Assessing Undergraduate Engineering Students' Professional Skills

This empirical full research paper looks to gain insight into how often engineering undergraduate students have opportunities to practice professional skills in their undergraduate experiences, depending on the type of program in research institutions. ABET, employers, and many national reports have emphasized the importance of engineering students developing professional skills. Still, these skills are difficult to assess due to their developmental nature, as students need opportunities to practice professional skills in and out of the classroom. A Professional Skills Opportunities (PSO) survey using a 7-point Likert scale covering Shared Leadership, Communication, Problem Solving, and Business and Management was administered to engineering students (n = 536) from various research institutions and a microelectronics workforce development program. The students' responses were analysed to gain insights into the types of professional skills they reported to practice and to compare the different experiences across these programs. Findings indicate that each group of students from research institutions and a workforce development program got ample opportunities to practice professional skills such as Shared Leadership, Communication, and Problem-Solving. Additionally, on average, women showed higher values than men in all categories. These insights are essential as they allow educators and administrators to adjust courses and co-curricular activities to give undergraduate students more opportunities to practice professional skills. Future work can focus on conducting qualitative interviews with students to understand their professional skill formation.