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Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with student veterans in the United States pursuing Bachelor's degrees in engineering across four institutions, we present findings relating military leadership and its application to engineering education. Our findings address three themes: (1) how leadership skills are learned, (2) motivation to be a leader, and (3) translation into, and enactment of military leadership skills in, engineering education. The interviews show that leadership skills and experiences acquired in the military play an important role in the academic experiences and success of student veterans in engineering (SVEs). Findings can help inform strategies and programs to encourage more SVEs to translate their leadership skills to an academic setting in an asset-based framework. Providing leadership opportunities for SVEs in the classroom has the potential to increase their engagement in engineering, strengthen their pathways to professional engineering practice, and provide important role models of servant leadership for the other engineering undergraduates who work with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with student veterans in the United States pursuing Bachelor's degrees in engineering across four institutions, we present findings relating military leadership and its application to engineering education. Our findings address three themes: (1) how leadership skills are learned, (2) motivation to be a leader, and (3) translation into, and enactment of military leadership skills in, engineering education. The interviews show that leadership skills and experiences acquired in the military play an important role in the academic experiences and success of student veterans in engineering (SVEs). Findings can help inform strategies and programs to encourage more SVEs to translate their leadership skills to an academic setting in an asset-based framework. Providing leadership opportunities for SVEs in the classroom has the potential to increase their engagement in engineering, strengthen their pathways to professional engineering practice, and provide important role models of servant leadership for the other engineering undergraduates who work with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our multi-method qualitative study examined how educational experiences of first-generation student veterans in engineering (FGSVE) in the United States are shaped by their first-generation, engineering, and military identities. Our study explores the extent to which FGSVEs' first-generation identities are central to the FGSVEs, as compared to their military and engineering identities. We also investigate how these identities are related to one another and whether they influence the FGSVEs' engineering education experiences. Our qualitative data were derived from 15 in-depth interviews of FGSVEs conducted at four institutions in Fall 2016 and Spring 2017. Our case studies of four of these FGSVEs reflect several themes pertaining to identity salience, including: "The military was a bridge beyond first-generation status and into engineering;" "The military provided access to higher education and an engineering career will provide financial security;" "There is a dissonance between my first-generation, engineering, and military identities;" and "The military was both a detour and a necessary pathway into engineering education." The results reveal that the FGSVEs' engineering and military identities were more central to their current experiences in engineering education than their first-generation status. All of these identities, however, were a source of pride in that the FGSVEs felt a sense of accomplishment for serving in the military, pursuing a college degree, and succeeding in a challenging major like engineering. For these students, their military service and engineering pursuits both offered promise for upward mobility. The results have implications for the design and implementation of programs for first-generation students in engineering and for student veterans in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial Engineering (IE) is known for its high participation of women and welcoming culture. This multi-institution longitudinal study of student demographics and educational outcomes in IE affords more detailed insights into disciplinary dynamics by describing the demographics, trajectories, and outcomes of IE students into, out of, and through nine IE programs. This research presents a quantitative perspective of IE student pathways and outcomes disaggregated by race/ethnicity and gender. The study includes 10,994 IE first-time-in-college and transfer students in the USA. Framed using Astin's college impact model, student pathways vary by gender and race/ethnicity and are both an outcome of the environment and an important factor influencing the environment. The outcomes for all populations in IE are notably positive compared to other disciplines. Hispanic and Black engineering students chose IE at higher rates than Asian and White students, resulting in more racial/ethnic diversity than the engineering aggregate. Within each race/ethnicity, women in engineering chose IE at higher rates than men. Hispanic men and women achieved the highest graduation rates. Black, White, and Hispanic women in IE all graduated at higher rates than their male counterparts. More students of all groups except Black men switched or transferred into IE than left. This study complements prior qualitative work leading to a deeper understanding of IE, which is noted as attracting and retaining a diverse student population. Detailed descriptions of IE student pathways and educational outcomes can also guide other disciplines that seek to improve diversity and student success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Probing students' conceptual understanding and misconceptions of key engineering concepts is a rich area of research. Given the importance of modern electronics in today's world, it is essential for many engineers, particularly device designers from electrical engineering, to have a robust conceptual knowledge of how electronic devices work. The P-N junction diode is the building block of more advanced semiconductor devices. This exploratory study investigates the representations that students use to describe the behavior of a P-N junction diode. Participants were 3rd year students enrolled in a required introductory course in semiconductor physics. Each student participated in a one hour individual semi-structured "think-aloud" interview where he/she had to conceptually solve problems related to P-N junction diodes. Although these semiconductor physics courses aim to develop foundational knowledge for future device design engineers; the results of this study suggest that even successful upper division students majoring in electrical engineering may not have a good conceptual grasp of key concepts related to the diode by the end of the course. For example, many could not correctly differentiate between the linear (or resistive) behavior of an N-N junction and the non-linear behavior of a P-N junction diode. Half of the students in this study did not use their previous knowledge including current-voltage (I-V) curves to perform reality checks. The students struggled with both the macro-level behavior of a P-N junction diode and the underlying micro-level phenomena. By investigating the roots of students' challenges, this study supports the need for new teaching approaches to facilitate better conceptual understanding in introductory semiconductor physics courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chemical Engineering (ChE) is one of the engineering disciplines with the highest participation of women. This article describes the experiences of Black and White women in chemical engineering programs that stand out because they attract and retain women at higher rates than peer institutions. We use a mixed-methods approach, quantitatively describing the trajectories of Black and White students at three Selected and seven Other institutions using data from a large, multiinstitution dataset and qualitatively describing the experiences of seven Black and nine White women through focus groups at those Selected institutions that were identified as " pockets of success" for women through the quantitative findings. We find that Black and White students have better outcomes at Selected institutions than at Other institutions; they are more likely to graduate within six years and more likely to remain in ChE. We find through focus groups that women are attracted to their institutions and departments due to institutional reputation and identify six reasons that these women stay in ChE at these institutions: Sisterhood, Real-World Experience, Real-World Examples, Faculty Caring, Sense of Accomplishment, and " I Got This Far." We conclude that institutional reputation is a factor in students choosing the institution but that the elements of reputation are different at the Selected institutions. Persistence in ChE appears to be most highly associated with relatedness. This can manifest through relatedness with other students, faculty who care, and the larger professional community through real-world experiences and examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education aims to instill in students the need for and the practice of lifelong learning. Given its importance, there are surprisingly few instruments to assess this outcome. Two recently developed instruments purport to measure various facets of this outcome in college students. We used the Lifelong Learning Scale (LLS) and the Autonomous Learner Scale (ALS) with engineering students (n = 356) at a large, public university in the western U.S. Analysis of variance was used to assess for differences between subgroups of students. The results from the LLS revealed that Asians self-reported as weaker lifelong learners in comparison to Whites. The results from the ALS showed Asian students self-reporting significantly weaker scores on "independence of learning" and "study habits" in comparison to Whites and Hispanics. Finally, male students held a higher self-belief in "independence of learning" compared with female students. Perhaps most important was the lack of any significant changes in either the LLS or the ALS with the year of study in the engineering curriculum. Inter-instrument comparisons showed good correlations between the factors of each instrument, indicating that the two are largely measuring similar facets of lifelong learning. Given the brevity of these two instruments, we recommend using both together to provide a deeper examination of students' lifelong learning habits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Success in any field depends on a complex interplay among environmental and personal factors. A key set of personal factors for success in academic settings are those associated with self-regulated learners (SRL). Self-regulated learners choose their own goals, select and organize their learning strategies, and self-monitor their effectiveness. Behaviors and attitudes consistent with self-regulated learning also contribute to self-confidence, which may be important for members of underrepresented groups such as women in engineering. This exploratory study, drawing on the concept of"critical mass", examines the relationship between the personal factors that identify a self-regulated learner and the environmental factors related to gender composition of engineering classrooms. Results indicate that a relatively student gender-balanced classroom and gender match between students and their instructors provide for the development of many adaptive SRL behaviors and attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calls for educational reform emphasize the need for students to develop a capacity for lifelong learning. Lifelong learners may be characterized as curious, motivated, reflective, analytical, persistent, flexible, and independent--traits that are critical for success in today's globalized economy. Stakeholders in engineering education recognize that students' development of the capacity for lifelong learning is vital for their success and that instructors play a critical role in influencing such outcomes. However, there is a critical lack of research in this area. This research investigates how instructor choices of active learning pedagogies affect student outcomes related to their development as lifelong learners at four institutions. We measure student self-regulated learning (SRL) in response to a range of active learning pedagogies and suggest that SRL is a proxy for lifelong learning in the context of the formal classroom. We consider the research question 'In what ways do pedagogical choices made by engineering instructors assist students to develop attitudes and behaviors associated with self-regulated learners?' The results of this mixed-method design suggest that students' development as self-regulated learners involves a complex interplay between many factors that are influenced by faculty choices in the course design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lifelong Learning (LLL) is critical for engaged citizens in the modern knowledge economy. The development of such generic or key competencies should be integrated throughout curricula, along with specific competencies in the disciplines such as engineering. This is a common educational goal in higher education in the USA and in Europe inside the Bologna Process. To enhance the capability of students to articulate their lifelong learning competencies, we developed a 'Lifelong Learning Competencies for Engineers' program for senior engineering students. This was presented as a workshop in a senior design course at the University of San Diego. The workshop includes presentations on lifelong learning competencies and specific recommendations for engineers, as well as an active learning exercise that helps students demonstrate their lifelong learning competence developed throughout their undergraduate career. Our mixed-methods evaluation reveals that the students improve their awareness of the importance of LLL at an important time in their lives as they finish their undergraduate academic career and move to the global labor market. Since lifelong learning spans disciplinary and national boundaries, this program could be adopted by other engineer educators and adapted by educators from a variety of fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incorporating writing into the curriculum in a challenge for engineering faculty. Constructivist and knowledge transformation frameworks of how writing helps build knowledge suggest that successful writing experiences in engineering are 'writing to communicate'. Drawing from that literature, the author advocates five guidelines for integrating effective 'writing to communicate' experience into undergraduate engineering courses: authentic investigation, tying the writing to the technical content, an authentic well-defined audience, providing useful practice for an engineering career and not being overly burdensome to the engineering faculty instructor. Specific' examples of activities based on these guidelines, from classroom, homework and laboratory activities in sophomore, junior and senior-level classes serve as suggestions for faculty seeking to creatively incorporate writing throughout the engineering curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering educators may have a sincere desire to enhance student learning but be unsure how to choose from a wide array of pedagogies. The aims of this paper are to: (i) delineate situational factors that influence the risks, benefits and implementation strategies of pedagogical choices and (ii) present a systematic approach to guide educators in choosing an optimal pedagogy. Using engineering design analysis methods, this paper presents a pedagogical assessment tool that accounts for factors related to students, course, instructor and institution. This tool may be useful for designing a course, continuous improvement of curriculum and optimizing allocation of resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Denny Davis and colleagues on the team citizenship of engineering students and another by Jonathan Stolk and colleagues on students' perceptions of self-directed learning experiences in the classroom.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one on the evolution of engineering education in Russia, and another on the association between enrollment in a pre-college engineering course.