2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Student perceptions on what engineering, and more specifically, what mechanical engineering is and what mechanical engineers do are important because these perceptions may relate to constructs like self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and interest, thus impacting subsequent decisions to remain in engineering or pursue a future career in the field. Further, student perceptions on what mechanical engineering is and do likely change over time based on coursework and informal learning experiences such as internships. Engineering literacy—the ability to solve problems using engineering design processes and make informed decisions about crucial issues such as energy consumption and climate change—is also a vital component of engineering education. Much of the research on student perceptions of engineering focuses on K-12 students and teachers rather than current engineering undergraduates. However, limited work examines how student perceptions of engineering change during their first engineering internship. Engineering students enhance their understanding of their profession as they progress through their academic journey. Although much of the coursework focuses on applying math and science to solve technical problems, many students tend to associate engineering with this limited perspective, overlooking its wider social impacts. By fostering awareness of these wider impacts, we can enhance their educational experience and better prepare them for future roles in the field. Therefore, we believe that understanding what engineering is and what engineers do can help us to design innovative and impactful learning experiences. In this paper, we investigate two primary research questions: 1. What are mechanical engineering students’ perceptions on engineering and mechanical engineering? and 2. How do these perceptions change after completing their first internship?
We interviewed 12 mechanical engineering students who were completing their first engineering internship. These students varied in levels of program completion from students who completed their first semester of their second year of studies in Spring 2024 to students who had completed their second semester of their third year of studies in Spring 2024. These students were interviewed both at the beginning of their internship and upon completion of their internship. We asked them to define engineer, engineering, mechanical engineer, and mechanical engineering before and after their internships. We use thematic analysis to explore first-time engineering interns’ perceptions on what these terms mean, along with how these perceptions changed over the course of their first engineering internship. Our analysis suggests that there are certain aspects of engineering that students don’t recognize before internships, such as criteria and constraints and the social and collaborative nature of engineering. There are other aspects that students did not address much before or after their internships, suggesting that there may be opportunities to expand student perceptions of engineering and mechanical engineering to better align with the reality of the engineering fields.