2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Navigating the Theory-to-Practice Gap: Insights from a Process Safety Education Pilot Study

Presented at Safety and Sustainability in the ChE Classroom

As engineering graduates transition from university to industry, they often encounter a two-year induction period known as the Theory-to-Practice gap. The Theory-to-Practice gap may stem from various factors, such as learning complex concepts through simplistic problems, struggling to integrate knowledge across courses for practical scenarios, and time constraints. The resulting two-year induction period poses challenges for companies, individuals, and higher education, emphasizing the need to identify and address specific areas of this gap.

This study focused on identifying the Theory-to-Practice gap in process safety education using the Dreyfus Five-Stage Model of Adult Skills Acquisition. The overarching study aims to understand differences in how experienced industry professionals and undergraduate engineering students approach process safety judgments. In this pilot study, we conducted interviews where participants were provided with relevant criteria for process safety judgments and asked them to describe their approaches to specific scenarios. Both industry professionals and students drew on previous experiences, with industry professionals connecting scenarios to workplace events and students to classroom, internship, or retail situations. However, industry professionals emphasized the influence of relationships with co-workers, superiors, and families in their judgments, which was contrasted by student responses where a lack of relevance of relationships in their judgment process was observed. Previous incidents documented by the Chemical Safety Board identify the impact of relationship dynamics on judgment processes, highlighting the need for process safety instruction that addresses this crucial component. The pilot study findings support these claims, emphasizing the importance of integrating relationship considerations into process safety education to better prepare students for the intricacies of professional practice.

Authors

Mrs. Brittany Lynn Butler-Morton Rowan University
Cayla Ritz Rowan University [biography]

Cayla Ritz, is pursuing a Ph.D in Engineering Education in the Experiential Engineering Education Department at Rowan University. Her research focuses on how story-driven games can be used to help engineering students understand how they may make decisions in professional engineering roles. She is particularly interested in how engineers make decisions in public welfare, community/environmental safety, and social contexts.
Dr. Elif Miskioglu Bucknell University [biography]

Dr. Elif Miskioglu is an early-career engineering education scholar and educator. She holds a B.S. ˘
in Chemical Engineering (with Genetics minor) from Iowa State University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in
Chemical Engineering from Ohio State University. Her early Ph.D. work focused on the development of
bacterial biosensors capable of screening pesticides for specifically targeting the malaria vector mosquito,
Anopheles gambiae. As a result, her diverse background also includes experience in infectious disease
and epidemiology, providing crucial exposure to the broader context of engineering problems and their
subsequent solutions. These diverse experiences and a growing passion for improving engineering education prompted Dr. Miskioglu to change her career path and become a scholar of engineering education. ˘
As an educator, she is committed to challenging her students to uncover new perspectives and dig deeper
into the context of the societal problems engineering is intended to solve. As a scholar, she seeks to not
only contribute original theoretical research to the field, but work to bridge the theory-to-practice gap in
engineering education by serving as an ambassador for empirically driven educational
practices.
Dr. Cheryl A Bodnar Rowan University [biography]

Dr. Bodnar is an Associate Professor in the Experiential Engineering Education Department at Rowan University. Her research interests relate to the incorporation of active learning techniques such as game-based learning in undergraduate classes as well as innovation and entrepreneurship.
Dr. Emily Dringenberg http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7635-7047 The Ohio State University [biography]

Dr. Dringenberg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Ohio State University. She holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering (Kansas State '08), a M.S. in Industrial Engineering (Purdue '14) and a Ph.D. in Engineering Education. Her current career purpose is to learn about and reveal beliefs that are widely-held as an implicit result of our socialization within systems of oppression so that she can embolden others to reflect on their assumptions and advance equity in their own ways.

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