Motivating Students to Pursue Transportation Careers

Abstract

General lack of awareness of the transportation profession and of its diversity of content has been cited as critical issues affecting transportation workforce recruitment. University engineering programs have a crucial role in recruitment and training of the next generation of transportation professionals, but in focusing mostly on automobile travel, undergraduate transportation engineering courses do not properly introduce students to the multimodal, environmental, and public service facets of the profession. Moreover, several surveys have cited that engineering students aspire to careers in which they can make a difference in the world, improve the lives of others, and better the natural environment. Service learning is one way to link course content better with students' motivation to study a subject while introducing non-traditional transportation engineering concepts in an effort to increase students' awareness of the diverse nature of the profession. This paper showcases how a transit feasibility study for Joshua Tree National Park was framed as a service-learning project and documents the lessons learned in facilitating student and community stakeholder involvement. A survey of student job placement after graduation showed that many of the participating students went on to transportation-related careers, as compared with their peers who had not participated. Although this unique service-learning project cannot be replicated exactly, it is a good model for forming future projects that highlight the multifaceted roles of transportation professionals and better leverage students' intrinsic motivation so that they persist through their degree programs to become members of the transportation workforce.