A Natural Experiment: NAE's Changing the Conversation Report and Students' Changing Perceptions of Engineering

In 2008, the Changing the Conversation (CTC) report was published by the National Academy of Engineering to provide suggestions for how to talk about engineering to get students excited about the field. Since that time, some engineering schools have utilized the suggested messaging to greater extents than other schools. The Alfred P. Sloan funded Project to Assess Climate in Engineering (PACE) has 2008 and 2012 survey data from engineering undergraduates at 15 schools across the United States. The timing of the PACE survey enables examination of the extent to which the use of the engineering messaging has improved the perceptions of students at participating schools. The results from this qualitative analysis of quantitative and qualitative data suggest that schools that used the CTC messaging and principles generally saw a greater number of improvements in student perceptions of engineering than those that did not use the CTC messaging and principles. Further, using CTC principles in the curriculum appears to have a stronger relationship with student perceptions of engineering than using CTC to create recruitment and publicity materials.