2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Maximizing opportunities for a career in Engineering requires providing pathways for students from non-engineering disciplines to enter graduate programs in engineering. Despite concerns about these students’ quantitative preparation in mathematics and physical sciences, limited data exists on their graduate completion rates compared to peers with engineering undergraduate degrees. Tracking such outcomes is notoriously difficult due to the nonlinear nature of graduate education and the scarcity of comprehensive university data. For example, students may be graduating but with a Master’s degree instead of their intended PhD, or they started graduate school in engineering but completed their degree in a different field. To address this gap, we developed a custom dashboard tool that enables dynamic tracking and benchmarking of graduate student completion rates. The dashboard data includes cohorts of incoming graduate students from 2007 to present. A key feature of this dashboard is its ability to follow student pathways (e.g., capturing transitions between degree programs and departments) and disaggregate data by identity markers such as gender, race/ethnicity, age, and citizenship status. This capability allows us to analyze the trajectories of students entering engineering graduate programs from non-engineering majors and compare their outcomes (e.g., milestone completion rate, time to graduation, etc.) to those with traditional engineering preparation. Preliminary findings from this tool offer insights into student success patterns and inform targeted interventions. Ultimately, this work supports the strategic expansion of engineering graduate recruitment to include non-engineering students, with the goal of broadening participation in engineering graduate programs and related careers.