Next-Generation Engineering: What are the Types of Real-World Problems that Our Students Want to Solve?

This research category full paper aims to contribute to the body of research in the motivation of engineering students to engage in sociotechnical problems. Students' characteristics are in constant evolution and the core of those currently enrolled in college belong to Generation Z, who have been documented to be more identified with sustainability goals, and with higher civic engagement than previous generations. In addition, research has shown that students with marginalized identities are more interested in engaging in engineering to contribute to solving complex social problems. While engineering has significant potential to contribute to sustainability, engineering education has often failed to strengthen such orientations for students. To explore the capital of students motivations at their time of entry to an engineering program we engage in a qualitative study of student artifacts generated within a first-year engineering seminar in Fall 2022. This study aims to gauge their interest when they start their engineering degrees and explore the differences in such interest by their intended engineering major and demographic characteristics. We used the reflections of 481 first-year undergraduate engineering students to explore which aspects of care guided the type of problems they were interested in tackling in the world. Framed under Ehrenfeld's taxonomy of concerns for sustainability we found that many students were motivated by one or more forms of care, care for the world, care for others, care for self. There was some overlap between the considered caring spaces; however, 21% of the students in our study were motivated by purely technical issues, demonstrating the need for strengthened connections between the teaching of engineering design and the ways that such a design may impact or create meaning in society The identification of problems that interest and motivate undergraduate engineers brings valuable insights into the preparation of more thoughtful and effective engineers.