2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This Work in Progress paper aims to gain insight into the diverse group of engineering students involved in Binghamton University's first-year engineering program so we can better serve them in the future. First-year students enter their college engineering programs with different backgrounds and varying levels of engineering knowledge. The goal of the first-year engineering program at Binghamton University is to equip all students with the same fundamental knowledge they will need to choose an engineering field and to be successful in that field. The first-year program also has a special interest in developing future educators; students who have completed the program can serve as undergraduate course assistants (UCAs) where they help students during their first-year engineering classes and have opportunities to develop and teach workshops on additional engineering topics. From an overall perspective, the first-year program appears to be successful at achieving its goals; however, a more detailed analysis of the demographics in the program could elucidate areas in need of improvement. This study investigates two research questions: 1) Is there a significant relationship between the students’ strengths or personality types and the engineering discipline they choose to pursue?; and 2) Is there a certain subset of strengths or personality types that are more drawn to teaching? To study this, qualitative data was collected from the students and the teaching faculty involved with the first-year engineering program at Binghamton University resulting in roughly 340 data points. These individuals took the High5 Test (https://high5test.com/) and the Humanmetrics Jung Typology Test (https://www.humanmetrics.com/personality) to assess their strengths and personality type, respectively. The High5 Test consists of 120 questions and provides the students with a list of their top 5 strengths out of 20 possible options. The Jung Typology Test consists of 64 questions and results in a 4-letter personality type as follows: extraverted (E) or introverted (I); sensing (S) or intuition (N); thinking (T) or feeling (F); and judging (J) or perceiving (P). A percentage is also given for each letter to indicate how marginal or extreme a given trait is to one’s personality. Additionally, the students' academic majors and interest in teaching or going into academia were collected. The teaching faculty's responses provide a baseline on the strengths and personality types of individuals who pursued their interest in teaching. The data were tabulated, graphed, and analyzed for interesting trends and anomalies. The preliminary analysis of the first-year engineering teaching faculty showed that the “Coach” strength was shared amongst all faculty and was the most prevalent trait. The High5 Test defines “Coach” as one who enjoys “discovering the potential in other people and supporting their personal growth. They find it hard to accept when this potential is getting wasted.” Additionally, all of the faculty members had personality types with the “N” and “J” traits. Based on these preliminary results, it is hypothesized that there will be a few strengths and personality types that are predominant for each academic major and that the “Coach” strength and the “N” and “J” personality traits will be dominant in the subset of individuals that expressed interest in teaching. The data from this study showed that the engineering program at Binghamton University attracts students with a broad range of strengths and personality types. Future studies can investigate students that end up graduating from each major to determine if those with certain strengths or personality types are more likely to persist in engineering to graduation. Depending on the results of that analysis, institutions and departments could consider reassessing their engineering programs to retain the diverse group of students that they initially attract. Additionally, the data showed a high prevalence of “Motivating” strengths in students that indicated they were definitely interested in teaching in the future, which was the one strength domain that was less prevalent in engineering majors as a whole. Future studies could look at the strengths of students that become undergraduate course assistants and current engineering educators to determine if that trend continues from interest level to career level. Data will continue to be collected from first-year engineering students in the future to see if more drastic trends develop with a larger dataset and alternate analyses could be explored.