Abstract
The future of work will be defined by increased connectivity between technology and people. The engineering workforce is situated at this intersection and needs a broad and ever-evolving system of competencies to address socio-technical issues. Although engineering practice continues to adapt at the human-technology frontier, education has been slower to respond. As a result, there is a purported competency gap between academia and industry. Within engineering education, faculty members play a critical role in the academic preparation and professional formation of students. Thus, it is instructive to consider faculty members’ perspectives on the competencies that define a student’s ability to succeed in the workplace. This study employed a qualitative approach through interviews with 11 engineering faculty members to characterize these perspectives. The findings indicate that faculty members emphasize students’ intra- and interpersonal competencies and their involvement in competency-building activities outside of the classroom. This paper concludes by leveraging the findings into a broader discussion of competencies needed for the future of work and equity and access related to competency-building activities.
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Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the National Science Foundation for supporting this work under grant number [1463802 and 1931371]. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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Polmear, M., Simmons, D.R., Volpe, E., Weisenfeld, D. (2021). Students Who Stand Out: Faculty Perspectives on the Competencies that Define Outstanding Students Entering the Workforce. In: Leitner, C., Ganz, W., Satterfield, D., Bassano, C. (eds) Advances in the Human Side of Service Engineering. AHFE 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 266. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80840-2_40
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