2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Students who participate in internships and co-ops are often influenced by these experiences when making career choices post-graduation. Participation in the experiential learning opportunities allows students to be better connected to their respective employers, especially to appreciate the specifics of job roles and understand opportunities and trajectories for future professional advancement. As the field of biomedical engineering continues to grow, it is particularly critical to understand if and how prior internships shape students’ successive decision making when pursuing professional careers. The purpose of this study is to investigate the intricacies of this process by exploring how the participation of undergraduate biomedical engineering students in internship experiences impacts their future career route in the biomedical engineering field. Students have opportunities through both structured and unstructured mechanisms to apply for external internships and it remains unclear precisely when internship experiences should be integrated into the student’s educational development for maximal professional impact. This research is the continuation of a ten-year retrospective outcomes analysis that is guided by the question:
How and in what ways does engagement in undergraduate internship experiences influence biomedical engineering students’ career decisions?
Understanding if and why students continue to pursue careers in a particular biomedical engineering domain (academia, industry, government/military/non-profit, healthcare) after cultivating new skills through internships is crucial to better prepare students for internship experiences in these domains and to advise them regarding when in their academic preparation to pursue such opportunities. Data collection methodology for this paper expands on, and compares, prior insights of a longitudinal data set gathered from 2015 to 2020 and 2020 to 2025 that consisted of internship type, year (within undergraduate studies), student cohort, and employment type after graduation of more than 120 former undergraduate biomedical engineering students. Criteria for being included in this study consisted of students registered in an undergraduate elective BME internship. Data was collected based on publicly listed information on LinkedIn, focusing on the listed employment post - graduation. Previous findings demonstrated that of 64 former students approximately 30-50% of each undergraduate class (2015-2020) participated in the internship course, with 7-18 students per cohort participating in an internship per year. Of the internships reported, 63% were in industry, 23% were in academia, 8% were military affiliated, and 6% were in the medical field. We note that the domain of the internship experience had no significant correlation with the employment post-graduation.