Gender and Diversity aspects in Engineering Education and their impact on the design of engineering curricula

Today's global transformation processes and sustainability issues, lead to challenges and modified competence requirements that the engineering sciences have to face. In addition to digitalization as a major influencing factor, graduates need to be prepared to develop complex and interdisciplinary solutions in teams. Engineering sciences have to take up the challenges to provide suitable engineering curricula for a divers and a broader target group (e.g. non-technical and female students); especially in light of the current shortage of qualified specialists. As a consequence, there is a need for evidence-based innovative curriculum design dealing with diversity and heterogeneous target groups and encouraging interdisciplinary approaches. This paper contributes threefold to that discourse on transformation processes and diversity aspects in Engineering Education: (1) by considering gender-specific data in Engineering Higher Education and Engineering Education Research (EER); (2) by presenting a qualitative study, which analyses gender-specific curriculum design requirements; and (3) by introducing a research-based bachelor's program for a diverse target group.