2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Tinkerers, Artists, and Athletes: Using Personas to Spotlight Alternative Engineering Identities and Pathways

Presented at Liberal Education/Engineering & Society Division (LEES) Technical Session 3: Identity, Professionalization, and Belonging II

Engineering education is typically described using a “pipeline” metaphor, wherein students are shuffled along pre-determined pathways toward a narrow set of career outcomes. However, several decades of research have shown that this pipeline model does not accurately describe engineering trajectories and may exclude students who enter the pipeline at different times and have other career outcomes in mind. Similarly, qualitative studies have shown that normative identities in engineering feature masculine stereotypes such as “geeks” and “nerds” that reproduce technical/social dichotomies. Several studies have suggested that broadening the expected outcomes and identities in engineering to include “alternative” pathways and identities may contribute to a shift to a more inclusive form of engineering education. To make these alternative pathways more visible to faculty and students, we have developed a set of engineering “personas” based on interviews [n=16] with senior engineering students at a liberal arts university. Interviews were coded by three members of the research team using consensus coding techniques to ascertain core elements of the personas: Origins, Identities, and Trajectories. Early drafts of student personas were presented to students, who provided insights into future iterations. We propose several engineering personas using a matrix approach, which allows each persona to be adaptable for various origins, identities, and trajectories. These personas contribute to our understanding of alternative engineering pathways based on real student experiences. We intend to use these personas as pedagogical tools to help faculty recognize a wider range of engineering identities, and to help students see themselves as “real engineers” without sacrificing other (non-technical) core values, identities, and pathways.

Authors

Sarah Appelhans http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7313-3504 Lafayette College [biography]

Sarah Appelhans is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Studies at Lafayette College. She earned her PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the University at Albany (SUNY) where she conducted research on the cultural factors that contribute to inequalities in engineering. As a postdoc at Bucknell University, she was the resident ethnographer in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, exploring applications of Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach in engineering education. Her current book project, On the Bleeding Edge: Gender, Immigration and Precarity in Semiconductor Engineering, investigates the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, and immigration status among semiconductor engineers.
Dr. Rebecca Thomas http://orcid.org/https://0000-0003-2426-4759 Bucknell University [biography]

Rebecca Thomas is the inaugural director for the Pathways Program at Bucknell University, where she oversees the rollout of Bucknell’s ePortfolio initiative. She is also a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering where she instructs the first-year design course for ECE majors. She holds a B.S. and M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Louisville and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University.
Jenny Tilsen http://orcid.org/https://0000-0003-4301-3592 Bucknell University [biography]

Dr. Jenny Tilsen has a background in Science and Technology Studies and STEM Education. She is also the creator or STEMtelling, a pedagogical storytelling tool.
Dr. Alan Cheville Bucknell University [biography]

Alan Cheville studied optoelectronics and ultrafast optics at Rice University, followed by 14 years as a faculty member at Oklahoma State University working on terahertz frequencies and engineering education. While at Oklahoma State, he developed courses

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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