Journal of Engineering Education

Background Evidence exists that some aspects of engineering as a disciplinary culture are problematic for students' mental health and help‐seeking attitude (HSAs). In order to promote positive cultural change, it is critical to further characterize those problematic aspects of engineering culture. Purpose The purpose of this study is to expand on the specific mechanisms through which shared beliefs and values within engineering culture harm students' mental well‐being and how they transform decision making that limits help‐seeking. Design/Method Operationalizing engineering as a disciplinary culture and framed under social identity theory, we conducted a thematic analysis of 60 semi‐structured interviews among engineering undergraduates at two institutions in the continental United States. Results Problem solving and efficiency were a public representation of engineering that participants linked with a preference for solving mental health problems on their own or not at all. Communication and collaboration were highlighted as necessary but not always developed skills due to rampant competition. Such tensions jeopardized students' ability to create and use essential support networks for mental health. The demands of an engineering degree were confirmed as affecting mental health negatively and deterring students' HSAs. Finally, masculinity and Whiteness in engineering were identified as elements influencing poor mental health and HSAs of gender and racial minorities. Conclusions Significant changes in the culture of engineering are necessary to improve HSAs of engineering students. We propose different strategies to start re‐imagining the identified cultural elements in engineering to support students' mental health.

Background Despite the vital function of engineering and computer science (Eng & CS) to innovation and economic development, retention within Eng & CS programs remains a major challenge in the U.S. educational system. Despite extensive research on influential factors of retention, there is a gap in our understanding of how these factors rank in relative importance and their temporal variations. Purpose This study aims to identify and compare the factors and demographic variables that predict retention in Eng & CS programs at two critical timepoints: from the first to the third year, and from the third year to completion within 6 years. Method The study applied random forest analyses to a longitudinal dataset from the nationally representative BPS 12/17 survey. Results High school academic preparation is the most important predictor of both 3‐year and 6‐year retention. Psychological factors are more crucial to retention in the early stages, while a more diverse, practical, career‐oriented set of factors gains importance when it comes to the 6‐year retention period. Conclusions The study advocates for stage‐wise interventions, such as enhanced academic preparation programs and robust support networks in the early stages, and career services and practical support systems as students advance. The findings also highlight the importance of peer support networks and tailored support from institutions.

Background The peer review process plays a vital role in the advancement of engineering educational research because it is largely through this process that the field determines which knowledge claims are considered valid. Unfortunately, peer review processes may reinforce inequities when peer reviewers, as readers, are not reflective about the ways that their own experiences, as situated within power‐laden and racialized sociohistorical contexts, shape how they evaluate manuscripts. Purpose The purpose of this study was to describe the ways in which the authors experienced the same phenomenon—evaluating manuscripts—differently due to our racialized positionalities. Method We reflected on the peer review process while participating in the Journal of Engineering Education's Mentored Review Program. The reviewers met over the course of 1 year to write responses to each other regarding our experiences and the tensions that arose during the process of peer reviewing manuscripts with race and oppression in mind. Results Three central ideas emerged from analysis of our reflective dialogue; namely, situating our “selves” within our review practice, reckoning with the roots of the strain between our personal and professional lives, and taking affirmative actions to enact racial equity in knowledge production. Conclusions This duoethnography calls for individual change among reviewers, as they seek to be more informed and introspective, as well as structural changes in standards that shape peer review culture.

Background Engineering students will be responsible for building new technologies that either mitigate or exacerbate future sustainability problems. Engineering educators are thus tasked with educating engineering students on the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors that will make them change makers of the future. Purpose The purpose of this research was to examine the learning opportunity structures that engineering students experience, as well as how students' opportunities to learn about sustainability‐related issues are related to cognitive and behavioral learning outcomes. Methods We surveyed engineering students at a large, public Midwestern university at the beginning and end of an academic year. Using structural equation modeling, this analysis focuses on engineering students' self‐reported opportunities to learn about sustainability‐related issues, as well as their self‐reported learning outcomes. Results We document sociodemographic differences in students' sustainability learning outcomes, including statistically significant sex differences in leadership and activism behaviors among engineering students. Additionally, various opportunities to learn about sustainability appear to be related to different learning outcomes, with implications for faculty pedagogies and learning activities. Finally, the relationship between cocurricular participation in sustainability‐related activities and cognitive and behavioral learning outcomes appears to be mediated by students' opportunities for learning about sustainability. Conclusion Engineering educators must carefully conceptualize the relationship between various opportunities to learn about sustainability and the specific learning outcomes those learning opportunities may foster. Moreover, opportunities to engage in sustainability‐related actions outside of the classroom may enhance students' learning in engineering education.

Background The inquiry into the ultimate purpose of engineering practice and into how engineering students develop a professional identity aligned with it is a matter of great ethical and political importance. Engineering education programs play a key role here by interpellating or inviting students, both in explicit and implicit ways, to adopt particular engineering identities. Purpose We investigated the interpellations to adopt particular professional identities that industrial engineering students in a private university in Bogotá, Colombia, experience during their studies. Research Design This is a qualitative study with four focus groups with fifth and eighth semester students, using rich pictures to stimulate their thinking. Analysis categories depict different professional identities and interpellation mechanisms. Results We identified interpellations to four general professional identities, related to technical excellence, the generation of personal and business economic success, a liberal ethics of professional practice, and social justice. The mechanisms for the first two were more ubiquitous and were mostly structural or operated through local interactions, sometimes as hidden curriculum, probably reflecting the normalization of dominant cultural values. Those for the other two were scarcer and included mostly explicit discursive interpellation mechanisms. Conclusions There are multiple identitarian interpellation mechanisms, some as part of the hidden curriculum in the structural or local interaction planes, which may go unnoticed and silently reinforce normalized dominant engineering identities. It is key to examine and debate these identitarian interpellations among students and faculty. This research also provides conceptual and methodological tools to conduct similar studies in other universities.

Background This study investigates the use of large language models to create adaptive, contextually relevant survey questions, aiming to enhance data quality in educational research without limiting scalability. Purpose We provide step‐by‐step methods to develop a dynamic survey instrument, driven by artificial intelligence (AI), and introduce the Synthetic Question–Response Analysis (SQRA) framework, a methodology designed to help evaluate AI‐generated questions before deployment with human participants. Design We examine the questions generated by our survey instrument, as well as compare AI‐to‐AI, generated through our SQRA framework, with AI‐to‐human interactions. Activity theory provides a theoretical lens to examine the dynamic interactions between AI and participants, highlighting the mutual influence within the survey tool. Results We found that AI‐generated questions were contextually relevant and adaptable, successfully incorporating course‐specific references. However, issues such as redundant phrasing, double‐barreled questions, and jargon affected the clarity of the questions. Although the SQRA framework exhibited limitations in replicating human response variability, its iterative refinement process proved effective in improving question quality, reinforcing the utility of this approach for enhancing AI‐driven surveys. Conclusions While AI‐driven question generation can enhance the scalability and personalization of open‐ended survey prompts, more research is needed to establish best practices for high‐quality educational research. The SQRA framework demonstrated practical utility for prompt refinement and initial validation of AI‐generated survey content, but it is not capable of replicating human responses. We highlight the importance of iterative prompt engineering, ethical considerations, and the need for methodological advancements in the development of trustworthy AI‐driven survey instruments for educational research.

Background Mentoring is an important developmental relationship that can positively impact student growth, specifically, students' capacity to make sense of their own selves through addressing any possible incongruence between their social identities and emerging professional identity as engineers. This need is even more pronounced for students who have one or more identities that are minoritized in the field of engineering. Purpose Although prior literature has reported mentoring to have contributed to students' professional identity development as engineers, we lack an understanding of how multiple developers in students' developmental networks can offer complementary support. To address this gap, we sought to understand how diverse developers in students' networks enabled them to filter stereotypes that make their minoritized social identities incongruent with their evolving engineering identity. Design/Methods We used an idiographic case study methodology and paired interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) with intersectionality to analyze data from 10 undergraduate minoritized engineering students. Results We offer three cases in this paper to illustrate minoritized students experiences at the intersections of their identities and how different developers offered three types of holding behaviors (e.g., empathic acknowledgment/confirmation, enabling perspective/contradiction, containment/continuity) that enabled the student mentees to grow their meaning‐making capacity (from formulaic to foundational) so that they could align their social identities with their emerging professional identity as engineers. Conclusion We conclude the paper with a discussion of both research and practice implications about utilizing diverse developmental networks for growing students' meaning‐making capacities needed for them to better comprehend their multiple identities.

Background Despite the well‐established positive effects of storytelling, narrative modes of thinking have neither been systematically assessed nor widely implemented in engineering education. Purpose Recently, the idea of story‐driven learning (SDL) as pedagogy has been applied in an engineering department at a public university. Our research question was: “How are students, as a result of story‐driven learning, changing in regard to both their self‐reported (1) entrepreneurial mindset, self‐concept clarity, and sense of narrative identity and (2) the ways in which they tell the stories of their lives?” Design We collected data from 60 students and compared the results from (1) students currently enrolled in “The Art of Telling Your Story” course and (2) students who had never taken the course. At the beginning and end of the semester, students completed self‐report measures (i.e., self‐concept clarity, awareness of narrative identity, entrepreneurial mindset) and two narrative prompts. The stories were then coded for six narrative themes: entrepreneurial mindset, redemption, contamination, agency, self‐concept clarity, autobiographical reasoning. Results Students in the class experienced an increase in agency and entrepreneurial mindset. Moreover, when directly compared with students not in the course, students in the course experienced an increase in autobiographical reasoning, awareness of narrative identity, and maintained their increase in entrepreneurial mindset. Conclusions These results showcase the potency of storytelling interventions, as well as highlighting—for the first time—their potential for influencing the development of entrepreneurially minded engineers.

Background Engineering requires new solutions to improve undergraduate performance outcomes, including course grades and continued enrollment in engineering pathways. Belonging and engineering role identity have long been associated with successful outcomes in engineering, including academic success, retention, and well‐being. Purpose We measure the relationships between belonging and role identity at the beginning of a first‐year engineering course with course grade and continued enrollment in engineering courses. We test the effect of an ecological belonging intervention on student belonging, course grade, and persistence. Method Students ( n = 834) reported their sense of belonging in engineering, cross‐racial experiences, engineering performance/competence, interest in engineering, and engineering recognition before and after an in‐class intervention to improve classroom belonging ecology. Through a series of longitudinal multigroup path analyses, a form of structural equation modeling, we tested the predictive relationships of the measured constructs with engineering identity and investigated differences in these relationships by student gender and race/ethnicity. Findings The proposed model predicts course grades and continued enrollment, providing insight into the potential for interventions to support first‐year engineering students. Group analysis results demonstrate the difference in the function of these psychosocial measures for women and Black, Latino/a/x, and Indigenous (BLI) students, providing insights into the potential importance of sociocultural interventions within engineering classrooms to improve the engineering climate, engagement, and retention of students. Implications The results highlight the need for more specific, nuanced theoretical investigations of how marginalized students experience the engineering environment and develop social belonging and engineering role identity.

Background Students' identification with engineering is intertwined culturally with being smart. Broadly, engineering students are often considered to be smart by others and by themselves, and these beliefs about smartness—what it is and who has enough of it to be an engineer—are a fundamental and limiting aspect of students' experiences. Purpose The purpose of this study was to explore how undergraduate engineering students describe themselves as smart enough to be engineers. We aimed to develop rich descriptions of the complex ways they articulate their identities as smart before coming to college and during the first two years of their undergraduate degrees. Design/Method We collected data through a series of interviews with 25 participants. We iteratively and collaboratively analyzed the data to determine the predominant ways the participants articulated their identities as smart enough to be engineers. We generated a qualitative data display to check for patterns related to pathways into engineering programs and privileged social identities. Results We found that engineering students have three different ways to articulate that they are smart enough to be engineers: (1) they have innate abilities, (2) they are hardworking and dedicated to learning, and (3) they have skills and experience related to engineering. Additionally, we provide qualitative evidence that the innate abilities articulation relates to privilege. Discussion/Conclusion The study participants engaged in identity work that produced the three articulations. As engineering educators, we need to take responsibility for the ways in which our participation in the cultural practice of smartness reproduces inequity.

Background and Aim There have been significant higher education curriculum reform initiatives over the past 30 years across different global regions in response to a range of drivers such as employability, global citizenship, and sustainability. In professions such as engineering, a key focus has been on holistic graduate attribute development for scarce skills needs in increasingly complex socio‐technical sectors. This paper sets out to explore the drivers of engineering curriculum reform in higher education institutions (HEIs) in a Global South context. Design/Method Drawing on semi‐structured, recorded focus group interviews with 28 program coordinators and academics across 15 of the 16 HEIs offering engineering qualifications in South Africa, the research team set out to determine what kinds of curriculum reform initiatives were being undertaken, who was responsible for initiating, implementing, and supporting these initiatives, and what were perceived to be challenges and successes. The emergent drivers were framed in relation to curriculum responsiveness theory analyzed using an overarching “critical realist” framework with structure, culture, and agency dimensions that systemically influence how curriculum reform is constrained or enabled. Results The findings reveal both internal and external drivers that align with economic, institutional, and pedagogical responsiveness. The dominance of some levers over others is influenced by the underlying structural and cultural dimensions that affect agency. While some institutions show agency in curriculum reform, the dominant structure–culture dynamic often constrains innovation and maintains the status quo. Conclusion The structure–culture–agency relationships that are presented highlight factors that constrain or enable curriculum reform, which has implications for practice and policy. To drive meaningful and sustainable reform, policymakers must develop frameworks that incentivize not only compliance with accreditation standards but also pedagogical innovation and social responsiveness, ensuring that curriculum transformation aligns with both economic demands and societal needs.

Background Collaboration—including coordination, communication, and teamwork—is crucial to engineering practice. However, engineering students are often perceived as lacking key collaboration skills at the time of graduation. Purpose We used structuration theory to explore how differences between students and practitioners' collaboration beliefs related to differences between academic and professional collaboration contexts. We sought to demonstrate that the perceived collaboration “skill gap” in engineering students can be explained by differences between academic and professional social systems. Methods We conducted interviews with 30 undergraduate engineering students and 28 practicing engineers, and from these interviews produced 98 discrete narratives of participants' collaboration experiences. We thematically analyzed these 98 collaboration narratives to identify student and practitioner collaboration beliefs. We further coded four narratives for organizational enablements and constraints to show how differences in student and practitioner collaboration beliefs related to differences in organizational collaboration “rules.” Findings Students described boosting productivity through teamwork and limiting social bonding with teammates. These beliefs represented reasonable approaches to collaboration given observed organizational constraints including short project durations, single‐discipline teams, and an inability to choose teammates. Practitioner beliefs about the importance of cross‐functional collaboration and building collaborator rapport across projects reflected organizational enablements that facilitated collaborations with these qualities. Conclusions Students' beliefs about appropriate academic collaboration practices did not translate to professional contexts. Instructors can prepare students for work by strategically easing collaboration constraints to allow for more diverse collaboration experiences. Work mentors should explain the collaboration expectations of their workplaces to facilitate new hire socialization.

Background Although most engineering colleges offer a variety of co‐curricular and extracurricular activities to enrich students' sense of belonging to the college, existing literature has not fully captured whether and how the various activities serve to support students' sense of belonging and predict student outcomes. Purpose We investigated how engineering students perceive diverse activities as supports for their sense of belonging, and how these perceptions predict their engineering motivation, persistence, and achievement depending on their year in college. Method Five thousand eleven first‐ to fourth‐year students from the College of Engineering of a four‐year, public university participated in a longitudinal, multicohort study. They reported their engineering‐related motivation, persistence, and perceptions about the extent to which four types of activities (i.e., university programs; college programs; co‐ops/internships and course teamwork; student organizations and research) contributed to their sense of belonging (i.e., served as supports for belonging). Multigroup structural equation modeling was conducted to examine the relations among supports for belonging and academic outcomes, with a focus on the variation depending on students' year in college. Results Co‐ops/internships and teamwork in courses were significant predictors of adaptive academic outcomes for all students regardless of their college year. This relation was stronger among third‐ and fourth‐year students than among first‐ and second‐year students. For first‐year students, enhanced belonging supported by university programs significantly contributed to their motivation and identity. Conclusions Institutional efforts to enhance students' sense of belonging should be tailored to meet the evolving needs of students as they advance through their college experience.

Background In the United States, there is increased demand to expand the engineering workforce. Many military veterans have received technical training that can be leveraged in engineering. Their pursuit of engineering degrees has great potential to expand and diversify the engineering workforce. Purpose This study examines the pathways of US military veterans from high school graduation through undergraduate engineering education and explores the resources they use to navigate their transition into engineering study. Methods Applying Schlossberg's transition model, this multimethod study uses semi‐structured interviews of 28 student veterans in engineering (SVEs) across four universities. Illustrative examples integrate thematic analyses of interview data and path analysis of key event timeline data. Results Path diagrams illustrate that SVEs embark on diverse pathways and engage in multiple transitions across high school graduation, military training, and undergraduate engineering education. Military experiences, especially engineering‐related work, and encouragement from military supervisors, other veterans, and family contribute to SVEs' pursuit of engineering degrees. SVEs also leverage a combination of supports and strategies in their transition to engineering education. Conclusions Findings highlight that educational pathways into engineering can be complex and that serving in the military can be a pathway to engineering success, challenging the idea that engineering students must follow a linear path. Key stakeholders (administrators, faculty, and student services professionals) can apply these findings to recruit and retain SVEs, and other students with complex pathways, in engineering. Research findings reveal areas for promoting student veterans' participation in engineering and developing strategies to support SVE success.

Background Visual representations are pervasive in electrical engineering instruction in various instructional settings. Further, electrical engineering instruction often requires students to extend simple visual representations to learn about more complex visualization in subsequent instruction. Yet, students often struggle to understand visualizations. An open question is whether supporting students' understanding of visual representations enhances their subsequent learning. We investigate this question in both individual and collaborative learning settings. Purpose We investigated the impact of support for students' understanding of simple visual representations on students' learning of subsequently presented complex visual representations. Further, we investigated whether students' level of mental rotation skills moderates the impact of such instructional support. Method Two experiments tested the impact of instructional support for visual representations in an individual or a collaborative learning setting. Students were randomly assigned to receive different versions of instructional support, or none. Results Study 1 was conducted in an individual learning setting. While students with high mental rotation skills benefited from the instructional support, students with low mental rotation skills did not benefit. Study 2 was conducted in a collaborative learning setting. Here, all students benefited equally from the support. Conclusions Our findings suggest that instructional support for simple visual representations can enhance students' subsequent learning with complex visual representations. Further, our findings suggest that a collaborative learning setting may be particularly beneficial to students with low mental rotation skills. This study contributes to an understanding of instructional environments that can improve learning with visual representations in engineering education.

Background Diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in higher education are increasingly recognizing the importance of understanding students' lived experience. More research is needed to deeply and contextually uncover voices, meanings, and stories that are enveloped within the complex realities of Hispanic women in engineering. Purpose While the Latiné/x/a/o, Hispanic women population is one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States, they receive only 3% of engineering undergraduate degrees. This research explored how self‐identified Hispanic women experienced engagement outside of class. Design/Method This exploratory qualitative research employed narrative inquiry design using a paradigmatic analysis method. We conducted two in‐depth interviews with five undergraduate engineering students who self‐identified as international Hispanic women. Findings By examining the narratives through a novel synthesis of a socio‐ecological framework of engagement and community cultural wealth, we identified three themes that tell the story of students' experiences outside of class: (i) Perceived benefits and level of involvement informed student dispositions and aspirational capital in counterspaces; (ii) Linguistic capital served as the entry point for receiving social and navigational capital; and (iii) Cultural and linguistic similarities provide a counterspace where students gained the drive, disposition, and aspiration to persist in engineering. Conclusions The findings identified the capital that drove students to engage outside of the classroom and capital they gained in return. Out‐of‐class activities provided a counterspace for Hispanic women in engineering that supported their sense of belonging, ability to navigate engineering, and professional development. Based on these findings, we provide recommendations for engineering education and research.

Background Engineering students experience high levels of distress and low rates of mental health treatment seeking, yet there is a gap in knowledge around how this compares with that of students in other fields of study. Given the influence of social identity (e.g., gender identity, race/ethnicity) on mental health and treatment seeking, it is important to account for sociodemographic variation across fields when performing such comparisons. Purpose This study used Andersen's Behavioral Model to compare mental health distress and treatment use between students in engineering and other fields while controlling for sociodemographic factors. Methods Survey data came from the 2021–2022 Healthy Minds Study (N > 50,000). Measures related to mental health, treatment use, and diagnosis were examined. Descriptive statistics were determined for each field of study, and regression analyses were used to assess differences across fields while accounting for covariates. Results Compared to students from other fields, engineering students were among the least likely to report symptoms of depression and anxiety. However, 44.4% of undergraduate engineering students screened positive for current depression and/or anxiety. Of those who screened positive, only 40.4% had received therapy/counseling in the past year. Further, they were the least likely to have received a depression or anxiety diagnosis when compared to students from other fields. Conclusion When controlling for sociodemographic factors, undergraduate engineering students reported lower rates of mental health distress and treatment use compared to students in other fields. This study highlights the need for considering engineering culture in the interpretation of student mental health and treatment.

Background Engineering education and other discipline‐based education researchers may motivate their work with claims that STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) norms and culture are unique, thus requiring focused study. As research on disabled students gains momentum in engineering education, it is important to understand differences that limit generalizability of prior work in other disciplines to STEM. Purpose What do studies document as differences between STEM and non‐STEM settings that impact disabled undergraduates, and to what extent are these studies using asset‐based perspectives of disability? Scope/Method This systematic review identified US studies that compared STEM to non‐STEM disciplines in regards to disabled undergraduate students. The qualifying studies, published during 1979–2023, comprise 22 journal articles and 15 doctoral or master's theses. Most studies used quantitative methods (n = 28). Results Of the 37 qualifying studies, 20 instructor studies provided moderate evidence that STEM instructors are less willing or less knowledgeable about how to support disabled students through accommodations or course design. We highlight a small number of student studies identifying assets of disabled students, although most took a deficit view by comparing disabled student experiences to an able‐bodied norm. Few studies emphasized the structural characteristics of STEM such as culture and educational practices that contribute to socially constructing disability by acting as barriers that disable students. Conclusions More work is needed to examine instructor actions beyond their intentions and attitudes toward disabled students. Critical and asset‐based perspectives are needed in future study designs that center disability to uncover systemic barriers and identify assets disabled students bring to STEM.

Background To address complex challenges of modern society, engineering education needs to help students develop sociotechnical perspectives of engineering. Research has documented efforts to incorporate sociotechnical thinking into undergraduate engineering education, but those perspectives must often compete with more dominant technocentric views. Research is needed to investigate how and why students do or do not adopt sociotechnical views. Purpose/Hypothesis(es) In this study, we investigated the extent to which students' views of engineering changed in the context of an Engineering Summer Bridge (ESB) program, in which engineering is promoted as a socially engaged practice. Design/Method We used a multiple case study methodology to investigate patterns across 24 ESB participants. We gathered multiple sources of data to investigate changes in participants' thinking, including pre/post surveys, weekly reflections during ESB, and follow‐up participant interviews. We grouped participants based on the extent to which they added socially engaged perspectives to their perceptions of engineering. We then identified variables associated with those groupings. Results Approximately one‐third of participants added socially engaged perspectives to their views of engineering. These students tended to have fewer prior engineering experiences prior to ESB and often self‐identified as having limited prior knowledge of engineering. They were also more likely to hold motivations and interests oriented toward the public good. Conclusions Our study identifies variables that potentially support and inhibit students' development of socially engaged views of engineering. It highlights the importance of early learning experiences and suggests that technocentric perspectives can be well established even before students begin their undergraduate programs.

Background Given high attrition rates and lack of interest in faculty careers, it is crucial to understand how doctoral engineering students conceptualize academia and academic careers. Purpose/Hypothesis This study aims to characterize the development of academic disenchantment among engineering students who have considered departure from their doctoral programs. Schema theory was used to explore how students develop and evolve in their conceptualizations of academia through their lived experiences. Design/Method Data were collected from 42 graduate students from research‐intensive universities across the United States who participated in qualitative, semi‐structured interviews investigating expectations for graduate school, experiences, attrition and persistence considerations, and career trajectories. The transcripts were thematically analyzed through open and axial coding to understand how students constructed their schemas of the academy. Findings Experiences and quotations of four participants are presented to describe the results of the transcripts. Participants' misaligned expectations of their graduate program's values and practices, coupled with a lack of agency and support, led them to see their graduate programs as antagonistic to their short‐ and long‐term career success. Even for students who may likely persist through to PhD degree completion, the development of disenchantment dissuades students—even those who once desired a faculty career—from interest in the academy. Conclusions By understanding how disenchantment arose in our participants' experiences, we better understand how to equip students with resources that will help them navigate graduate programs. This research advances the literature by identifying underutilized opportunities to prepare students to cope with the challenges of engineering doctoral education.

Background As more universities seek to offer international experiences for engineering students, it is important to design such programs to effectively support student learning abroad. Previous research on study abroad has focused on a limited number of outcomes and therefore failed to consider the diversity of experiences students may have in the same program and the range of learning outcomes they may develop while abroad. Purpose We explored student experiences across multiple types of engineering study abroad programs to address the research question: How do the types of significant experiences students highlighted from their time abroad differ based on student and/or program characteristics? Method We interviewed 79 engineering students after completing their study abroad programs using the critical incident technique to identify significant experiences from their time abroad. We used multiple rounds of coding to characterize the critical incidents identified by students and then compared the frequency of our main themes across student and program characteristics. Results We found that student experiences differed across both personal and program characteristics, in particular students' prior travel experiences, program duration, and the destination's cultural distance from the United States. Conclusions Our findings can inform the design of global engineering programs, which should consider the impact of program characteristics on student experiences and employ a variety of pedagogies to accommodate differences in students' needs and prior experiences. We also argue that it is important to consider students' experiences more holistically in research and evaluation of global engineering programs.

Background The engineering profession has changed dramatically, and engineers today must work in diverse (multidisciplinary or international) groups. As such, practice in diverse student groupwork can be beneficial to develop all‐round skillsets. However, simply mixing students with different backgrounds into one group is not always effective in engineering group projects. Purpose This study investigates how a diverse student group composition is related to group processes and, subsequently, group output, and also to see whether students' positive diversity beliefs influence the relation between diverse student group composition and group processes. Method Multilevel analyses were performed on 124 groups to analyze associations between diversity in group compositions (nationality and gender diversity), group processes (task elaboration, shared understanding of the task, and trust in the group), and group outcomes (performance and satisfaction), at both the individual and group level. Positive diversity beliefs were included as moderators. Results We found negative group‐level associations between nationality diversity and shared understanding of the task and trust in the group. On the individual level, we found students' relative positive diversity beliefs to be positively associated with their perceptions of all group processes, which, in turn, were positively associated with perceived group performance and satisfaction. Conclusions A student group with different nationalities may encounter challenges in group processes, although we did not find direct implications for group performance and group‐level satisfaction. Individual student perceptions of group processes were more clearly associated with outcomes than group‐level aggregates. To facilitate diverse student groupwork, educators need to pay attention to and enhance students' awareness of the value of working in a diverse group.