Students’ Perception of the Link between Their Courses and Future Career

Reflective writing is known to be helpful in enhancing understanding, promoting life-long learning, and shaping students’ identity as future professional engineers. Students a second-year chemical engineering course were asked write reflective paragraph, maximum of one page, on how they expect apply the concepts learned their profession an engineer. This task was introduced students part term project that due last day classes fall 2021 academic year. The reflection portion worth 2% towards final grade course. It should noted this focused technical content there no guidance provided critical writing. class taken by from four different programs including, biological – process option (CHML), bio (CHBE), environmental (ENVL), integrated (IGEN). student reflections qualitatively analyzed using coding thematic analysis identify common themes skills mentioned students. total word count over 52000 and, average, wrote 253 words for assignment, with standard deviation 102 words, minimum 54 629 words. Six key identified. most referred include “sustainability”, “general problem-solving strategy”, “material energy balances (MEB) backbone product design”. These specifically 47%, 40%, 27% students, respectively. As expected, sustainability popular theme between ENVL followed CHML, IGEN CHBE prevalent among strategy” half them saw it main takeaway Almost third CHML program career, where only 25% 10% believed so.