To What Extent Does Gender and Ethnicity Impact Engineering Students’ Career Outcomes? An Exploratory Analysis Comparing Biomedical to Three Other Undergraduate Engineering Majors

Abstract

He holds a B.S. in industrial engineering from the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez, and a M.S. and PhD in biomedical engineering from The Ohio State University. His current position entails teaching measurements and instrumentation courses, leading micro and nano educational labs, as well as mentoring students in their senior capstone projects. His current projects include industry integration in the curriculum, undergraduate professional development, and entrepreneurial minded learning in the classroom. Amena Shermadou, Ohio State University Amena Shermadou is an Engineering Education graduate student at The Ohio State University. She received her Bachelors and Masters in Biomedical Engineering from Wright State University, in Dayton, Ohio. Her experience with teaching first-year engineering students has led to research interests in curriculum development, student empowerment and the development of holistic engineers through the collaboration with engineering stakeholders.

Determinants of Intra-major Specialization and Career Decisions Among Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering Students

“…Although research has explored the factors influencing students' decisions to pursue BME as a major (e.g., [1][2][3]), limited work has investigated factors related to students' choice of specialization within the BME major. Moreover, while studies have examined how BME students describe their career interests and job prospects [1,16], as well as gender differences in career outcomes [17] to our knowledge, no research has examined how gender influences track choice. This study, informed by prior research on intra-major specialization and SCCT, examined the factors that BME students' report being influential to their intra-major specialization track selection, the outcome expectations that they associate with particular BME specialization tracks, and gender differences in these relationships.…”

“…Further, while some research has looked at how BME career interests and hurdles related to job and career prospects [1,16], no research of which we are aware has examined the relationship between BME intramajor specialization and career interests. Finally, while some studies have examined gender differences in career outcomes for BME students [17], to our knowledge, no studies have examined gender differences in BME students' intra-major specialization. This is surprising given that scholars have shown that gender is a highly influential factor in women's choice of, and experiences in, engineering majors [11,[18][19][20].…”

Diversity and Equity as Part of Personal Decision-Making

“…Substantial and varied work on DEI is accessible through ASEE's best DEI paper award [17]-including all finalists' papers. Ortiz-Rosario, et al [18] describe career and educational choices at graduation for female/male and under-represented minorities (URM)/(non-URM) students for 4 engineering majors at Ohio State. Li, et al [19] focus on workplace experiences depending on ethnic and gender categories.…”