Denise Simmons

Shaping the Engineers of 2020

Aligning student preparedness with workplace demands is a common goal amongst universities and colleges; however, engineering industries repeatedly report that that their recently graduated new hires do not possess many attributes necessary for their jobs.

Denise Simmons hopes to change that. Simmons came across this pervasive problem while completing her doctoral work in civil engineering at Clemson University—she read The Engineer of 2020, a book detailing the concepts of competencies that engineers would need by the year 2020, and it captured her imagination. Now she is focusing her research efforts on preparing engineering students for their future careers. 

Simmons is the recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award and drew inspiration for her current project from the NSF’s interest in competencies across engineering. One day she was having an informal conversation with Dr. Nicholas Clegorne, the Director of the Residential Learning Community, about leadership.

“I had heard industry individuals talk for over twenty years about how students were lacking in leadership,” remarked Simmons. “He [Clegorne] thought that it was interesting and together we thought, ‘Let’s form some formal research questions—let’s find why these deficiencies still exist.’”

The Institute of Society, Culture and Environment provided direct seed money to Simmons and Clegorne to look at the problem at its most basic level: how engineering leadership is defined.

“Our hypothesis is that this is where the disconnect will be. The school and industry will define leadership differently, or industry will want X, Y, and Z and the school will only include X. There are missing nuances.”

Simmons and Clegorne preformed an extensive literature review and developed a meta-synthesis of that data. They plan to submit it as a manuscript and have it serve as support for a September NSF application.

The team is looking to build the project out beyond their initial research questions to form a multi-phase interdisciplinary research project to explore engineering leadership competencies. Simmons also has plans for future collaborations to focus on the other competencies of that The Engineer of 2020 promotes, particularly communication.

“Ultimately, what I think the result is, is better prepared students. The common theme of my research is preparing 21st century STEM workforces.”