2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The mental health crisis has been experiencing significant growth among US college students. Compared to the general population, engineering students are more prone to mental health problems like anxiety and depression. Before students begin their career, graduating college students may also experience job-seeking anxiety. In addition, engineering students tend to have more psychological issues due to their lack of help-seeking attitudes in comparison to their peers. Because of challenging conditions and high prevalence of mental disorders and suicide rates in the construction industry, it is essential to promote mental health awareness among students studying Civil, Architecture, and Construction engineering fields. Moreover, improving their abilities to support themselves, their peers, and future coworkers can contribute to the development of a more productive and mentally healthy future engineering workforce, with better communication skills. The purpose of this study is to assess stress levels and stressors of Civil, Architecture, and Construction engineering students as well as identify key mental health skills they need to learn to cope with job-seeking and future workplace challenges. To this end and through a questionnaire survey, this study will evaluate the factors and challenges that impact the mental health of senior engineering students, and the concerns and stressors that entry-level and inexperienced engineers may face in the workplace. After collecting demographic information, two sets of questions were administered to evaluate the participants' stress levels related to job-seeking and future career challenges. These questions were categorized as personal and work-related stressors. Also, this study aims to gather opinions on the necessary skills that should be integrated into a mental health educational program. This will provide insights into the required educational content that should be incorporated into future mental health curricula for engineering students.