2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

IUSE: Non-Traditional Engineering Students: Lived Experience and Classroom Engagement

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session I

Research in nontraditional engineering students (NTES) generally focused on their demographics, the challenges they faced, their deficiencies, and methods to improve the outcomes of NTES in engineering programs. None of the existing studies in NTES are asset-based and focus on their strengths such as their lived experiences, or leveraging their strengths to increase engaged student learning for all students. The objective of this study is to identify the characteristics of NTES lived experience that can be incorporated into engineering classrooms to increase engagement for all students. Through interviews with NTES and thematic analysis, the attributes of NTES’ past experience that were of interest to traditional engineering students in their engineering courses and classrooms were identified. Results show that NTES professional skills (networking and problem-identification), and the application of their work experience into technical lecture content were more frequently discussed when they collaborated with traditional engineering students. Future work for this project will include validating the lived experience of the NTES with the traditional students, and creating in-class cooperative learning activities that utilize NTES lived experience.

Authors

Dr. Ean H Ng http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9016-3097 Oregon State University [biography]

Ean H. Ng is an assistant professor at Oregon State University. She received her Ph.D. in Systems and Engineering Management from Texas Tech University. Her research interests include engineering economic analysis, high reliability organization, safety engineering, peer effects in workplace safety, and performance measurement.
Dr. Ganapathy S Natarajan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7905-9966 University of Wisconsin - Platteville [biography]

Ganapathy Natarajan, Ph.D., CPEM is an Associate Professor in Industrial Engineering at University of Wisconsin – Platteville. He received his Ph.D. in Systems and Engineering Management from Texas Tech University. Gana’s research interests are in engineering education, learning analytics, and novel use of data analytics in decision making.
Ingrid Scheel Oregon State University [biography]

Ingrid Scheel is a Project Instructor at Oregon State University. She works to teach from an integrated sociotechnical perspective in engineering science and design courses. Her focus is systems engineering and program management. Scheel has experience in small business strategic planning and risk assessment, designing and deploying fiber optic sensors and sensing systems, prototype development, instrumentation, data acquisition and analysis, and reporting.

Scheel contributes to the International Society for Optics and Photonics as a conference chair, editor, and author. She is the President of Optica, Columbia Section, and works to forge strong connections between industry and academic research.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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