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This paper aims to explore the differences in first-year and senior engineering students’ engineering agency beliefs and career goals related to sustainable development. The authors also sought to understand how topics related to sustainable development in engineering courses affect senior engineering students’ goals to address these issues in their careers. This work provides evidence of how students’ agency beliefs may be shaped by higher education, which is essential to workforce development.

Findings stem from two national surveys of engineering first-year (Sustainability and Gender in Engineering, n = 7,709) and senior students (Student Survey about Career Goals, College Experiences, n = 4,605). The authors compared both groups using pairwise testing by class standing.

The results indicate that undergraduate studies tend to reinforce students’ engineering agency beliefs to improve their quality of life and preserve the environment. Significantly more senior students selected career goals to address environmental issues compared to first-year students. In general, students undervalue their roles as engineers in addressing issues related to social inequities. Those topics are rarely addressed in engineering courses. Findings from this work suggest discussing sustainability in courses positively impact setting career goals to address such challenges.

The study compares results from two distinct surveys, conveyed at different periods. Nonetheless, the sample size and national spread of respondents across US colleges and universities are robust to offer relevant insights on sustainable development in engineering education.

Adapting engineering curriculum by ensuring that engineering students are prepared to confront global problems related to sustainable development in their careers will have a positive societal impact.

This study highlights shortcomings of engineering education in promoting social and economic sustainability as related to the engineering field. Educational programs would benefit from emphasizing the interconnectedness of environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development. This approach could increase diversity in engineering education and the industry, and by ripple effect, benefit the communities and local governance.

This work is a first step toward understanding how undergraduate experiences impact students’ engineering agency beliefs and career goals related to sustainability. It explores potential factors that could increase students’ engineering agency and goals to make a change through engineering.

This study explores the effects of interdisciplinary education on engineering students by observing students' competencies before and after the programme.

The effects of interdisciplinary education were studied over three years through the use of a survey to test the social competencies of organisational life and the interdisciplinary competencies of college students. A total of 5,185 responses were collected from engineering students who took part in interdisciplinary education programmes. The survey was conducted during weeks 3 and 14 of each semester, and a comparison test was used to reveal any changes.

Among the 12 competencies developed or adapted, leadership significantly improved during all six semesters. Analytical thinking, interpersonal competency, professional attitude, global-mindedness, and creative attitudes also improved in some of the semesters.

It was not possible to control for the effect of classes that students were attending in addition to the targeted interdisciplinary class. However, this study was able to examine empirically the improvement of competencies for future engineers, and its findings provide a basis for future researchers to elaborate on other competencies as well.

The study recommends competencies needed by engineers working in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, examining the effects of interdisciplinary education on competency development. It contributes to strengthening the current trend in universities that seek to reform interdisciplinary education by empirically verifying its effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to deliver a roadmap that displays pathways to develop sustainability skills in the engineering curricula.

The selected approach to enrich engineering students with sustainability skills was active learning methodologies. First, a survey was carried out on a sample of 189 students to test the current sustainability literacy and determine the roadmap starting point. Next, a scientometric study regarding active learning methodologies was executed. A total of 2,885 articles and conference proceedings from the period 2013-2016 were retrieved from the Web of Science database. The records were then imported into text mining software to undergo a term clumping process. Annual knowledge clusters based on key terms were outputted. Finally, a roadmap was created by experts based on the annual knowledge clusters.

Four annual pathways were created along the roadmap to develop sustainability skills during the four-year college course in engineering. The first consisted on promoting a recycling campaign through a circular economy. The second aimed at creating educational videos regarding sustainability. The third reinforced reasoning and argumentative skills by preparing a debate on environmental issues. The last path assumed that the student is working in internship programs and prepared him/her to apply environmental management models to solve sustainability issues within the company.

Roadmaps should be updated approximately every two years to reflect novelty. The proposed methodology shows an easy way to create them.

Results from this paper, as well as the proposed methodology, can be applied to any organization forming individuals: from primary school education to employee training programs in organizations.

The development of sustainability skills has a direct, positive impact on professional decision-making and, ultimately, on the environment.

This paper presents a roadmapping process to develop sustainability competences throughout engineering college education.

Although a student’s sense of belonging is a key factor of persistence in higher education, research on international students’ belonging tends to rely on domain-agnostic survey measures and promote interpretations that focus mainly on social integration and adjustment. This paper aims to examine how male international graduate students in engineering understand and describe their sense of belonging and how they perceive its development at their institution.

The authors conducted in-depth interviews with 12 male electrical engineering doctoral students at a selective research university in the USA. This interpretive approach allowed students to articulate their subjective understanding of belonging within a specific disciplinary context.

Contrary to the broad notion that the social domain is the primary locus of students’ sense of belonging, participants emphasized the academic domain when referring to their struggles with, and attempts to develop, a sense of belonging. Results suggest that the meritocratic culture of engineering education may influence students to prioritize the academic domain when conceptualizing and developing their belonging. Moreover, the strong academic motivation endemic to international students pursuing graduate education at a top American research university intensified this mechanism.

This study argues that universities seeking to enhance international graduate students’ sense of belonging can be more intentional in providing opportunities for students to establish positive academic identities. Furthermore, addressing students’ non-academic identity and marginalization as relevant and essential topics in engineering will expand their understanding of what means to belong.

This paper describes the change of dominance, in the provision of engineering education and training, from that of major large scale industry to that of the UK public sector. Using aerospace engineering as an example, it emphasises the need for education to demonstrate more openly and effectively its ability to provide world class support for UK industry. This industry is now dominated by small and medium enterprises and in aerospace, as well as other high technological areas, it is facing increasingly severe competition from overseas. Ways of helping the further and higher education institutions to achieve such support is described by their initiation of the well established Association of Colleges of Aerospace Technology (ACAT) and the relatively new Association of Aerospace Universities (AAU). These bodies comprise mainly aerospace engineering teaching staff but there are some members from industry. Their aims are to continually improve the image, effectiveness and relevance of aerospace education. Details of ACAT and AAU are given in the appendices together with ideas for collaboration with Internet initiatives of Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology (MCB University Press Ltd) and the Aerospace Academic Network (AAN).

In the 1967 film, The Graduate, Mr. Robinson gave Dust in Hoffman's character, Benjamin, the scene‐stealing career suggestion, “plastics!” Although Benjamin appeared indifferent to the oracle‐like advice, thousands of other graduates have since helped to make plastics, or polymers, a popular career choice. Today, the U.S. polymer‐based industries (plastics, rubber, fibers, paints, films, membranes, coatings, and adhesives) employ more than a million workers and need 10,000 new graduates yearly to support their growth. Yet, despite the emphasis industry and government place on formal training in polymer science and engineering (hereafter called PSE), academia has given the rapidly developing field a cool reception. Science writer Joseph Alper notes:

The purpose of the current study is to assess Omani teachers’ performance on tasks related to the stages of engineering design. To achieve this, data from an engineering design test was used, and demographic variables that are correlated with this performance were identified.

This descriptive study employed a cross-sectional design and the collection of quantitative data. A sample of preservice science teachers from Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) (n = 70) participated in this study.

Findings showed low and moderate levels of proficiency related to the stages of engineering design. Differences between males and females in terms of performance on engineering design tasks were found, with females scoring higher overall on the assessment. Biology preservice teachers scored higher than teachers from the other two majors (physics and chemistry) in two subscales. There were also differences between teachers studying in the Bachelor of Science (BSc) program and the teacher qualification diploma (TQD) program.

This study provides an overview, in an Arab setting, of preservice science teachers’ proficiency with engineering design process (EDP) tasks. It is hoped that the results may lead to improved instruction in science teacher training programs in similar contexts. Additionally, this research demonstrates how EDP competency relates to preservice teacher gender, major and preparation program. Findings from this study will contribute to the growing body of research investigating the strengths and shortcomings of teacher education programs in relation to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of mastery goal orientation, support for career development, career decision-making self-efficacy and engineering interest in career adaptability for engineering students.

Data were collected from 307 Korean engineering students from two universities. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze data and examine the relationships among the variables.

The results indicated that the level of mastery of goal orientation and support for career development significantly affected career decision-making self-efficacy. Engineering students’ career decision-making self-efficacy also positively influenced their engineering interests and career adaptability. Finally, the students’ engineering interest positively affected their career adaptability.

This study demonstrated that important factors for career planning and development need to be successively considered during the career choice process by linking it to career decision-making self-efficacy, engineering interest and career adaptability (career choice action), in consecutive order.

In the US today there exists two kinds of logisticians, one produced from the business college and the other from the engineering college. Each is usually not aware the other exists; each type is in approximately the same dollar market, and both use the title “logistician”. With the increasing complexity of technology and size of systems today, there exists a growing need for a third kind of logistician. This paper describes the need and offers some suggested reorientation for colleges of business and of engineering to meet this need.