2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The field of biomedical engineering (BME) has witnessed significant growth in recent years, driven by advances in technology and a growing emphasis on healthcare innovation. This growth has led to a large range of post-graduation career paths for BME undergraduates including medical and professional school, graduate school, and direct employment as engineers in the medtech, biotech, and healthcare industries [1]. Much of the literature on career choice and motivations of these students focuses on their plans at a static time point [2]. Often this time point corresponds to their entry into college or into a BME major [3-5] or shortly before or upon completion of their undergraduate degree [6-7]. The purpose of this work is to “fill in the gaps” and understand how and why the career plans of these students change throughout the course of their undergraduate degree in response to their interactions with the curriculum, participation in extracurricular experiences in research, industry, and clinical settings, and other external factors.
To achieve this, we collected a series of reflection assignments submitted in various required courses in the BME curriculum at a public southeastern research university. These assignments were independently assigned by the various instructors who taught each course, but each asked students to reflect on short- and/or long-term career plans, narrative explanations of their motivation or passions, and experiences within and external to the curriculum. Two of the assignments (one at entry to the major and the other at the start of the final year) required students to submit a résumé detailing their significant professional development experiences. As a final data point, the post-graduation positions of these students (self-reported via LinkedIn or other public sources) was included as a measure of whether the student achieved their intended short-term career goals, if available.
After compiling and deidentifying, the resulting dataset allows us to perform a retrospective longitudinal study of how students’ career plans change over the course of their undergraduate career at both the cohort and individual student level. The relatively large size (over 500 students across 5 cohorts) and richness of this dataset allows for multiple avenues of research including factors which correlate to success in progressing through and persisting in the major and success in meeting career goals. Narrative analysis of student responses may also yield insights into the factors that influence initial career choice. As a department, we plan to use insights gained from this work as an input into curriculum reform and workforce development efforts.

References:
1. R.A. Linsenmeier and A. Saterbak, “Fifty Years of Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Education,” Ann. Biomed. Eng., vol. 48, no.6, pp. 1590-1615, 2020.
2. N.L. Ramo and A. Huang-Saad, “Work in Progress: Exploring the Relationships Between BME Student Perception of the Field and Career Plans,” ASEE Annu. Conf. Expo. Conf. Proc., vol. 2021-June 2021.
3. K. Meyers, V. Goodrich, S. Blackowsi, and E.Spingola, “Factors affecting first-year engineering students’ choice of majors,” Int. J. Eng. Educ., vol. 35, no.4, pp. 861-877, 2019.
4. B.D. Jones, M.C. Paretti, S.F. Hein, and T.W. Knott, “An analysis of motivation constructs with first-year engineering students: Relationships among expectancies, values, achievement, and career plans,” J. Eng. Educ., vol. 99, no. 4, pp. 319-336, 2010.
5. G. Potvin et al., “Gendered interests in electrical, computer, and biomedical engineering: Intersections with career outcome expectations,” IEEE Trans. Educ., vol. 61, no. 4 pp. 28-304, 2018.
6. J. Rohde, J. France, B. Benedict, and A. Godwin, “Exploring the early career pathways of degree holders from biomedical, environmental, and interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary engineering,” ASEE Annu. Conf. Expo. Conf. Proc., vol. 2020-June, 2020.
7. A. Patrick, M. Borrego, and C. Riegle-Crumb, “Post-graduation Plans of Undergraduate BME Students: Gender, Self-efficacy, Value, and Identity Beliefs,” Ann. Biomed. Eng., 2020.