Writing attitudes and career trajectories of domestic and international students in the United States

Graduate engineering students are rarely taught to write in formal disciplinary coursework, but it is an essential skill required forsuccess in industry and academic careers. This study builds on existing work exploring doctoral writing practices, processes, andattitudes, expanding it into the disciplinary context of engineering. Engineering traditionally offers few opportunities for students topractice or develop academic writing in coursework, despite the fact that most academic milestones for graduate students are basedon writing. Grounded in Academic Literacies Theory, this paper seeks to determine how engineering graduate students’ writingattitudes affect their career trajectories. This study surveyed N = 621 engineering graduate students at ten research-intensiveuniversities in the United States using several previously established scales. These data were analyzed using Pearson correlationsand Welch’s t-test methods to answer the research questions. Results indicate that while most students consider writing to be aknowledge-transforming activity, they overwhelmingly struggle with procrastination, perfectionism, and low-writing self-efficacy.Further, strong writing attitudes are linked statistically with the likelihood to pursue a broader set of future careers after graduateschool, indicating that writing may be an invisible mediator for broadening participation in all sectors of engineering.