Transitioning to Professional Work: A View from the Field
This chapter explores the question: “what is a successful transition to professional work for an engineering graduate”? To answer this question, it considers the viewpoint of both recent graduates and more experienced engineering professionals. While grad
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Transitioning to Professional Work: A View from the Field Sally Hawse
Abstract This chapter explores the question: “what is a successful transition to professional work for an engineering graduate”? To answer this question, it considers the viewpoint of both recent graduates and more experienced engineering professionals. While graduation signifies successful completion of a higher education program of learning, philosophies of the work lifespan and career transitions present a broader view of the journey from student to professional. Responses to a questionnaire about the value of their engineering degree, and whether technical skills or generic and transferrable skills are of greater benefit to an engineering career, inform suggestions for how higher education and organisations can contribute to successful transition for graduates into the workplace. This chapter starts with a brief literature review and moves on to a discussion of transitions and workplace expectations. It then looks at new graduate and experienced professional views relating to the work readiness provided by formal engineering programs of study. The chapter concludes with recommendations for what academia and organisations can do to support the transition to work. Keywords Engineering
Employability skills Work readiness
Introduction Changes across industry and the economy, shifting social values, increased demand for higher education, and globalisation are impacts which Edgerton (2001) identifies as significantly reshaping contemporary educational programs. He contends that program completion, participant understanding, and acquisition of the literacies required for effective work, citizenship, and personal fulfilment are the quality standards against which educational programs should be evaluated. Edgerton’s (2001) viewpoint is particularly resonant for contemporary STEM (Science, S. Hawse (&) Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 L.N. Wood and Y.A. Breyer (eds.), Success in Higher Education, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-2791-8_14
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Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) curricula. With dwindling enrolments and increased industry need, these disciplines have received policy focus and attention directed towards encouraging students to pursue careers in science and technology fields. Curricular and program responses incorporate teamwork activities, communication and professional skills, and the environmental and social implications of scientific solutions. Recent US data shows that these engagement and curricular reform efforts have been successful, with STEM enrolments increasing over the past 5 years, notably in engineering and biology (Arizona State University 2014; Jaschik 2014; The City University of New York (CUNY) 2015; UW‐Madison 2014). Research into how knowledge is produced in digital- and science-oriented economies, and the increasing diversification of higher education, indicates that the role of academia now ranges “from the most speci
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