The Role of Engineering-Adjacent Involvement in Engineering Students’ Development of Future Time Perspective: An Exploratory Study

Background: Having strong motivation is crucial to students’ ability to engage and persist in engineering. Motivations to persist in engineering can be developed through students’ involvement in activities, including those that are “engineering-adjacent,” that students feel contribute to their future goals.

Purpose: This paper explores how motivation to persist in engineering is influenced by undergraduate students’ “engineering-adjacent” involvement. This knowledge may influence practice that encourages participation and retention in traditionally unwelcoming engineering programs.

Scope/Method: We interviewed ten engineering students from one mid-Atlantic institution, where they were asked about their involvements and career goals. We coded transcripts borrowing from Kirn and Benson’s (2018) research on future time perspective and future possible selves. We then developed overarching themes based upon relationships among the codes.

Results: Engineering-adjacent involvement was found to affect students’ engineering goals in three ways, as: 1) pulling students away from their engineering futures, 2) helping students temporarily escape the stress of engineering, or 3) enabling students to integrate further into engineering through meaningful connections between their future possible selves.

Conclusions: We found that students’ perceptions of themselves and their engineering-adjacent involvement were influenced by the cultural expectations of engineering, leading to unique impacts on their motivations and engineering futures. We believe that researchers and educators can use the results of this study to inform educational practices that allow students to better perceive themselves as integrated into engineering, influencing their motivation to pursue engineering futures.