Session on Engineering Learning Systems International Conference of Research in Engineering Education 1 Exploring the Not-So-Talked-About Undergraduate Pathway: Migrating Into Engineering Krista M. Donaldson and Sheri D. Sheppard Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94107 kmd@stanford.edu, sheppard@stanford.edu Abstract - In researching undergraduate engineering persistence, defined as declaring an engineering major, at a private research university, we had an unexpected finding: students who do not initially express an interest in engineering at admission were migrating into engineering. In fact, over 25 percent of engineering majors who entered the university as freshmen in 2003 had intended to study a non-engineering major. In this paper, we describe the engineering education research being undertaken as part of the Academic Pathways Study that led to our recognition of this group. Our research prompted further question-asking that challenges some of the traditional metaphors used to describe persistence and attrition in undergraduate education. Index Terms – Persistence, Major selection, Hybrid majors, Academic Pathways Study. INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND The pipeline metaphor dominates engineering education literature on the topic of undergraduate student persistence in engineering, particularly related to women and ethnic minority students [1-4]. Undergraduate students who initially express interest in pursuing engineering degrees, but ultimately do not graduate with an engineering degree are considered to have “leaked” from the pipeline. Despite recent questions about the metaphor [5], the general acceptance of this model in the engineering education community has led to a focus on research topics examining students’ motivations for “leaving” engineering. Our work on the Academic Pathways Study (under the umbrella of the National Science Foundation-funded Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education) was shaped by the pipeline metaphor[5], particularly as related to selection of students to include in the study. The Academic Pathways Study (APS) aims to provide a comprehensive account of how people become engineers, providing insight into key questions in engineering education [6]. Of particular interest is to build upon knowledge related to persistence in undergraduate engineering education in the United States. Specific APS goals are: 1. Generating a comprehensive understanding of the work patterns, strategies, and learning trajectories of students as they progress through their engineering education. 2. Exploring how misalignments between university and workplace practices impact preparation and retention in the engineering professions. 3. Describing how participants’ learning and working environments intersect with engineering, how their engineering knowledge changes over time, and the context of those changes. 4. Understanding how engineering learning and educational experience vary across populations and institutions, and identifying significant factors related to gender, ethnic and geographic diversity. Based on these APS goals, the study addresses research questions related to skills, identity, education and workplace 1 , such as: • How do students’ engineering skills and knowledge develop and/or change over time? (Skills) • How do students come to identify themselves as engineers? (Identity) • What do students find difficult and how do they deal with the difficulties they face? (Education) • What skills do early career engineers need as they enter the workplace? (Workplace) The APS has four components as outlined in Table I. The project began in 2003 with the recruitment of 160 freshmen students at four American universities, one of which was Coleman University. (In this paper, we refer to the universities by pseudonyms, including Coleman.) At the time of their admission, all study participants had stated intent to major in an engineering discipline. We refer to the 40 Cohort 1 subjects at Coleman as the “Coleman 40”. Education literature addressing the process of choosing a STEM (science, technology, engineering or mathematics) major tends to focus on attrition: those students who stay in and those who leave engineering. Seymour and Hewitt characterize students as “persisters” (students who stay in SME 2 majors) and “switchers” (those who switch to new majors) [7]. Adelman, who does not agree with the pipeline 1 For the full set of APS research questions, see related publications [6]. 2 Science, math and engineering