Preparing for Engineering Work: Interpersonal Relationships in the School to Work Transition.

Research on engineering work emphasizes the centrality of collaboration in practice, and research on students’ transition from school to work highlights the deep social and organizational learning new engineers experience as they build the working relationships needed to function effectively in their roles. Yet even as engineering programs incorporate communication and teamwork into curricula, little work has been done to examine how students learn to build such relationships as they move from the relational structures of school to those in contemporary workplaces. To better understand this transition, this paper draws on data from a multi-institution study that followed graduates from four U.S. universities through their first year of engineering work, including reflective journals from participants’ first three months and interviews at 3, 6, and 12 months of work. The findings highlight three critical themes that characterize participants challenges related to interpersonal communication at work: 1) building working relationships with a diverse set of colleagues, 2) managing negative relationships, and 3) interacting with appropriate confidence. The findings point to the importance of targeted mentoring and collaborative projects that emphasize workplace cultures in undergraduate education. While such learning often happens in the design projects students undertake in their final year ("capstone" or "senior design"), it also points to the need for sustained attention to these skills throughout the curriculum.