From October 2021 to July 2022, I worked as a research assistant as a contributor to an NSF grant in engineering education research. I worked closely with Dr. Andrew Olewnik in my research, where I identified the engineering competencies valued most in industry, and then compared them to those being promoted in introductory aerospace engineering course syllabi. I gained valuable experience using Excel and NVivo software to analyze and present data. In March 2023, I was selected to present my work at an ASEE (American Society of Engineering Education) conference via poster presentation. 

Under ABET accreditation requirements, faculty must envision, collectively articulate, and prioritize the competencies that students should gain from their educational program to prepare for life and their career paths. The goal of this research was to first identify the engineering competencies most valued by employers in industry, and to compare them to the competencies being emphasized in introductory aerospace engineering courses. This comparison provides an opportunity to examine and critique the presence of valuable core items that an ABET accredited program is supposed to ensure. As a student who has attended an introductory aerospace course during my time in university, my hope is that providing this critical analysis will help inform more beneficial practices in engineering education.

In discerning between outstanding and ordinary engineer performance, the top tier competencies were found to be communicate effectively, coordinate efforts, and devise process. Others denoted as high importance and core engineering competencies were interpret data, take initiative, think creatively, solve problems, and make decisions. In order to identify the competencies promoted in introductory aerospace engineering courses, I obtained syllabi from 16 introductory aerospace courses from various ABET accredited aerospace engineering programs. NVivo software was used to create a word frequency list which was then used in combination with qualitative coding to categorize the common language being used in describing the topics and intended learning outcomes covered in the course. I used Bloom’s Taxonomy as a lens to categorize the language from the syllabi and determine the skills and engineering competencies being promoted within aerospace engineering courses. Bloom's Taxonomy is a hierarchical framework developed for categorizing educational goals. It contains six major categories representative of the rise from lower-order thinking to higher-order thinking. In such order, they are Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create. I used conceptual content analysis to map the language to these tiers, and then mapped the tiers to their associated engineering competencies. Following the analysis, 46.3% of the skills mentioned in the syllabi learning outcomes were of the Understand tier, a tier which has no connotation with any of the 8 most valuable competencies. Of the 8 competencies, 7 were found to be reflected in the skills promoted, with none of them being a majority component of the skills mentioned in the syllabi, nor of the course learning outcomes. The most emphasized of the 7 competencies was solve problems, accounting for 20.7% of the mentions, followed by communicate effectively and make decisions (10.98%), interpret data (8.53%), devise process and think creatively (7.32%), and coordinate efforts (6.1%).

I found this data to be an accurate representation of my experience in introductory aerospace engineering, where most of my experience was in solving textbook problems, and incorporating some education about ethical decision-making as an engineer. Some potential limitations include the fact that only 16 programs were investigated, and the fact that course syllabi may not provide extensive comprehensive insight into the courses. However, the fact remains, for many first generation college students like myself, college is not just a step of life, it is an investment. With the average federal student loan debt being $37,574 per borrower, and the average private student loan debt averaging $54,921 per borrower, the return on investment has never been more important than right now. If the purpose of ABET accreditation is to promote competent, competitive engineers into industry, then my research suggests that more work needs to be done in the engineering education space.