When The Light Goes On: Illuminating The Pathway To Engineering

After teaching first-year students for many years, a number of instructors expressed interest in becoming involved in programs that seek to define and work toward addressing the problem of flat engineering graduation rates in the United States. Can we help illuminate the pathway to engineering for the right students? Given the many excellent recruitment initiatives and opportunities to work with K-12 programs, it was not clear though, which type of program to pursue to this end. We wanted to find the right target point, considering when, what, and how to get involved in attracting young engineers – therefore our research begins it’s focus with a question: when does the light go on? In order to have some data from the youngest engineers we know, we administered a survey as the first-year engineering students started classes in order to capture their information before they developed any bias from their current experiences at the university. The research and analysis revealed a distinct profile of factors that attract young people to the engineering field in different stages of their development. This work will provide examples of the survey used and the salient results. The hope is to get other educators involved in order to exploit the students marked interest in engineering as determined by their age group – in the end inspiring students to pursue an engineering career.