penn State alumni two to three years following graduation show that different kinds of achievement and measures of accomplishment apply to the different earlycareer paths. This raises questions that may need to be considered for curriculum design. For instance: What actions should we be taking to prepare our students for the broader aspects of their professional careers? What competencies and abilities should we emphasize in a curriculum constrained by a limited time frame? Examining the data from our surveys of recent graduates, which include information on the tasks they are actually performing in various roles, offers insights into these questions and gives us a starting point to begin to make decisions on how to prioritize the implementation of potential curricular improvements. Data collected over several years also allow us to examine patterns over time to make reasonable interpretations about the effectiveness of our programs and trends in graduates’ perceptions of their education as the move into the workplace or pursue advanced degrees. I. Origins of the Alumni Survey For many years, the College of Engineering at Penn State has been surveying students and graduates concerning their perceptions of their undergraduate education, their early work P ge 999.1 Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright© 2004, American Society for Engineering Education experiences, and their future plans. Surveys of recent alumni have been carried out for over fifteen years to provide information from former students on impressions of their education and to track their early post-graduate education, professional development, and work activities. Approximately ten years ago, the College developed a new method of conducting the alumni survey and began surveying recent graduates. Starting with the class of 1995, graduates have been surveyed two to three years following the completion of their undergraduate education. This instrument was originally distributed in paper form, but was converted to an online version in 2001, which is now administered via the World Wide Web. The new expectations regarding formative assessment for engineering program accreditation served as an additional driver for a change in approach. It simply made sense to reformulate the surveys so that measures would result that could be used to effect change. The challenge was to design the new instruments so that the value of comparison with the results of previous surveys was not lost, while introducing the new content in a way that would not make for a timeconsuming and ultimately off-putting format. The most likely candidate for piloting this new strategy was the survey administered to recent alumni. Both the departments and the programs were interested in the perceptions of students relative to the eleven program outcomes specified in the general criteria of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology and in gaining insight as to the curricular elements or experiences that students equate to their level of preparation in these areas. Specifically, the survey probes the various professional and workplace activities in which graduates are involved, as well as their perceptions of their undergraduate education and how well it prepared them for their chosen career path. The alumni survey is administered every two years and is sent to alumni who graduated two and three years prior. One of the new emphases of the survey is to gain a better understanding of how the specific post-graduation activities in which our alumni are engaged relate to their perceptions of preparedness, as well as the importance they assign to selected competencies or abilities. In previous studies, we have evaluated how graduates in successive class years perceive various aspects of their education. For this study, the response data have been partitioned in a new way, categorizing alumni based on whether they pursued full-time employment directly after earning their undergraduate degrees or if they went on immediately to full-time graduate school. II. Impact of Post-Graduation Activities on Perceptions of Preparedness and Importance of Selected Competencies Following completion of the baccalaureate program, our engineering graduates typically select one of two post-graduate paths -either full time employment or pursuit of full time graduate studies. Within both these groups of graduates, some tend to work or do advanced study in technical areas related to engineering, while others are employed or seeking further education in business-related/non-technical fields. Table 1 gives a breakdown into these groups for the almost 1,300 survey respondents from the graduating classes of 1995 through 2000. During this period, the proportions of graduates taking full time employment versus those going to graduate school full time remained relatively constant. P ge 999.2 Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright© 2004, American Society for Engineering Education Table 1. Respondents’ Breakdown into Various Categories Full-time Employed in Engineering Jobs (design, product, process) 589 in Business/Management/Non-technical 125 in Research/Consulting 92 in Other Roles 391 Total 1,197 (94%) Full-time Graduate School* in Engineering/Technical 58 in Business/Other 5 Total 69 (6%) *Graduates who pursue graduate studies full-time immediately after earning their B.S. degrees. Note: Over 30% of graduates eventually pursue advanced studies within two to three years of graduation; 70-80% of these in engineering and 20-30% in business or MBA programs. Clearly, a large majority of graduates chose to pursue full-time employment opportunities directly out of college, a manifestation of the healthy employment market and attractive job offers extended to graduating engineering students during that period of time. The survey asked all alumni to rate (on a scale of 1 to 5) how well their undergraduate education prepared them in each of 22 competencies or abilities, as well as how important each competency or ability is to their current job or studies. Figure 1 shows the graduates’ perceptions of preparedness with regard to these competencies and abilities. In each case, the full-time employment group is compared to the graduate school group. 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 M a k e O ra l P re s e n ta ti o n s