Abstract
Early in 2017, a team of engineering technology practitioners along with others interested in the state of engineering technology published a report entitled “Engineering Technology Education in the United States.” This report garnered a list of recommendations and things that needed to be investigated to further our understanding of this student population; specifically focusing on the students and how they relate to other students studying both similar and different material. A team of like-minded engineering technology education researchers have been working together to ascertain the answers to the findings. They prepared two surveys, obtained institutional approval, and distributed it throughout the United States. One survey was designed to query undergraduate students and the other student graduates or those who have already graduated. This paper is intended to provide a high-level review of what was found in the graduate survey, while future journal publications will take a deeper look into some of the prevailing issues identified by the report. The survey was designed to address issues described in the report as “loose coupling” of completed degrees and employment. In this case, we are examining the demographics of graduates and potential influences of their career and academic choices. Later work will focus more on salaries and other factors that influence engineering technology graduates and their lives post-graduation. Responding graduates are closely aligned to the graduate demographic with nearly 57% male and nearly 42% female. Since STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) graduates were polled, the number is expected to be closer to par, representing the general graduate population. Most students were white, followed by Hispanic and Asian; other races are far fewer in number. Nearly 17% of the graduates began their studies in a two-year institution, and the balance at a 4-year institution. Thirty-three percent of the respondents stated they had a graduate degree. This paper will focus on the engineering technology graduate subset of the STEAM graduate survey respondents.
Keywords
Graduate, matriculation, retention, graduation, engineering technology
Date of this Version
6-2019
DOI
10.18260/1-2--32739
Published in:
Lucietto, A. M., & Dell, E., & Cooney, E. M., & Russell, L. A., & Schott, E. (2019, June), Engineering Technology Graduates: A Survey of Demographics and Mentoring Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--32739
Link to original published article:
https://peer.asee.org/32739
Comments
© 2019 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference.