Adaptability has emerged as an essential skill in the engineering workforce due to constant technological and social change, engineering grand challenges, and the recent global pandemic. Although engineering employers and national reports have called for increased adaptability among engineers, what adaptability means in the engineering workplace has not been investigated. This dissertation uses qualitative semi-structured critical incident interviews with engineering managers from four corporations to better understand their perceptions of adaptability and then incorporates these findings into a scenario-based intervention for the engineering classroom. Thematic analysis of the interviews with engineering managers expanded existing frameworks for workplace adaptability to provide an engineering-specific understanding of adaptability as a construct. Managers’ perceptions of adaptability span six dimensions, each important when teaching this competency to engineering students: Creative Problem Solving; Interpersonal Adaptability; Handling Work Stress; Dealing with Uncertain and Unpredictable Situations; Learning New Technologies, Tasks, and Procedures; and Cultural Adaptability. Managers’ beliefs about the importance of a balanced approach to being adaptable in different work contexts, and the influence of personal characteristics such as self-awareness and having had specific experiences related to being adaptable, emerged from the findings as well. Composite narratives reflecting real-life situations encountered by engineers in the workplace were developed based on findings from the engineering manager interviews to provide greater texture to the data. Six of the narratives mapped to the six dimensions of adaptability identified in the thematic analysis, while the seventh narrative illustrated the importance of balance and context when deciding whether and how to be adaptable. They revealed how multiple dimensions of adaptability work together and that contextual factors like support from managers and coworkers are integral to an engineer’s adaptability. The narratives were condensed into two scenarios for use in a classroom-based intervention with first-year engineering students at a large public university. After the intervention, many students’ definitions of adaptability became more multi-dimensional and reflective of adaptability context and balance. Students also reported a better understanding of engineering work, an expanded definition of adaptability, greater delineation of adaptability, increased self-awareness, greater appreciation for the importance of adaptability balance, and enhanced feelings of job preparedness.

Online education is fast growing due to its accessibility and scalability, but engineering has fallen behind other fields in adopting and researching the online educational format. Student course-level attrition is a significant issue in online courses. The goal of this dissertation is to better understand the factors that impact course level persistence decisions among online undergraduate engineering students. Three different research methodologies were employed for this study: a systematic literature review (SLR), learning analytics and data mining, and multi-level modeling.The SLR focuses on understanding the temporal trends and findings from research in online engineering education. A total of thirty-nine articles published between 2011 to 2020 met inclusion criteria, and the synthesis of these articles revealed five themes: content design and delivery, student engagement and interactions, assessment, feedback, and challenges in online engineering. Theoretical, methodological, and publication trends across the forty articles were also summarized. Data for the second study was compiled from 81 courses contained within three online, ABET-accredited undergraduate engineering degree programs at a large, public institution in the southwestern United States. The students' learning management system (LMS) interaction data was utilized to create features that represent the amount of time students spent on different course activities and how those times differed from “typical” interaction patterns among students in the same course. Association rule mining was used to develop rules that describe the behavior of students who completed the course (i.e., completers) and those who opted to withdraw (i.e., leavers). The best measure of student engagement was determined to be the mathematical difference between the percentages of completer and leaver rules met by each student. Finally, multi-level modeling was used to examine the impact of interpersonal interactions on online undergraduate engineering students' course-level persistence intentions. The data for this study was gathered from online courses during the 2019-2020 academic year. Students completed questionnaires about their course and related persistence intentions twelve times during their 7.5-week online course. Students’ perceptions of the course LMS dialog, instructor practices, and peer support were found to significantly predict their course persistence intentions.

Significant efforts are underway by engineering organizations to diversify their workforce. However, research findings on workplace diversity are mixed, with insufficient clarity into what makes heterogeneous work environments successful. Acknowledging the role of individual behavior in building diverse workplaces that are cohesive and productive, researchers have called for more theory-based investigation into individuals’ workplace behaviors and their determinants. This three-part study bridges the gap within an engineering context by leveraging Berry's acculturation framework (Berry, 1972, 2005) from cross-cultural psychology to examine the factors influencing engineers’ acculturation behaviors in workplaces. Acculturation refers to the process by which individuals adjust to people different from themselves in their daily interactions (Berry, 1972, 2005). Based on Berry’s framework, the study postulates four acculturation attitudes and behaviors for engineers—Integration, Assimilation, Separation, and Marginalization. Acculturation attitudes are based on acculturation preferences, such as the importance an individual places on retaining individual values and the importance an individual places on receiving acceptance from coworkers. These acculturation attitudes and perceived acceptance together influence behaviors. The first study designed and validated an instrument to measure engineers’ acculturation preferences, acculturation behaviors, and perceived acceptance from coworkers. The results provided complete to partial support for the expected correlations among factors. The second study conducted cluster and Chi-square analyses focusing on the two acculturation preferences. The results revealed four clusters corresponding to Berry’s acculturation attitudes and revealed findings, such as women’s preference for Integration attitude over men’s. The third study used a path model to gain insight into gender differences in engineers’ acculturation behaviors and revealed acceptance as a crucial factor. The results quantitatively substantiated prior findings, namely, that women engineers prefer Assimilation and Separation behaviors more and Integration behavior less mediated by factors related to acceptance. The developed instrument and study findings offer researchers another lens to study organizations’ diversification efforts, along with other personal and contextual factors. The study findings could also help engineering organizations recruit employees with acculturation attitudes favorable to the organization’s diversity goals and design trainings that highlight the importance of coworker acceptance. Such interventions would facilitate the creation of more diverse work environments.

Prior research has provided evidence to suggest that veterans exhibit unique assets that benefit them in engineering education and engineering industry. However, there is little evidence to determine whether their assets are due to military service or other demographic factors such as age, maturity, or gender. The aim of this study is to discover, better understand, and disseminate the unique assets that veterans gained through military service and continue to employ as engineering students or professional engineers. This strength-based thematic analysis investigated the semi-structured narrative interviews of 18 military veterans who are now engineering students or professionals in engineering industry. Using the Funds of Knowledge framework, veterans’ Funds of Knowledge were identified and analyzed for emergent themes. Participants exhibited 10 unique veterans’ Funds of Knowledge. Utilizing analytical memos, repeated reflection, and iterative analysis, two overarching themes emerged, Effective Teaming in Engineering and Adapting to Overcome Challenges. Additionally, a niche concept of Identity Crafting was explored using the unique narratives of two participants. This study provides empirical evidence of military veterans experientially learning valuable assets in engineering from their military service. A better understanding of the veterans’ Funds of Knowledge presented in this study provides valuable opportunities for their utilization in engineering education and engineering industry.