2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This study examines undergraduate biomedical engineering students’ affinity toward engineering professional practices after completing a 3-credit independent study course. Anecdotally, students in our institution have struggled with acquiring industry experience and often struggle to translate their educational practices into real-world practices. Partnering with a local company [redacted for blind review], a 3-credit industry independent course was created. This course drew on current projects from the company, covered introductory design literature [1], and had students work on industry projects throughout the semester. The projects ranged from programming, machine learning, and human factors.

For this study, twenty-four students (11 female, 12 male) across four semesters completed a semester-long course that included a for-credit internship component at a large midwestern research university. This study looked at students’ gender, career goals (industry or further education), and pre- and post- intervention responses from a modified version of Patrick et al.’s instrument [2]. This instrument measures affect toward elements of professional engineering practice including five constructs: project management, framing and solving problems, collaboration, analysis, and design. A multilinear regression model was used to analyze all constructs relationship with gender, career goals, and the pre/post survey results.

This instrument has been used effectively to evaluate the relationship between engineering identity and students’ affinity toward engineering professional practices [3], even extending it to the effect gender has on these professional practice constructs [4]. This project adds a new dimension by evaluating the impact of desired career outcomes along with these constructs.

The Project Management construct resulted significant (F(4, 41) = 2.82, p = .04) with career aspiration significantly contributed to the model, F(2, 41) = 3.88, p = .03. Classification (pre/post survey) and gender were not significant predictors (both p > .10). The Design construct produced a significant model, F(4, 41) = 3.91, p = .01. Career aspiration was the only significant individual predictor, F(2, 41) = 6.30, p < .001. No other predictors reached significance. The Collaboration construct approached significance, F(4, 41) = 2.30, p = .08. Though the model was not significant, it did show an interesting trend. This is the only model where Gender emerged as a notable predictor, F(1, 41) = 6.59, p = .01, with male students scoring lower on collaboration than female students.

For the pre- and post-assessment points no change was observed, which potentially shows that aspects of professional identity are not easily modified or changed with small semester-long interventions. The results contribute to ongoing efforts to understand the relationship between short-term professional experiences and professional identity formation in undergraduate engineering education.