Engineering Specialty
Engineering identity is known to relate professional and educational persistence. Students have the welfare of belonging to the community of engineering professionals which is important in identifying oneself (Williams, n.d.). My engineering specialty is Mechanical engineering; I am a mechanical engineer by profession.
The Relationship between Cultural Identity and Engineering Identity
There is a correlation between the profession identity and the cultural identity. Identifying oneself as an engineer result from the culture that one comes from or what people used to follow or believe. For instance, the community of blacksmiths. People in this culture do local metal work such as bending/straightening of metals to make tools for hunting or farming. This is a culture that gives one the original identity (CAPOBIANCO, FRENCH & DIEFES-DU, 2012)
In this culture, metal work is done on a small scale to suit the demand of the community. In mechanical engineering, metalwork involves a lot more in design, production, and management of voluminous work. These include sheet metal work, forging, planning, machining, drilling, bending, casting, etc. On the hand the cultural aspect of metal involves smelting, bending, forging and drilling on a small scale. Engineering as a profession has a wide variety of knowledge and experts that specialize in a particular field.
Similarly, in a community, for example, not every individual is a medicine man or a blacksmith for that matter. The cultural identity is known to a particular ancient entity only, while engineering identity combines both the old and the present aspects of life, especially in technology. In both identities, it is only the level of activity that brings variation and, more importantly, the issue of age ("Engineering identity as a developmental process" by Kerry L Meyers", 2016)
Cultural Factors that Influence the Choice of my Engineering Profession
A cultural factor is an original identification based on the community where one originates. A career in life is mostly chosen from the environment where one exists. One can copy the simplest ideas around, incorporate in oneself and he/she may find it useful and from then, the career begins. There are some factors that facilitated the choice of my profession.
Firstly, in the community where I come from there was this watermill which used to serve the community for milling maize flour. The design of this system is such that the water drives some wheels, and this rotation is transmitted to the grinding stones above it. The big stones that grind each other at an angle are fed simultaneously with maize grains which are then grounded to produce flour. From the time of realization of how that work, I began to develop some interests on some physics of rotation and finally engineering.
Another factor that culminated me in engineering was a neighbor who owned a car. When I was young, truthfully, my heartfelt desire was to own a car. From the fact that the neighbor had a car because of him being an engineer gave me the greatest motivation at that time. The idea procreated, and I ended up making prototypes of cars and bicycles and not to mention the many toys I could own at a time. Thirdly, the factor that prompted me into this profession was the pass mark in high school. I met the cut-off point to the university and the minimum cluster points needed in a mechanical engineering course. This factor among others validated the desire for me being an engineer by profession (CAPOBIANCO, FRENCH & DIEFES-DU, 2012)
References
CAPOBIANCO, B., FRENCH, B., & DIEFES-DU, H. (2012). Engineering Identity Development among Pre-Adolescent Learners. Journal of Engineering Education, 101(4), 698-716. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2012.tb01125.x
"Engineering identity as a developmental process" by Kerry L Meyers. (2016). Docs.lib.purdue.edu. Retrieved 10 March 2016, from http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/dissertations/AAI3403137/
Margolis, J., & Kotys-Schwartz, D. (2008). The attrition of engineering graduates: An exploratory study on influential career choice factors.
Meyers, K., Ohland, M., Pawley, A., Silliman, S., & Smith, K. (2012). Factors relating to engineering identity. Global Journal of Engineering Education, 14(1). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258239081_Factors_relating_to_engineering_identity
Williams, B. Engineering practice in a global context.
