CAREER: Strengthening Workforce Ecosystems by Understanding Self-Adjustment Experiences Among Community College Students in Engineering Technology Pathways

Despite substantial national investment in advanced manufacturing, semiconductor production, automation, and other emerging technical sectors, comparatively little is known about how students move from community and technical colleges into four-year institutions or the workforce through engineering technology pathways. These transitions will be especially important as employers adopt artificial intelligence (AI), advanced data systems, and rapidly changing production technologies that require workers to adapt to new tools, processes, and expectations. Students in these pathways will often need to manage academic, professional, financial, and personal demands while navigating unfamiliar institutional and workplace environments. This project will examine how students respond to those demands, where they encounter the greatest barriers, and what types of educational and workforce support will help them continue and succeed. The work will align with NSF's Faculty Early Career Development Program by integrating research, education, mentoring, and partnership development within the principal investigator's long-term research agenda. It will also advance the mission of the Division of Engineering Education and Centers within the Directorate for Engineering by generating new knowledge about student learning, adjustment, persistence, and progression in engineering technology education. Co-funding from NSF's Advanced Technological Education program will reflect the project's direct relevance to community and technical colleges and to the preparation of the skilled technical workforce needed in advanced manufacturing, semiconductor technology, automation, and related fields. NSF investment will generate evidence, practical resources, and sustained partnerships that colleges, workforce organizations, and employers will be able to use to strengthen engineering technology pathways and better prepare students for rapidly changing technical careers. This CAREER project will develop the Self-Adjustment in Engineering Education (SAEE) model, a longitudinal and theory-driven framework for understanding how community and technical college students will respond to the challenges and opportunities associated with educational and career transitions in engineering technology pathways. The project will address questions about how students will experience self-adjustment across stages of degree progression; how their strategies, decisions, and perceptions will change over time; and how institutional and workforce conditions will shape those experiences. The research will use a multiphase, longitudinal qualitative design. Phase A will use cross-sectional interviews at four community and technical colleges in Florida, Texas, and Wisconsin to examine variation across institutions and stages of progression. Phase B will follow a cohort of students for two to three years through biannual interviews and journey-mapping activities as participants move into four-year institutions or the workforce. Phase C will analyze institutional documents and conduct interviews with educators, advisors, and workforce partners to characterize the systems that influence student transitions. Phase D will engage students, educators, and workforce leaders in developing and piloting a Student Self-Adjustment Toolkit through participatory workshops and structured feedback. The study will use Constructivist Grounded Theory and will draw on self-organization and ecosystem perspectives, with guidance from an advisory board and ongoing formative evaluation. Partnerships with FloridaMakes-FLATE, community and technical colleges, state-level workforce organizations, and a national workforce development institute will support recruitment, interpretation, implementation, and dissemination. Expected outcomes will include the SAEE model, practice-ready advising and student-support resources, a student-designed virtual learning module, student workshops, an open-access repository, peer-reviewed publications, and conference presentations. The project will contribute a new conceptual approach for studying student adjustment in engineering education while establishing a sustainable structure for translating research into practice across engineering technology and workforce development settings. This project is jointly funded by the Research in the Formation of Engineers program in the Engineering Directorate and the Advanced Technological Education program in the STEM Education Directorate. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.