2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Changing the Conversation Surrounding Students’ Professional Skills: Making the Case for the Importance of Professional Skills, and More Inclusive Language

Presented at College Industry Partnerships Division (CIP) Technical Session 1

The engineering education community has integrated non-technical professional skills (e.g., communication, leadership, lifelong learning, teamwork) into the curriculum through direct curricular activities and, more importantly, through co-curricular and extracurricular activities where students get real experiences practicing and honing their non-technical professional skills. However, according to employers, gaps persist in students’ perceived professional skills. The purpose of this paper is to assist in changing the conversation about students’ professional skills by reviewing the history of how students’ professional skills are developed and making the case for the importance of professional skills. This study utilized bibliometric and content analysis tools to search for and identify articles of interest related to how the language of students’ professional skills has changed over the past 20 years across a wide range of databases and search terms. The bibliometric and content analysis showed that the predominant term for professional skills in the past 20 years has been “soft skills,” which connotes that professional skills are somehow less important than technical skills. The key takeaway from this paper is that the language around students’ professional skills needs to change. Additionally, Engineering educators need to focus on encouraging and providing more opportunities outside of the classroom for students to develop their professional skills in real-world contexts that are more realistic for what students will see in their work life. Industry practitioners can help immensely by adopting more inclusive language toward professional skills and providing internship opportunities to incorporate these skills for students to gain real-world experience.

Authors

Dr. Eric Holloway http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0343-1709 Purdue University, West Lafayette [biography]

Dr. Eric Holloway currently serves as the Sr. Director of Industry Research in the College of Engineering at Purdue, where he focuses on industry research in the College of Engineering. He also holds a courtesy faculty appointment in the School of Engineering Education and Mechanical Engineering.
Dr. Jennifer S. Linvill Purdue University, West Lafayette [biography]

Dr. Jennifer S. Linvill is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Technology Leadership & Innovation at Purdue University. Her research examines organizational communication, particularly in the contexts of destructive workplace behaviors, leadership, teams, and workforce development. Notably, Dr. Linvill is a Co-Principal Investigator on the SCalable Asymmetric Lifestyle Engagement (SCALE) production proposal, funded by the Department of Defense, with colleagues in Purdue’s College of Engineering. The project focuses on developing a scalable and sustainable workforce development program for microelectronics that will serve as a model for other workforce development efforts (i.e., artificial intelligence, hypersonics). In this role, she examines organizational and leadership issues that span across an ecosystem of partners within the following areas: defense, government, industry, community colleges, and universities. Dr. Linvill’s research is strategically designed to address organizational challenges and create novel solutions to those challenges. Her work has been presented at national and international conferences and has been published in The Routledge Handbook of Communication and Bullying and in Communication, relationships, and practices in virtual work (IGI Global). Dr. Linvill applies an organizational communication lens to her classes on Business Principles, Ethics, Negotiation and Decision Making, Organizational Behavior, and Organizational Leadership, and to Awareness Trainings related to destructive workplace behaviors presented at local high schools. Dr. Linvill is a Member of the Advisory Committee on Equity for the Office of the Vice President for Ethics and Compliance at Purdue University. She has also served as a Mentor for the USAID Liberia Strategic Analysis Program, mentoring an early-career Liberian woman on leadership and communication skills, professional development, and networking.

Download paper (977 KB)

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session