Readying the Workforce: Engineering Veteran Graduate Student Experiences Pivoting Towards Research

Various incarnations of the G.I. Bill program have helped generations of veterans to pursue higher education post-discharge. In recent years, there has also been increased attention to the need for integrating military students into research. Industry and the military have long recognized that machines, materials, and processes constantly grow in complexity; customer expectations do as well. Many Student Veterans had exposure and familiarity with complex military systems and could put this practical experience to use in higher education. Such students are often well suited to engage in graduate research and bring technical knowledge from real world experiences. Once a veteran or active-duty student makes a commitment to attend a graduate program, there are a number of activities and processes employed both before they arrive and during their time on campus to make them part of the research community and to ensure they graduate in accordance with their professional timeline. The focus of these efforts is to create a culture of open communication with potential student veterans and to increase engagement of these students with faculty, engineering professionals, and peers to matriculate them into the graduate research community. Through the lens of organizational theory, this work in progress report examines graduate engineering student experiences at Penn State University, a large, public, research-intensive institution in the northeast United States, with respect to graduate research pathways and research education using mixed methods surveys of both faculty and veteran graduate students. Preliminary findings from a prior study suggest a need for engineering faculty to reconceptualize how they approach the selection and retention of student veterans pursuing research-based graduate degrees. This paper will be useful to student veterans, faculty research advisors, and administrators alike to help inform policy, student support, and best practices.