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While engineering educators have engaged in many endeavors aimed at advancing engineering education and practice, much of this work has focused on broad curricular issues. Few studies focus on what it means to be an engineer or the process of what it takes to learn to engineer. In the last decade engineering educators have begun to focus on developing the research base with an emphasis on engineering student learning. The Academic Pathways Study (APS) was designed to build on and add to prior and ongoing research to investigate the engineering undergraduate learning experience and the transition to work. The APS is an extensive, multi-institution research project that is looking at how people become engineers over the course of their undergraduate educations and upon entry into the engineering workplace. Initial findings reported in this paper effectively challenge the long-held notion of the engineering education pipeline. The results in this paper have shown that the Academic Pathways Study is providing compelling data that paint a picture of the undergraduate engineering student learning experience not only with a human face, but with a multi-faceted understanding that comes from a rich triangulation of data types and sources.

The paths students follow after completing a bachelor's degree in an engineering field are varied and expectations about the numbers of students who will pursue engineering work or graduate school are supported by various studies. This study explores how decisions to do graduate work in engineering are made. Among the questions examined are: (1) What factors do students consider?; (2) How do students decide where to apply for graduate work and in what field?; and (3) Who is involved in the decision? Preliminary answers to these questions for one particular group--those choosing to pursue a dual degree in engineering--are discussed in this paper. The authors conclude that there is still much more to understand about the undergraduate-to-graduate decision process and transition. This is becoming increasingly important as more students undertake graduate education, and as national leadership calls for a debate on the relationship between undergraduate and graduate education and the practice of engineering.

This report is based on data from the Academic Pathways of People Learning Engineering Survey (APPLES), administered to engineering students at 21 U.S. engineering colleges and schools in the spring of 2008. The first comprehensive set of analyses completed on the APPLES dataset presented here looks at how engineering students experience their education, how they gain knowledge of what engineering is, and what their post-graduation plans are. The APPLES instrument is one of the research tools developed and used by the National Science Foundation-funded Academic Pathways Study (APS)1. The APPLES study represented the major cross-sectional survey component of the APS. Other components included a four-year longitudinal study of 160 engineering students at four institutions, and interviews of over 90 practicing engineers in a range of professional settings. Taken together, these components were designed to expand our understanding of the undergraduate engineering experience and the transition from school to the workplace. The APS research questions focus on four primary areas that investigate what engineering graduates need to succeed in an increasingly complex world: (1) Skills and Knowledge: How do students' engineering skills and knowledge develop and/or change over time?; (2) Identity: How do students come to identify themselves as engineers? How does student appreciation, confidence, and commitment to engineering change as they navigate their education? How does this in turn impact how these students make decisions about further participation in engineering after graduation?; (3) Education: What elements of students' engineering educations contribute to changes observed in the questions related to skills, knowledge, and identity? What do students find difficult and how do they deal with the difficulties they face?; and (4) Workplace: How do students and early career engineers conceive of their engineering future? What skills do early career engineers need as they enter the workplace? Where did they obtain these skills? Are there any missing skills? This report presents the first set of analyses conducted on the APPLES dataset. The first section of the report (Chapters 1-3) is an overview of the APPLES instrument along with demographics of the overall cross-sectional population surveyed. In Chapter 1, the APPLES instrument is described, including definitions of the variables which form the basis of the rest of the report. Chapter 2 specifies the selection of the 21 schools where APPLES was deployed and the demographics of the 4,266 students who completed the survey. Then in Chapter 3, the organization of the remainder of the report and its focus on the comparisons between first-year and senior engineering majors are outlined. Appended are: (1) The Academic Pathways of People Learning Engineering Survey (APPLES) Instrument; (2) Descriptions of the Major Declaration Process and Institutional Selectivity Characteristics; (3) Definitions of APPLES Engineering Majors and Other Majors; (4) Means and Standard Deviations of Core Constructs; (5) Simple Correlation Coefficients: First-Year Students; (6) Calculating APPLES Multi-Item Variables; and (7) Methodological Notes for Regressions. Individual chapters contain footnotes. (Contains 11 figures and 99 tables.).

The Academic Pathways Study (APS) of the NSF-funded Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education (CAEE) is a cross-university study that systematically examines how engineering students navigate their education, and how engineering skills and identity develop during their undergraduate careers. The APS has utilized a variety of methods including surveys, structured interviews, ethnographic methods, engineering design tasks, and academic transcripts to gain a broader and richer picture of students' undergraduate engineering experiences. Of this portfolio of methods, a key component has been the survey, and through the collective work of the APS, two instruments have emerged--the Persistence In Engineering (PIE) survey and the Academic Pathways of People Learning Engineering Survey (APPLES). Building upon the PIE survey and the findings from the other APS methods, APPLES was designed to look at academic and professional persistence in two different cross-sectional populations of American undergraduate engineering students. The main objective of APPLES was to corroborate earlier findings from the APS on a larger scale and in particular, to explore the generalizability of findings from the PIE survey to engineering students at a greater number of American higher education institutions. Although results of these analyses are ongoing, the integration of findings from both quantitative and qualitative APS methods represents a valuable contribution and a useful model for future research.

A Stanford Research Team (SRT) received a grant from Future Transport Inc (FTI) to assess "innovation culture" among over 10,000 product development engineers at four sites worldwide. The SRT conducted 21 interviews with company executives, innovation managers, and Innovation Catalysts (ICs), positions created to spark innovation mindsets among product development engineers. The SRT was challenged to derive valuable insights and actionable recommendations pertaining to an innovation initiative about which FTI executives and ICs were deeply familiar. The project highlighted common challenges in the collection, analysis, and reporting of qualitative data. The SRT took measures to ensure that the data would be credible to FTI stakeholders by 1) framing research questions that addressed FTI participants' pain points, 2) conducting data analysis based on coding categories, which created a sample size of nearly 900 quotes; 3) conducting rigorous intercoder reliability (ICR), and 4) reporting findings using a SWOT analysis, which is considered a best practice in business settings. The case study also highlights an ethical dilemma the SRT faced and discusses the importance of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) for the protection of study participants, including the research team.

Student engagement in extracurricular activities, and the integration of these activities with academics, can be critical factors influencing student persistence. There is also evidence linking extracurricular and social involvement to career choices, goals and plans, as well as success in future employment and earnings. This paper explores the relationship of students to these extra- and co-curricular activities. Extracurricular activities can play an important role in exposing undergraduate engineering students to broader challenges that enable them to utilize and/or complement their disciplinary knowledge. Fostering integrative learning "across courses, over time, and between campus and community life" has been highlighted as an important goal of undergraduate education.

The Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education (CAEE) began in January 2003 with a grant from the National Science Foundation (ESI-0227558). Two NSF Directorates, Engineering and Education and Human Resources, oversee the Center's work. The Academic Pathways Study (APS) is part of the Scholarship on Learning Engineering element of the CAEE. This document provides a picture of APS study design and implementation activities. Descriptions of the APS analysis methods, findings, and the more technical aspects of the research such as methodological background, sampling calculations, statistical methods, etc. are being reported elsewhere. The chapters in this document progress more or less chronologically. The following descriptions of each chapter provide a quick overview to orient the reader to the content of this document. Chapter 1 presents the overall goals and background for the APS research. This chapter includes information such as research and leadership team description, study design, participating school descriptions, data storage and analysis plans, and study terminology. Chapters 2 through 5 cover the longitudinal portion of the study, one chapter for each of the four years of longitudinal research on a cohort of 160 engineering undergraduates. These chapters contain information on recruitment, study group assignments, changes to original study design, data collection using four primary methods, and miscellaneous notes and reflections. Chapter 6 covers the Broader Core Sample (800+ students from the schools participating in the longitudinal study) and Chapter 7 covers the Broader National Sample (4200+ students from 21 institutions around the country). These two chapters describe CAEE's use of the APPLE (Academic Pathways of People Learning Engineering) survey to confirm findings from the longitudinal work discussed in Chapters 2 through 5. The two chapters include information about IRB approval, recruitment, sampling plan, data collection/survey deployment, and miscellaneous notes and reflections. Chapter 8 covers the school-to-work transition with the Workplace Cohort, describing the general methodology and the three threads of workplace data collection and analysis. The extensive appendices listed at the end of this document include study materials ranging from data access guidelines to sampling plans to data collection instruments. Appended are: (1) Process Documents; (2) Recruitment Documents; (3) Interview and ETD Instruments/Documents; (4) Survey Instruments; and (5) Other. (Contains 11 figures, 10 tables, and 3 footnotes.).