Service-Motivated Students’ Transitions To Industry

With a growing emphasis on developing holistic engineers, many engineering educators are turning to service-based pedagogies to help students gain broader perspectives of their roles as engineers in society. The explosive growth of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) and the rise of programs such as Purdue’s Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) and Michigan Tech’s D80 program exemplify how both students and institutions highly value such activities. Research into the effects of activities such as these has shown that students gain a greater understanding of their civic and social responsibility, awareness of the world, and increased academic, personal and professional advancement. There remains, however, significant uncertainty about what happens when these students leave school and enter the engineering profession, and to what degree they are able and willing to continue participating in engineering service. Engineering service opportunities and value in the workplace were explored through interviews with twelve engineering company employees. The employees were engaged in engineering service and described varying degrees of support from their companies. The engineering firms ranged from environmental engineering consultants to large construction to the aerospace industry. Also, eight alumni of Learning Through Service (LTS) activities in college (similar to EWB) were interviewed about their pathways since graduating from college. All of the interviews lasted thirty to sixty minutes using a semi-structured approach. The engineering employees had a wide range of experiences in the ways and means to which their service aspirations were supported. Some firms offered an extra week of paid time off for engineering service-related travel while at other companies employees received informal accolades and invitations to give lunchtime presentations. Employees described the ways they were able to present the value of engineering service activities to decision makers in their firms (high-level engineers to marketing managers) in order to be supported. The twelve employee interviews and eight alumni interviews painted a complex and encouraging picture of the status of engineering service in the workplace.