Sustainability Engagement and Career Aspirations Among Underrepresented Engineering Students: Insights from a Comparative Analysis
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Integrating sustainability into engineering education is critical for addressing climate change and its impacts on communities disproportionately affected by environmental challenges.Yet, little research has examined how underrepresented minority (URM) students at minority-serving institutions (MSI) perceive and engage with sustainability-related content and careers.Accordingly, this study investigates the relationships among demographics, sustainability engagement, and career aspirations in 124 undergraduate engineering students at a MSI -Hispanic-serving institution -surveyed from January to February 2024.Survey items were measured on a five-point Likert scale with strong internal consistency (Cronbach's α = .833).Non-parametric analyses including the Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis test revealed that URM students reported higher confidence in sustainable engineering solutions and stronger preferences for sustainability content compared to non-URM peers, highlighting a strengths-based perspective that emphasizes URM students' potential leadership in sustainability.Gender significantly influenced sustainability interest and regional needs perception with female students expressing greater interest in sustainability.Additionally, students' academic year in their university program significantly affected both sustainability engagement and career aspirations.These findings are especially relevant for civil and architectural engineering students, who play a vital role in shaping sustainable practices in design, construction, and operation and the built environment.Overall, this research highlights the strengths and unique perspectives that historically marginalized students bring to engineering education, particularly in sustainability contexts.This has important implications for engineering education policy and curriculum design, particularly in developing more inclusive and effective sustainability education programs that leverage diverse student experiences.
Institution: University of Arizona
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W7127980378