2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Humanitarian Engineering (HE) programs, aimed at training engineers to address infrastructure and public service inequality, have gained popularity and are drawing diverse and passionate students, including those from historically underrepresented minority groups in STEM. However, there is a lack of comprehensive data on how these students' career aspirations and capabilities evolve within HE programs. Furthermore, the HE field is undergoing a transformation, grappling with its colonial legacy, which has contributed to perpetuating disparities through infrastructure and environmental racism and the need for decolonization. This research explores how these changes influence students enrolled in HE programs. Specifically, we collect and analyze data from longitudinal interviews and surveys with 47 graduate students enrolled in seven HE graduate programs in the US. Through this research, we explore and characterize HE students’ evolving (1) self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and career interests in the HE sector; (2) social justice activism, including their critiquing of social oppression and motivation for social justice; and (3) self-efficacy in social justice activism, tying changes to learning experiences throughout the program. Further, we (4) examine how the cultural capital of marginalized students adds value to HE education and the support provided to and barriers encountered by these students in their programs. As a result, this study longitudinally documents how social justice calls influence pedagogy and student growth, pushing students to challenge colonial narratives and engage in equity-oriented changes. Overall, this research contributes to the understanding of how HE students navigate their evolving career aspirations, activism, and the decolonization of the HE field.