Bridging the Gap: A Mixed-Methods Study of Engineering Internships Through Surveys and Interviews

Undergraduate students in engineering often seek industry internships to expand their knowledge of industry and apply skills they have learned from their education.Existing research reports that students have an overall positive experience and experience learning gains in their internships.However, existing research has two important gaps.First, most research relies on surveys alone for data collection, with no subsequent interviews.Interviews provide more in-depth information on student experiences.Second, most research focuses on the overall experience and skills that students learned in internships, with few further investigations on specific aspects that contribute to the overall experience of student internships.The present study addresses these research gaps by using a mixedmethods approach involving surveys and semi-structured interviews with a group of engineering students who recently completed their summer industry internships.The results from surveys show an overall positive experience for student interns and found potential challenges, benefits, and perceptions that students reported from their internship experiences.The results from interviews further reveal that the main challenge students faced was with the organization of industry versus the more familiar organization of academia.Students noted a lot more freedom in their internships and looked to their industry mentors to help create structure.The main benefit students noted from their internships was being offered long-term employment or extensions of their internships from the companies they interned with.Students noted an overall positive perception of internships and emphasized that the importance of having an internship was for them to reach their educational goals.The findings generated from the present study not only corroborate the generally positive perception of student internships reported in the literature but also provide new insights into the multifaceted nature of student internship experiences, especially challenges and personal growth opportunities.