In the paper ‘Co-op education and the impact on the behaviors and competencies of undergraduate engineering students’, Dr. Nassif E. Rayess, Dr. David Pistrui, Dr. Ron Bonnstetter and Dr. Eric T. Gehrig used TTI Success Insights’ TriMetrix DNA assessment to gauge the effect of an internship experience on undergraduate students’ behaviors and competencies.
Of the 23 competencies surveyed, all are below national means and their mastery. There are a few exceptions, as a group, is extremely low but please keep in mind that they are being compared to a national workforce mean and not other first-year college students. Nebraska’s College of Engineering was one of the first programs in the nation to gather this data. So, comparison to similar groupings is nearly impossible. More importantly, while documenting student entry levels is useful, what is crucial is identifying what skills our students gain as a result of their programs of study. This study opens many questions that only longitudinal studies can address.
