2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engineering is often perceived as a rational discipline where students believe that emotions will hinder their ability to make logical decisions. Literature corroborates this bias: most interventions in engineering education are advertised as self-improvement (e.g. emotional self-control) in the context of leadership and interpersonal skills. Considering emotions as part of engineering work (e.g. problem-solving and decision-making) are discouraged. This belief may affect men, women, and underrepresented engineering students differently. Literature indicates that women and underrepresented students are often associated with powerless emotions (e.g. sadness and fear) while men are often associated with powerful emotions (anger and pride). Consequently, powerful emotions are associated with positions of high power, and powerless emotions are associated with positions of lower power. This served as motivation to develop a course that focuses on developing emotional skills of engineering students to be positively applied in the contexts of self-improvement and engineering practice. The final goal of this project is to evaluate the impact of this course on students’ emotional intelligence and psychological capital. While psychological capital is not the focus of the course, literature data suggests that it is positively correlated with emotional intelligence. As a first objective, we assessed the current state of emotional intelligence and psychological capital of engineering students at the INSTITUTION before the intervention. This data is what will be presented and will serve as a baseline for future comparison to accomplish the final goal. Engineering students were surveyed about their emotional intelligence and psychological capital by using the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire - Short Form (TEIQue-SF) and the Psychological Capital questionnaire, respectively. TEIQue-SF is divided into five sub-dimensions (emotionality, self-control, well-being, sociability, and global trait) while Psychological Capital is divided into self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and resiliency to measure an individual strength towards each of these characteristics. Students were also asked to self-report if they were currently experiencing mental health distress and provide their demographic information. Results show that perceptions of current mental health state presented significant differences in wellbeing, self-control, global trait, and resilience. Male and female students differed significantly in self-control and emotionality. The only domain evaluated in which first-generation students significantly differed from continuing-generation students was emotionality. There were no significant differences in emotional intelligence and psychological capital subscales between students in different years of study or of different ethnicities.