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Background Sustainability is increasingly a vital consideration for engineers. Improved understanding of how attention to sustainability influences student major and career choice could inform efforts to broaden participation in engineering. Purpose Two related questions guided our research. How do career outcome expectations related to sustainability predict the choice of an engineering career? Which broader sustainability-related outcomes do students perceive as related to engineering? To address both questions, we compared effects for engineering and nonengineering students while controlling for various confounding variables. Design/Method We conducted a survey to collect responses about sustainability and other variables of interest from a national sample of college students in introductory English classes. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlational analysis. Results Students who hope to address certain sustainability issues such as energy, climate change, environmental degradation, and water supply are more likely to pursue engineering. Those who hope to address other sustainability issues such as opportunities for women and minorities, poverty, and disease are less likely to do so. Students hoping to address sustainability-related outcome expectations with obvious human relevance are less likely to pursue engineering. Yet those students who perceive 'improving quality of life' and 'saving lives' as associated with engineering are more likely to pursue the profession. Conclusions Our results suggest that showing students the connection between certain sustainability issues and engineering careers could help those striving to increase and diversify participation in engineering. A broader range of engineers would likely bring new ideas and ways of thinking to engineering for sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: The current study finds that female-identified students report stronger associations between “helping others” and interest in bioengineering/biomedical engineering than non-females, while they report less interest in electrical and computer engineering overall, with similar associations to factors such as “inventing/designing things” than non-females. Background: While women have made gains in STEM, electrical and computer engineering programs award 13% of their Bachelor’s degrees to women while bioengineering/biomedical engineering programs award over 40%. Prior work suggests that women’s persistent under-representation in electrical and computer engingeering may be due to them being drawn into other disciplines. Women persist in engineering at similar rates as men, so a better understanding of early college attitudes is needed. Research Questions: 1) How are career outcome expectations associated to electrical engineering, computer engineering, and bioengineering/biomedical engineering? 2) What are females’ interests in electrical engineering, computer engineering, and bioengineering/biomedical engineering? 3) Are outcome expectations and major interests distinct for female-identified students? Methodology: Regression analyses were conducted on multiply-imputed data of introductory engineering students at four public universities in the U.S. Findings: Students associate inventing/designing things and “developing new knowledge and skills” to electrical engineering, and associate inventing/designing things and “working with people” (negative) to computer engineering. Students associate helping others and “supervising others” (negative) to bioengineering/biomedical engineering. Female-identified students are less interested in electrical and computer engineering, more interested in bioengineering/biomedical engineering, and associate helping others to bioengineering/biomedical engineering more strongly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on peers' interest in high school biology, chemistry, and physics classes on students' STEM-related career intentions and course achievement in the U.S. Students perceive a high level of interest for the subject matter from their classmates in an interest quorum. Students are more likely to choose STEM careers who experience such an interest quorum.