Exploring Opportunities for Innovative Professional Impact: Implementation of a Multidisciplinary Course

Engineering programs offer programmatic opportunities for students to develop the necessary knowledge, skills, attitudes to be prepared as holistic engineers for professional endeavors. Students have numerous career choices available to them after graduation, and there is an opportunity to teach students how to navigate these options and make decisions that align with their professional and personal values and goals. This paper describes the implementation of a new course entitled Pathways to Impact offered at a large university that was created with the formal objective of exposing students to various professional pathway options and decision-making considerations. This course serves to enhance student confidence in understanding the different ways in which they can make an impact throughout their careers, all while creating a learning experience that aims to strengthen students' entrepreneurial mindset. To achieve this objective during the first offering, this course utilized active learning techniques, personal reflection, and the development of an individualized career-impact roadmap by each student. In order to work in conjunction with programming available from existing career centers and academic advising, this interdisciplinary course placed an emphasis on personal reflection and the roles of innovation and technology commercialization in creating societal impact. This paper describes the logistics of developing and implementing this 1-credit hour course and provides details of the assignments used to assess student learning. This course can serve as an example to other institutions who seek to more fully empower their students to understand various career pathways-including through new venture creation, industry, or research and academia-and make career decisions that align with students' personal values and goals.