Work in Progress: Identifying Factors that Impact Student Experience of Engineering Stress Culture

Abstract

with a focus in Engineering Education. His work focuses on mentorship, mental health, and retention in STEM students and faculty. He was awarded the NAGAP Graduate Education Research Grant award to study engineering faculty perceptions of graduate student well-being and attrition. Before studying education at UIUC, Joseph earned an MS degree in Physics from Indiana University in Bloomington and a BS in Engineering Physics at UIUC.

Are the kids alright? Exploring students’ experiences of support mechanisms to enhance wellbeing on an engineering programme in the UK

“…• Students struggle with the workload and achieving a reasonable work-life balance which impacts upon their wellbeing • The peer buddying/mentoring system is not robust enough to be effective • The remit and role of wellbeing (student) officers requires organisation • Personal tutors do not all possess the right skills or work to the same exacting standards in delivering pastoral care • There is a lack of clarity among students about who to trust and who assumes responsibility for their wellbeing Concerns around student workload have been mentioned earlier in this paper, although part of the added difficulty is that a packed curriculum in engineering is seen as normal by students, meaning they are reluctant to seek support (Mirabelli et al 2020). Engineering curriculums suffer from content overload, which also means the material is delivered in an often-repeated, fragmented way (Ktoridou and Eteokleous 2014).…”

Mental Health in Engineering Education: Identifying Population and Intersectional Variation

“…Several studies show links between student mental health conditions and student retention and success [17], [18]. Studies have also shown that modern engineering programs foster cultures of stress [19], [20] and shame [21], which may also contribute to poor mental health in engineering students. Improving engineering student mental health overall may be an important mechanism for graduating larger cohorts of engineers.…”

CAREER: Supporting Undergraduate Mental Health by Building a Culture of Wellness in Engineering

“…When probed for other relevant experiences to add, participants suggested an increased significance of the importance of extracurriculars to participants' daily lives compared with our team's expectations. Findings also included repeated participant uncertainty regarding the differences between stress, anxiety, and depression, as well as clinical versus symptomatic anxiety and depression, consistent with our team's previous findings [6]. For example, some participants had no confusion in our mental health items, while others believed that depression should not be grouped with stress and anxiety, as it was "too severe."…”

“…In the first step toward defining this new measure, we have developed a pool of new survey items. The survey items were developed from a previous mixed methods study consisting of a survey and interviews administered to engineering students [6,7]. Sample items were derived from themes observed in the open response questions on the survey as well as themes from the qualitative interviews.…”