Report to Outcomes Assessment Committee

College of Engineering

2002-2003 Special Alumni Survey Segment on Liberal Education

Robert J. Gustafson

Edward McCaul

11 November 2003

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Based on a focused survey on liberal education for engineers, that was completed by 373 College of Engineering alumni during the spring of 2003, four main observations can be made.

All four are consistent across year group, gender, and ethnicity. Our graduates report that:

the courses they take for their liberal education requirement can best serve them by giving them the ability to effectively communicate both in writing and orally. The ability to communicate effectively was by far the highest rated and most mentioned subject.
they need a solid foundation in ethics and professionalism. Ethics and professionalism was the second highest rated subject as well as the fourth highest recipient of comments on what should be changed in the liberal education portion of our curriculum.
courses need to be more applicable to their chosen profession of engineering. Many of the individuals who rated certain subjects low commented that they did so as it was not made applicable their perceived needs.
emphasis needs to be given to an international or global perspective in our liberal education. For example, many of our graduates feel that learning about global diversity/world affairs was as important than learning about diversity within the United States.

This survey highlights the opportunities for improvement in the liberal education of our engineering students. It also points to subjects, e. g. communications, ethics and professionalism, and internationalism, which can receive increased emphasized within our own major courses as well.

Background

Based on results of the previous College of Engineering Alumni Surveys (2^nd, 6^th and 15^th year) and feedback from other sources, the Outcomes Assessment Committee requested that a special survey be sent with the regular alumni survey to study the nature of the difference between perceived importance verses preparation of College of Engineering B.S. graduates in the area of liberal education. The goal of the study was to give guidance to our programs on ways to reduce the gap and to assist in the reevaluation of engineering’s liberal arts requirements. This is one of six areas where gaps between Ability/Preparation and Importance were identified from recent alumni surveys. It is related to ABET EC 2003 Criterion 3. (h) “the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global and societal context” and Criterion 3 (j) “a knowledge of contemporary issues”.

An alumni survey was developed (full copy in Appendix 1). The survey was designed to address two main issues:

1) what importance alumni place on various liberal education topics, and

2) the best way of addressing liberal education in the engineering curriculum.

The elements of the survey were:

Asking respondents to indicate how they would rate ten liberal education topics from not important, somewhat important, important, very important, and extremely important.
Asking respondents to indicate from 0 – 8 how many courses should be taken in any one of the topics they had previously rated with the total number of possible courses equaling 8.
An open-ended question asking ‘what liberal education courses did you find to be of most value to you’.
An open-ended question asking ‘what liberal education courses did you find to be of least value to you’.
An open-ended question asking ‘what changes would you recommend to our liberal education curriculum’.

After being reviewed by the Outcomes Assessment Committee the survey was included as an extra one-page with the 2002-2003 alumni surveys. Surveys were mailed to engineering alumni of the 2^nd (2000), 6^th (1996), and 15^th (1987) year alumni groups based on addresses maintained by the Ohio State University Alumni Association. For the general survey, 377 useable surveys were returned, while for the special survey segment 373 useable surveys returned. This rate of return was high when compared to previous special surveys. (Professional and Ethical Responsibility survey 249 returns out of 344 total submitted, Business survey 392 returns out of 430 submitted)

Alumni Year	No. Mailed	Survey Returned	Percent
2^nd (2000)	579	114	19.7%
6^th (1996)	619	127	20.5%
15^th (1987)	757	132	17.4%
Total	1,955	373	19.1%

Demographics of Respondents

Total Number Returned
Gender	Male	302
	Female	71
Ethnic	African-American	7
	Asia-American	8
	Caucasian	331
	Native-American	1
	Hispanic-American	4
	Foreign (non-US cit)	9
	Other	13
Year of Grad	1987	132
	1996	127
	2000	114
Program	Aero	13
	Aviation	5
	Ceramic	4
	Chemical	32
	Civil	49
	Civil/environmental	10
	CSE	32
	ECE-elec	48
	ECE-comp	3
	Physics	4
	FABE	18
	Geomatics	0
	ISE	53
	MSE	6
	ME	66
	Metallurgical	3
	Surveying	3
	Welding	24

Results

Question A – Given your experience, how would you rate the importance of the following topics in preparing engineering graduates?

Table 1 below summarizes the data for how the respondents rated the importance of the topics in preparing engineering graduates. The table orders the situations by mean of “How Important” from most important to least important using the one to five scale indicated in the Table.

Table 1. Importance of Topics

Topic	Not Important (1)	Somewhat Important (2)	Important (3)	Very Important (4)		Extremely Important (5)	Mean
Writing & Com	0.00%	0.54%	4.83%	31.10%		62.20%	4.59
Ethics & Prof	1.07%	5.09%	20.38%	35.39%		36.73%	4.06
Intl Issues	7.24%	24.40%	38.07%	21.45%		7.51%	3.02
Diversity US	13.14%	21.45%	33.51%	19.03%		10.99%	2.98
Contemp Wld	8.04%	23.86%	38.07%	24.40%		4.29%	2.97
Diversity non W	14.75%	27.08%	32.17%	14.75%		9.38%	2.82
History	9.65%	40.75%	32.71%	12.87%		2.41%	2.62
Foreign Lang	26.27%	29.22%	23.59%	15.01%		4.02%	2.45
Literature	23.06%	40.48%	24.66%	9.12%		0.54%	2.28
V/P Art	36.73%	41.29%	13.94%	5.36%		0.54%	1.95
Note: A small number of people responded with non-integer numbers. Their responses are not included in the count but are included in the mean.
					Mean of means		2.97

Observations:

Writing and Communication Skills as well as Ethics and Professional Responsibility were rated much higher than any other topic. While there are many different ways that these two topics can be covered in the curriculum it is obvious that more emphasis should be put on them than any other liberal arts topic.

Variation by demographic factors were not large (see Appendix 2 - Data Comparison by Gender, Appendix 3 - Data Comparison by Ethnicity, and Appendix 4 - Data Comparison by Year Group), but:

Across all of the different groups Writing and Communication Skills as well as Ethics and Professional Responsibility were rated much higher than any other topic.
Visual and Performing Arts was ranked lowest by males, females, Caucasians, second year, sixth year, and fifteenth year alumni.

Question B – Given 8 courses, how would you divide the courses between the topics? You may indicate any number of courses, 0 – 8, for any topic. For example, as an extreme, you may indicate that all 8 courses should be taken on one topic with all other topics having no courses.

Table 2 indicates the number of courses the respondents felt should be in each topic. The table orders the items by mean rating for the number of courses indicated, most to least.

Table 2. Division of Courses.

	Number of Courses
Topic	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	Mean
Writing & Com	1	29	166	96	44	7	5	0	0	2.56
Ethics & Prof	33	216	90	3	3	0	0	0	0	1.20
History	133	163	46	3	0	0	0	0	0	0.76
Contemp Wld	124	200	10	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.65
Intl Issues	131	196	9	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.63
Foreign Lang	223	70	42	9	2	0	0	0	0	0.55
Diversity US	176	156	7	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.50
Literature	194	142	8	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.46
Diversity non W	234	103	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.32
V/P Art	267	71	6	1	0	0	0	0	0	0.25

Observations:

Writing and Communication Skills as well as Ethics and Professional Responsibility were given substantially more courses than any of the other topics. Overall, allocating eight courses between the ten topics was a confirmation of the information in the importance question.

Question 1 – Based on your experiences, what liberal education courses have you found to be of most value to you?

Question 2 – Based on your experiences, what liberal education courses have you found to be of least value to you?

Content of the written responses to the first two open-ended questions (All comments are listed in Appendices 3 and 4) were categorized by the report authors into thirty-five (35) categories. Results of the full tabulation are in Appendix 5. The thirty-five categories were then further combined into the categories of the current engineering GEC model and an additional category for Other not fitting directly. Results are displayed in Table 3.

	Value
	Most	Least
Writing and Communications (Includes English)