Volunteerism in Engineering Students and Its Relation to Social Responsibility

Abstract

Addressing how engineering students view their role in society, their social responsibility, is seen as a central aspect toward creating holistic engineers who are able to address complex social issues.The Professional Social Responsibility Development Model (PSRDM) provides a framework for social responsibility development in engineers.Included in this model is a cycle where feelings of professional obligation to help others are enhanced through engaging in service.This study set out to characterize volunteerism among engineering students and to attempted to relate community service activities with views of social responsibility.Data for this study were collected through the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment (EPRA) which was developed to operationalize the PSRDM.The survey was distributed to undergraduate engineering students at 17 universities in the spring of 2014.Over 1880 undergraduate students from a diversity of majors and academic ranks completed the survey, including Likert-type items measuring their views of social responsibility and detailing their previous volunteer histories by both activity and frequency.Students reported their level of participation in 17 different volunteer or community service activities during college, or could write-in their own activity.The most frequently cited activities were: unpaid tutoring of college students; tutoring elementary or secondary children, and donating blood (40-47%).A high percentage of students (25-35%) also participated in service-learning projects, community service via a professional society (ASCE, ASME, AAEE, etc.), unpaid coaching or sports camp volunteer, food bank volunteer, or a short term on-site service project (i.e.spring break service trip, EWB/ESW in-country work).Thirty-six percent of the students also wrote-in a unique service activity.The median activity level during college for most of these common community service activities was more than twice but not routinely.Only 6.5% of the students reported no level of participation in volunteer or community service activities.

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