The power of connections: a mixed methods approach to understanding social capital’s influence on engineering students’ professional skills

Providing engineering students with the non-technical professional skills they will need in the workforce, including communication, teamwork, and leadership, requires repeated, contextually embedded development opportunities. Yet, limited research has explored how such opportunities vary by institutional type and academic year, or how students gain access to them. This study examines the relationship between engineering students’ social capital and their access to opportunities to practice their