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Background: Out-of-school time (OST) science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programming has positive impacts for youth, and the importance of engineering design activities and principles within STEM programming is well-supported by research. Including subject matter experts (SMEs) in these programs enriches the experience of youth participants. Public libraries are widely accessible to the public, and their role in the OST arena is expanding. Library staff can boost the quality of STEM learning experiences by partnering with SMEs. Purpose: Subject matter experts (SME) contribute more than just their expertise. Between 2018 and 2019, a group of diverse professional engineers and librarians co-facilitated engineering activities at six U.S. libraries serving traditionally underserved populations. This study investigates the alignment in active learning preferences between youth, library staff, and professional engineer volunteers. Method: The study's design implemented the Framework for the Observation and Categorization of Instructional Strategies (FOCIS), which identifies seven different types of learning activities: collaborating, competing, performing, discovering, making, teaching, and caretaking. The FOCIS helped researchers evaluate the learning activity preferences of youth participants, engineers, and librarians. Results: The analysis showed that the learning activity preferences of youth and engineers were much more closely aligned than those of librarians. Conclusions: Alignment between youth-program participants and SME program facilitators has the potential to enrich the program experience and foster active engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Engineers are professionally obligated to protect the safety and well‐being of the public impacted by the technologies they design and maintain. In an increasingly complex sociotechnical world, engineering educators and professional institutions have a duty to train engineers in these responsibilities. Purpose/Hypothesis: This article asks, where are engineers trained in their public welfare responsibilities, and how effective is this training? We argue that engineers trained in public welfare responsibilities, especially within engineering education, will demonstrate greater understanding of their duty to recognize and respond to public welfare concerns. We expect training in formal engineering classes to be more broadly impactful than training in contexts like work or professional societies. Data/Methods: We analyze unique survey data from a representative sample of US practicing engineers using descriptive and regression techniques. Results: Consistent with expectations, engineers who received public welfare responsibility training in engineering classes are more likely than other engineers to understand their responsibilities to protect public health and safety and problem‐solve collectively, to recognize the importance of social consequences and ethical responsibilities in their own jobs, to have noticed ethical issues in their workplace, and to have taken action about an issue that concerned them. Training through other parts of college, workplaces, or professional societies has comparatively little impact. Concerningly, nearly a third of engineers reported never being trained in public welfare responsibilities. Conclusion: These results suggest that training in engineering education can shape engineers' long‐term understanding of their public welfare responsibilities. They underscore the need for these responsibilities to be taught as a core, non‐negotiable part of engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The curriculum challenges presented to first-year engineering instructors at a Southwestern institution in the United States as well as the need to highlight the process of theory-building in engineering education motivated a team to conduct an umbrella research project related to the enculturation of engineering students. This umbrella project has generated six conference papers and this manuscript constitutes the last of the series focusing on the changes that students experience and perceive over time, once exposed to the first-year engineering curriculum, and how these changes inform a theory of enculturation. The research questions investigated how students perceive their enculturation, once they have progressed in their engineering programs, and how the results constitute a theory of enculturation. Eight sophomore and junior level engineering students of diverse backgrounds participated in semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Their perceptions were analyzed via quantitative and qualitative strategies of inquiry (i.e. content analysis and open coding) and the resulting themes and associated frequencies were examined to constitute a theory. Informed by prior enculturation studies, this research identified eight dimensions and five themes, thirteen units in total. These thirteen units were organized in extrinsic and intrinsic factors that characterize a theory of enculturation to engineering during the first-year experience and hypothesized on how these units operate to produce professional engineers. This theory of enculturation emphasizes the role of the support systems of schools of engineering which in turn provides a framework that instructors and administrators can utilize when planning or modifying these support systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the lead society for environmental engineering and similarly named programs accredited by ABET (formerly the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology, Inc.), the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientist (the Academy) welcomes a conversation on the training and credentialing of environmental engineers. Faculty of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (the Association) and the Environmental Engineering Division of the American Society for Engineering Education (the Society) have a vested interest in this conversation. We encourage you to engage in this conversation and contribute your views as we refresh our shared definition of the environmental engineering body of knowledge and explore how our self-regulating process of licensure and credentialing may best protect the safety, health, and welfare of the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]