2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Offering voluntary engineering student project experiences has been a strategy used by universities and engineering schools across the globe. These out of classroom experiences, which are sometimes offered through student organizations have enabled students to develop technical hands-on engineering and interpersonal skills. However, despite the many documented benefits of these opportunities, many students choose not to participate. A better understanding of the motivations of students who choose to participate and persist in these initiatives could be used by faculty and staff advisors, student leaders and competition organizers when attempting to recruit students.
In this paper, a multi-modal data collection approach is utilized to assess student motivations in joining these project teams. The data includes self-reported quantitative data and relevant comments from long form responses. The data comes from students who are a part of various student project teams such as EcoCar, AutoDrive, Formula SAE, Baja SAE, Solar Racing, Battery Workforce Challenge. In this study, various students across different project teams were sent an anonymous survey to document their motivations to join their respective project teams. The participants are asked to describe their experiences, outcomes and how the competition organizers and faculty advisors help them in achieving their goals. Additionally, this study explores the impact of these projects on other aspects of the students’ college experience including class attendance, social life, leisure time, and mental health. The interpretation of these results could serve as a guide for university administrators, project advisors and leaders to improve student experiences and learning outcomes.