2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This research brief will share progress from all three phases of our research design, which explores how early-career engineers experience and navigate ethics and equity challenges as they transition from academic training to professional practice.

Engineering education holds an important role in preparing future engineers not only as technical experts but also as ethical, socially responsible professionals. However, despite ongoing reforms, current ethics instruction often fails to translate into practical competence or confidence in real-world decision-making. Our study addresses that gap by exploring how early-career engineers experience and navigate ethics and equity challenges during their transition from academic training to professional practice.

This study employs a three-phase sequential exploratory mixed methods design: an initial qualitative phase (qual), followed by a quantitative survey phase (QUAN), and will conclude with a second qualitative phase (QUAL). In Phase one, 13 semi-structured interviews were conducted with North American early-career engineers. Using reflexive thematic analysis, four key themes emerged: (1) Higher education does not fully prepare early-career engineers in terms of ethical and equitable practices. (2) Characteristics of individual workplaces strongly shape the early-career experiences of engineers, including their experiences with ethics and equity. (3) Ethical decision-making influences and processes explained by the participants highlight how engineers make decisions based on both their personal attributes and the support provided or limitations imposed by their workplace. (4) Self-confidence and self-worth of early-career engineers affect ethical decision-making.
Phase two involved a national survey of 184 early-career engineers to further investigate the influence of educational and workplace contexts on their ethical readiness. The findings highlight a clear trend: practical, workplace-based experiences are perceived as more influential than formal academic coursework in equipping early-career engineers to handle ethical and equity-related challenges.
Phase Three represents the final stage of the research project. In this phase, a qualitative approach will be employed, conducting in-depth interviews with senior engineers, primarily from the civil and computer engineering disciplines, which were largely represented in the sample during phase two. These interviews will explore how experienced engineers mentor their early-career engineers. The objective of phase three is to understand how early-career engineers interpret, navigate, and respond to ethical and equity-related challenges in their everyday professional environments.

The implications of this research highlight the urgent need for engineering education to move beyond mere awareness and adopt applied, discussion-based ethics pedagogy grounded in lived experiences such as the experiences explored in our study. Future work will synthesize findings from all three phases of the research into a case study resource that will assign engineering educators. We will also provide resources that will support the transition into professional practice by helping early-career engineers navigate relationships with supervisors and manage workplace expectations. While the educational materials will promote student-centered learning, the resources for early-career engineers will contribute to professional development programs.

Keywords: mixed-methods research, ethics education, engineering practice, higher education, engineering ethics, equity, early-career engineers