Fostering engineering identity and persistence among high school students at a global scale: evaluating the GE Foundation Next Engineers Program

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Engineers have long played a pivotal role in global efforts towards stronger economic, social, and sustainable development. As the world strives to meet the Sustainable Development Goals by 2023, the need for engineers with skills and capabilities to design and develop infrastructure, systems and processes that make the world safer, cleaner, and more accessible has only grown. However, across the world demand for talented engineering professionals often exceeds availability due in large part to the lack of young people entering the sector (OECD, 2017; UNESCO, 2021). The low enrollment of young people into engineering education and preparation programs is the result of multiple factors including insufficient awareness of what engineers do, limited access and exposure to educational opportunities in engineering, and few chances to build and develop an identity as an engineer at a young age (Regan & DeWitt, 2015; Wang, 2013). Compounding the challenge of the limited supply of engineers, is the underrepresentation of women and people of color within the engineering profession, a phenomenon resulting from institutional, structural, and societal barriers constructed in settings across the globe (Leyva et al. 2021, Besser, et al., 2019; Radzi & Sulaiman, 2018; Wang, 2013).

As the world grapples with an ever-expanding list of complex challenges, there is an urgent need to reimagine the process of preparing, inspiring, and supporting the next generation of engineers at a global scale. However, the majority of the research dedicated to understanding how best to recruit, retain and prepare youth, particularly those from underrepresented groups, for careers within engineering is focused on students in Western settings (UNESCO, 2021). Despite the growth in demand at a global scale, little data is available to shed light on the demographics of engineers in other contexts, let alone the challenges to expanding access and entry into the profession (OECD, 2017). How then do we understand the mechanisms that propel interest, engagement, and persistence in engineering in settings across the globe? How do we provide effective support to underrepresented students and students of diverse backgrounds to pursue engineering studies from high school through to higher education? How can we prepare students to persist through in engineering programs in higher education, and to engage in an engineering profession? This panel explores these questions through three different presentations. Through these presentations, we provide insight into the mechanisms that enable or determine enrollment and persistence in engineering programs and eventually pursuit of an engineering career.


In the first presentation, we consider how engineering identity and persistence have been documented within the literature and how these constructs have been measured across different educational and geographical settings. We present our conceptual framework for this research and outline the theory of change embedded in the Next Engineers: Engineering Academy program.

Building on this conceptual framework, in our second presentation we outline the Next Engineers: Engineering Academy program, a global education and college-readiness initiative focused on increasing the population of young people pursuing and entering careers in engineering, particularly among groups who have been historically excluded from the field such as women and minority populations.

In our third presentation we present a longitudinal approach to measuring the impacts of the Next Engineering program on young people’s engineering identity and their persistence through post-secondary education and into their professional careers. In addition, we present preliminary baseline results from 200 students enrolled in the Engineering Academy across 4 different cities, two in the US, one in the UK and one in South Africa.

Sub Unit

• Youth Development and Education SIG

Chair

• Steven Ehrenberg, FHI 360

Individual Presentations

• Engineering identity and persistence: developing an integrated conceptual framework for understanding students’ choice of engineering education and careers - Caitlín Rose Dailey, FHI 360; Elizabeth Adelman, FHI 360

• Next Engineers Engineering Academy: Exploring a global model for developing engineering identity and mindset formation - Dylan Busa, FHI 360; Kendra Northington, FHI 360; Rachel M Hatch, FHI360

• Impacts of the Next Engineers Engineering Academy on students’ paths toward becoming Engineers: Research design and preliminary analyses - Saori Iwamoto, Family Health International (FHI360); Wael S Moussa, FHI 360

Discussant

• Elizabeth Adelman, FHI 360