2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

EEC Collaborative Research: Non-Academic Career Paths of Master’s and PhD Engineers

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session II

Despite trends in career trajectories of engineering graduates whereby the majority of Master’s and PhD recipients enter initial jobs outside of academia, most of the existing research and resources focus on academic career paths, which reinforces a culture that privileges academic positions over non-academic career pathways. These priorities fall short of serving the majority of engineering graduates who will end up in sectors such as private industry, government, or a non-profit organization. This project has sought to understand the preparation of engineering graduate students for non-academic careers (i.e., government labs, industry, start-up, non-profit) and how graduate school experiences impacted those decisions, experiences, and outcomes.

Given the relative dearth of knowledge on non-academic career pathways, we adopted an early-stage exploratory approach with multiple strands of data collection and analyses. We began with national-scale quantitative analyses of non-academic career pathways in engineering using the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) and Survey of Doctoral Recipients (SDR). In addition, we conducted analyses of job advertisements to understand the skills required by the workforce for different education levels as could be gleaned from job advertisements. We also purposively sampled 12 institutions to investigate experiences of alumni, associate deans, and faculty to understand how these institutions and programs prepare graduates for non-academic careers and to gain insight on how graduates make career decisions. Institutions were sampled to ensure we include institutions with high proportions of graduates entering nonacademic careers, geographic diversity, diverse student compositions at the Master’s and doctoral levels, urban and rural settings, and local industries.

This project’s findings couple research and practice. Mined lists of skills required by engineering employers across disciplines and degree levels can help inform engineering educators’ curricular decisions. Rates at which engineering PhD earners enter industry, government, and academic careers bring awareness to the prevalence of non-academic career pathways. Findings from interviews with leaders at 12 institutions show how institutions can synergistically leverage organizational factors to support Master’s and PhD students’ non-academic career preparation. This project has also developed a workshop and associated materials for graduate students to plan skill development during their studies so they are prepared to obtain and be successful in the workforce after graduation. As this is the final year of the project, the NSF grantees poster session will feature findings from each of these different data streams.

Authors

Dr. Gabriella Coloyan Fleming http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6771-8741 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

Dr. Gabriella Coloyan Fleming is a research scientist in the department of engineering education at Virginia Tech. She earned her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from UT Austin. Her engineering education research interests include individual- and systems-approaches to engineering workforce development, LLMs for qualitative research, and assets-based teaching and learning.
Dr. David B Knight http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4576-2490 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

David Knight is a Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech and also serves as Chief of Strategy in the College of Engineering and Special Assistant to the Provost. His research tends to be at the macro-scale, focused on a systems-level perspective of how engineering education can become more effective, efficient, and inclusive, and considers the intersection between policy and organizational contexts. Knight currently serves as the co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Engineering Education.
Dr. Maura Borrego http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7131-4611 University of Texas at Austin [biography]

Maura Borrego is the E.P. Schoch Professor in Engineering, Director of the Center for Engineering Education and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and STEM Education at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Borrego is a Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education and currently serves as Senior Associate Editor for Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering. She was previously a rotating program officer at the National Science Foundation, a Vice President and member of the Board of the American Society for Engineering Education, an associate dean in the graduate school, Deputy Editor of the Journal of Engineering Education and Associate Editor for International Journal of STEM Education. Her research awards include U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), a National Science Foundation CAREER award, and two outstanding publication awards from the American Educational Research Association for her journal articles.
Dr. Jessica R Deters http://orcid.org/https://0000-0001-8766-9548 University of Nebraska - Lincoln [biography]

Dr. Jessica Deters is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and Discipline Based Education Researcher at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. She holds her Ph.D. in Engineering Education and M.S. in Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech and a B.S. in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from Colorado School of Mines. Her research focuses on engineering culture, workplace preparedness and career trajectories of undergraduate and graduate students, and student well-being. She is the recipient of the Harold and Esther Edgerton Junior Faculty Award, Henry Y. Kleinkauf Family Distinguished New Faculty Teaching Award, and the UNL University Distinguished Teaching Award.
Dustin Grote http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9189-2424 Weber State University [biography]

Dustin currently serves as an Assistant Professor in Teacher Education at Weber State University and leads the higher education leadership program. He holds a PhD from Virginia Tech in Higher Education. His interdisciplinary research agenda includes gradu
Dr. Maya Denton The University of Oklahoma [biography]

Maya Denton is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Pathways in the Gallogly College of Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University and her M.S. in Environmental Engineering and PhD in STEM Education from the University of Texas at Austin.
Mrs. Amy Richardson P.E. Virginia Tech Department of Engineering Education [biography]

Amy Richardson is a Graduate Research Assistant at Virginia Tech in the Department of Engineering Education along with an Assistant Professor of Engineering at Northern Virginia Community College. She has been teaching math and engineering courses at com
Parker Boggs Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

Parker Boggs is an Engineering Education doctoral student and graduate research assistant at Virginia Tech. He earned his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from West Virginia University.
Dr. Sydni Alexa Cobb http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9816-9100 University of Texas at Austin [biography]

Dr. Sydni Cobb received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the illustrious North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 2015, entered the engineering workforce, and later enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin to complete her M.S. (2023) and PhD (2025) in Mechanical Engineering.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026

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