WIP: Relationship Between Students’ Demographics and Manufacturing Career Perceptions

Chidubem Nuela Enebechi; Greg J. Strimel; Liesl Klein; Sydney Taylor Serban

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Conference: 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
Location: Virtual On line
Publication Date: June 22, 2020
Start Date: June 22, 2020
End Date: June 26, 2021
Conference Session: Pre-college Engineering Education Division Technical Session 9
Tagged Division: Pre-College Engineering Education
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 7
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--35567
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/35567
Download Count: 403

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Paper Authors

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Chidubem Nuela Enebechi Purdue University, West Lafayette

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Chidubem Nuela Enebechi is a first-year Ph.D. student in Industrial Engineering at Purdue University. She is an international student from Nigeria, and she received her bachelor's in Computer Science at Minnesota State University Moorhead. Nuela’s research interests focus on understanding the relationship between students’ demographics and manufacturing career perceptions, Machine Learning, Computer Vission among many others. In her spare time, Nuela enjoys, traveling, running marathons, and various outdoor activities.

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Greg J. Strimel Purdue University, West Lafayette orcid.org/0000-0002-4847-4526

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Greg J. Strimel, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of Technology Leadership and Innovation and coordinator of the Design and Innovation Minor at Purdue University. Dr. Strimel conducts research on design pedagogy, cognition, and assessment as well as the preparation of K-12 engineering teachers.

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Liesl Klein Purdue University, West Lafayette

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Liesl Krause is a current Ph.D. student at Purdue University in the Polytechnic Institute. She is currently funded through the Purdue Doctoral Fellowship. She has research interests in student career perceptions and student mentorship in graduate school. Liesl graduated from Villanova University in 2016 with her Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering and graduated from Purdue University's Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering in 2018 with her Master's.

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Sydney Taylor Serban Purdue University, West Lafayette

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Sydney Serban is an undergraduate student at Purdue University, where she majors in Mechanical Engineering Technology and double minors in Dance and Design & Innovation. In addition to her studies, Sydney has been an undergraduate researcher through Purdue Polytechnic Institute for the past two years.

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Abstract

While manufacturing continues to be considered the backbone of economic growth in the United States (Nadine & Gielczyk, 2018), manufacturers continue to express concerns related to the availability of a skilled workforce to fill the projected workforce demands—3.5 million available manufacturing jobs by the year 2025 (The Manufacturing Institute & Deloitte, 2015). The 2018 report by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute revealed that manufacturing executives believe there to be three main factors contributing to this concern: (1) the retirement of the baby boomer population, (2) the shifting skills sets related to the digitalization of manufacturing, and (3) the misperceptions that children and their parents hold of manufacturing jobs. Specific to concern number three, research has shown that society seems to hold a negative perception of manufacturing careers, which likely prevents many potential workers from entering the field (Bosman & Strimel, 2018; Deloitte, 2017; Krause & Strimel, 2019). There have been recommendations to establish industry-education partnerships starting as early as an elementary school in both formal and informal settings (Deloitte & the Manufacturing Institute, 2018). While there are numerous outreach initiatives related to career exposure and awareness, specifically in the arena of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education, there is a lack of research focused on how such initiatives can influence a child’s perception of manufacturing and how this is related to their upbringing, community, culture, and general demographics. This study sought to determine the relationship between students’ career perceptions of the manufacturing industry and their demographic characteristics. A Manufacturing Career Perception Survey was administered to K-12 students before and after a weeklong manufacturing outreach program titled Manufacturing Week. The significance of how each participant’s response changed from pre-survey to post-survey was determined by individual demographics using one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Additional descriptive analyses were also carried out to better understand the ways that the participants responded to each survey question. For this study, the demographics considered were gender and ethnicity. The genders in this study were defined as Male/Female while the ethnicities were Caucasian/Minority. Participants from Minority backgrounds were all classified under one group category for data analysis purposes. This analysis can provide additional insight into how demographic backgrounds can be linked to how students perceive manufacturing careers. Recommendations will be suggested for future studies and outreach programs for equitable educational practices related to manufacturing career awareness and exposure.

Citation
Format

Enebechi, C. N., & Strimel, G. J., & Klein, L., & Serban, S. T. (2020, June), WIP: Relationship Between Students’ Demographics and Manufacturing Career Perceptions Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--35567

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - While manufacturing continues to be considered the backbone of economic growth in the United States (Nadine &amp;amp; Gielczyk, 2018), manufacturers continue to express concerns related to the availability of a skilled workforce to fill the projected workforce demands—3.5 million available manufacturing jobs by the year 2025 (The Manufacturing Institute &amp;amp; Deloitte, 2015). The 2018 report by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute revealed that manufacturing executives believe there to be three main factors contributing to this concern: (1) the retirement of the baby boomer population, (2) the shifting skills sets related to the digitalization of manufacturing, and (3) the misperceptions that children and their parents hold of manufacturing jobs. Specific to concern number three, research has shown that society seems to hold a negative perception of manufacturing careers, which likely prevents many potential workers from entering the field (Bosman &amp;amp; Strimel, 2018; Deloitte, 2017; Krause &amp;amp; Strimel, 2019). There have been recommendations to establish industry-education partnerships starting as early as an elementary school in both formal and informal settings (Deloitte &amp;amp; the Manufacturing Institute, 2018). While there are numerous outreach initiatives related to career exposure and awareness, specifically in the arena of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education, there is a lack of research focused on how such initiatives can influence a child’s perception of manufacturing and how this is related to their upbringing, community, culture, and general demographics. This study sought to determine the relationship between students’ career perceptions of the manufacturing industry and their demographic characteristics. A Manufacturing Career Perception Survey was administered to K-12 students before and after a weeklong manufacturing outreach program titled Manufacturing Week. The significance of how each participant’s response changed from pre-survey to post-survey was determined by individual demographics using one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Additional descriptive analyses were also carried out to better understand the ways that the participants responded to each survey question. For this study, the demographics considered were gender and ethnicity. The genders in this study were defined as Male/Female while the ethnicities were Caucasian/Minority. Participants from Minority backgrounds were all classified under one group category for data analysis purposes. This analysis can provide additional insight into how demographic backgrounds can be linked to how students perceive manufacturing careers. Recommendations will be suggested for future studies and outreach programs for equitable educational practices related to manufacturing career awareness and exposure. 
AU  - Chidubem Nuela Enebechi
AU  - Greg J. Strimel
AU  - Liesl Klein
AU  - Sydney Taylor Serban
CY  - Virtual On line 
DA  - 2020/06/22
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - WIP: Relationship Between Students’ Demographics and Manufacturing Career Perceptions
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/35567
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--35567
ER  -