Documenting Engineering Identity: Electrical and Computer Engineering Departmental Documents and Student Identity

As concerns about the preparation of engineers grow, so has interest in the dimensions of engineering identity. This departmental document analysis deepens understanding of undergraduate electrical, computer, and software engineering identities. The electrical, computer, and software engineering department in question privileges the role of performance/competence in engineering identity at the expense of cultivating recognition or interest in the field. Additionally, these documents show an understanding of engineering identity that does not take social identities, such as race or gender, into account. Taken together, these documents construct the department’s image of an ‘ideal engineer.’ Undergraduate students’ engineering identities have emerged as a prominent research topic among engineering educators. Identity—both in terms of social identities (i.e., race/ethnicity, gender, etc.) and as engineers (i.e., viewing oneself as an engineering person)— has been found to play a role in undergraduate persistence [1], [2], retention [3], [4], [5], and even teamwork [6], [7]. Recent research extends beyond assessing impact to understanding the concept itself—for example, recent work has identified recognition and interest as key players in whether or not a student will develop an engineering identity [8], [9], [10]. Understanding more about how undergraduate engineering students develop identities as engineers will help engineering educators better prepare students for engineering careers and support those students during their postsecondary experiences. Much of the current research on engineering identity takes engineering as a monolithic discipline. In other words, it is taken as a given that different engineering disciplines function in the same way with respect to engineering identity development. However, previous research has shown that the culture of engineering disciplines do, in fact, differ from each other—for example, some disciplines, such as biomedical engineering, civil engineering, and chemical engineering, are more inclusive of gender diversity than others [11], [12]. Similarly, it is possible that there is some variation in engineering identity development between the separate disciplines. Engineering in general, and electrical and computer engineering in specific, has a diversity issue: women and students of color are simply not persisting at similar rates as their male and white peers. For example, the AAUW reported only slightly more than 2000 women receiving electrical engineering degrees, compared to over 16,000 men [13]. Similarly, in 2013, 62% of all undergraduates enrolled in engineering programs were white [14]. Some of this attrition and disparity may be attributed to the climate within individual departments. It is possible to understand parts of departmental climate through what a department chooses to show about itself to prospective and current students, faculty and staff, and external stakeholders. By understanding the ways in which engineering departments look at engineering identity development, we can understand how these departments support students and their development. Therefore, this paper explores undergraduate student engineering development using document analysis [15]. Our investigation focused on departmental documents from a single electrical & computing department in a large, public, Midwestern land-grant university. These documents, which range from public-facing websites to internal reports to informational texts, provide a window through which researchers can begin to view departmental priorities with respect to developing undergraduate engineering identities. Using qualitative and document analysis techniques, we asked the following research questions: • How is an electrical, computer, and software engineering identity or identities characterized in departmental documents? • How is an electrical and computer engineering department’s commitment to undergraduate engineering identity development expressed in departmental documents?