Examining Calling as a Motivator in Career Decisions: A Comparison of Engineering Graduates from Secular and Christian Undergraduate Institutions

About Examining Calling as a Motivator in Career Decisions: A Comparison of Engineering Graduates from Secular and Christian Undergraduate Institutions

Abstract

The stated mission of many Christian undergraduate engineering schools involves producing engineering graduates who have a distinct orientation towards serving others with their technological knowledge. This other-orientedness is a distinguishing element of the consensus definition of calling in published literature to date. In the present work, persons 5 to 30 years post-graduation from engineering colleges were studied to examine the role that calling as defined by other-orientedness plays in various career decisions they had made. A brief on-line survey was administered to over 600 respondents who had earned an engineering degree, in order to collect information on demographics, attitudes toward engineering and work, religious faith commitment, and willingness to participate in a follow-up interview. Approximately 70 people agreed to participate in a 60-to-90 minute, semi-structured interview. This sub-set was used to select participants for this study. Participants were purposefully selected based on creating a wide distribution of graduation years, gender, and alma mater (14 Christian college alumni and 9 alumni of a public, secular institution). Twenty three interviews were conducted. Interview questions were designed to elicit the role of faith in career-related decision-making, as well as to reveal the presence of a sense of calling, either to engineering or to other life roles. Interviews were analyzed using a constant comparative method of analysis to identify common themes. Results indicate that graduates of Christian colleges did not differ noticeably from persons graduating from secular institutions in their initial reasons for choosing engineering. They also did not differ noticeably in their expression of a sense of calling (expressed as other-orientedness). Only about half of Christian college engineering alumni expressed an orientation towards service to others as a part of their engineering work. In order to better align with Christian college mission statements, faculty and engineering departments at such institutions are encouraged to seek ways to assist engineering students to be better prepared for recognizing and seeking out the other-oriented, service aspects of a professional career in engineering.