2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Designing Curiosity in Engineering Education: From Momentary Spark to Motivational Drive

Presented at Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation Division (ENT) Technical Session 6- Student Factors, Skills & Outcomes

Curiosity is increasingly recognized as a core intellectual virtue that supports adaptive problem-solving, ethical discernment, and innovation in professional engineering practice. Yet in undergraduate education, curiosity is often treated as a happy byproduct of instructional design rather than a deliberate target of professional formation. This mixed-methods article addresses the critical gap between conceptual theory and prescriptive pedagogy. We first synthesize 63 peer-reviewed articles to confirm how curiosity is defined, measured, and cultivated, using psychological models to differentiate curiosity as a momentary reaction versus a motivational drive and durable character trait. Our scoping review confirms that current engineering interventions are overwhelmingly short-term and typically promote fleeting, passive engagement through inquiry-based activities, rarely addressing the necessary development of active, sustained curiosity or its crucial relationship to adjacent virtues like intellectual humility. To address the pedagogical gap, we report on semi-structured interviews with engineering faculty to uncover the implicit strategies, or "levers," they use to promote curiosity in their classrooms. This work offers two key contributions designed for the broader ASEE audience: a pedagogical strategy for cultivating active and sustained curiosity in the engineering classroom, and a set of validated metrics, adapted from longitudinal studies, to assess the efficacy of these levers. By shifting the focus from accidental "spark" to deliberate, measurable "cultivation," this framework lays the groundwork for integrating curiosity as an essential professional competency.

Authors

Mahi Patel Duke University [biography]

Mahi Patel completed her Bachelor's Degree in Biomedical Engineering at Duke University, minoring in Chemistry and Computational Biology. Alongside her studies, she worked as a research assistant, focusing on character formation in engineering education. Her industry experience includes technology strategy consulting and working closely with international teams and stakeholders.
Prof. Cameron Michael Kim http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3671-1691 Duke University [biography]

Cameron Kim is an Assistant Professor of the Practice in Biomedical Engineering and the Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies at Duke University, Associate Faculty in the Duke Science & Society Initiative, and a member of the Duke Center for Advanced Genomic Technologies. He holds a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Stanford University, where his research centered on engineering protein and RNA-based control systems for mammalian synthetic biology. He is the co-director of the Biomedical Engineering Education & Teaching Laboratory (BEETL) where his current work bridges biotechnology education with ethical responsibility, focusing on equipping future engineers with the tools to address ethical challenges in emerging technologies like gene and cell-based therapies. His scholarship of engineering formation, characterized by curiosity and intellectual humility, informs his approach to pedagogy and mentorship. He also actively contributes to the ethical discourse surrounding engineering biology through his involvement in various ELSI committees, including those within the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the Engineering Biology Research Consortium.

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

« View session