2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The global emphasis on technical standards education in undergraduate engineering curriculums continues to capture the attention of academia, government, and industry. However, many engineering educators engaged in undergraduate engineering instruction lack either the resources to create technical standards educational material for insertion into their courses or access to such pre-developed material which they could customize for their courses. As a result, students’ first, primary, and only exposure to technical standards often comes through opportunities external to universities. Examples include internships, volunteer opportunities, conferences, and part- or full-time employment. While industry and government are instrumental in the educational refinement of engineers’ technical standards knowledge, the introduction of technical standards content late in undergraduate students’ educational journey hinders their performance in complementary technical engineering courses and puts them at a disadvantage when entering the workforce. Furthermore, employers do not have time to bring engineering students’ and new hires’ technical standards knowledge up to a capable level, but rather, they aim to expand upon students’ solid foundation of technical standards knowledge. With the hypothesis that a pre-developed technical standards course would be of benefit to engineering educators, a survey was conducted (1) to gauge the current relationship between technical standards education and the engineering profession and (2) to gather feedback on what characteristics of an undergraduate engineering technical standard training program are most desired across professional sectors in the United States nationwide. The survey was distributed across the engineering field to students, academics, industry employees, and government employees through multiple professional organizations and societies. Two hundred and one individuals participated in the survey. The results show that the engineering field agrees that (1) technical standards should be taught in the undergraduate engineering curriculum, (2) professors teaching undergraduate engineering courses have an acceptable knowledge of technical standards, and (3) four-year academic engineering programs do not put sufficient emphasis on teaching technical standards. Additionally, there is concensus that a technical standards course would be beneficial to students, new hires, and new professional engineers, but also to engineers at more experienced levels. Course content was the primary (81.9%) course feature of interest to survey participants with the most desirable topics including technical standards basics (84.1%), practical applications of standards (70.1%), and how to read standards (69.7%).