STEM Workforce Development  

STEM Learning and Learning Environments  

How Undergraduate Engineering Students' Conceptualizations of Well-Being in Engineering Programs and Careers Develop and Manifest

Effective Years: 2024-2029

The well-being of engineering students is critical to understand given the mental health crisis that is accelerating on college campuses across the country. Engineering is known for its culture of hardship which negatively impacts the well-being of its students. Engineering students must navigate that culture of hardship as they examine and determine what types of careers they will pursue in the future. Given these connections, this project explores how engineers think about their well-being and careers in tandem. Identifying connections between the two, and how they change, will help researchers and practitioners support the well-being and career development of engineering students, leading to a thriving STEM discipline on and off college campuses. Engineering students who are better able to thrive are more likely to continue into thoughtful and impactful engineering careers that are apt to positively impact the country's competitiveness. This primarily qualitative longitudinal project uses interviews and concept maps to explore how students perceive connections between their well-being and future goals as engineers, and how these conceptualizations grow and change over time. A thematic approach aids the analysis. The work will also leverage a novel machine learning method, network analysis, to identify quantifiable changes in engineering students' concept maps. Given this project's novel contributions to nascent well-being research in engineering education, the project findings will lay important groundwork for future studies on student well-being. Researchers and practitioners can use the work to improve the concurrent well-being and career development processes that engineers are hypothesized to engage in as they pursue their degrees. This work supports broader salutogenic discussions surrounding human development and thriving which will lead to greater contributions to the economic and social well-being of people in the United States. This project is supported by NSF's EDU Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.