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One of the things I love about being a grad student at Northwestern McCormick’s MSIT program is that I receive a regular newsletter from the engineering school (although it is apparently available as an RSS feed). In the most recent newsletter was a an article titled Study: Engineering Stereotypes Drive Counterproductive Practices, by Emily Ayshford.

The study was done by Paul Leonardi, the Breed Junior Chair in Design at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, and colleagues at the University of Colorado. What they found was that engineering students would fall into stereotypical behavior they have observed in media or in older students, such as procrastination, working individually on a group project, or bragging about having done a problem without following directions. These behaviors are what students feel they need to do to prove their engineering prowess, but hiring managers are finding that they are counterproductive for the real world workplace.

"There’s a stereotype that engineers do things by themselves," Leonardi says. "So when students are asked to work in teams, they think, am I going to be disadvantaged? When I go to the workplace am I not going to be as valuable?"

In other words, students believed that if they weren’t able to do a project alone, they couldn’t consider themselves an expert engineer. Leonardi and his colleagues often saw groups splitting up group work, even if they were specifically asked to work on it together at the same time.

These findings fascinate me. At least since high school, I have been guilty of such behavior. In grad school, however, I have taken a slightly different approach. I’m still a bit of a procrastinator, but that has little to do with bragging and more to do with some occasionally poor time management. I like to do some of the coursework alone, but the huge amount of group work has been extremely beneficial to me. The chance to interact with others about the topics we’re learning in class has been invaluable, both from a personal learning experience perspective and from a professional networking perspective.

I have definitely found it is important to learn how to work well on a team, and even better to learn how to work well on a team where everyone has different strengths, weaknesses, and personalities. The guy who prefers to work alone or do everything himself only serves to bring the entire team down.

Are there any other stereotypical behaviors you’ve seen in school or in the workplace? Were they in engineering or in another field?

If you’re a geek (and since you’re reading this blog, you must be), then you’re probably at least somewhat interested in the upcoming Windows 7 release from Microsoft. I have been testing Windows 7 Beta and RC for the past few months, and I have to say that it is a lot better than Vista was when it was released a couple of years ago. My main computers still have Windows XP on them because of how bad I thought Vista was. When I return from DC, I have plans to upgrade my desktop at home with Windows 7 RC, now that I finally have everything backed up to a Western Digital Elements 1 TB external HDD.

That being said, if you will be in the market to upgrade your Windows operating system, but not your hardware, Microsoft has a great deal on Windows 7 upgrade licenses. For a limited time, you can pre-order and get 50% or more off of Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade and Windows 7 Professional Upgrade. The offer is good until July 11. Unfortunately, the discount does not apply to Windows 7 Ultimate Upgrade. To get more information and to see which version is right for you, you can check out Amazon.com’s Windows 7 Resources page. Of course, you can always ask me, too.

And as an added bonus, if you purchase Windows 7 through any of the links here, you will be supporting ask-mark.com. Doesn’t that thought make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? I thought so.

With grad school done for the year (one year down, one more to go), I decided to take the afternoon off on Friday. After working in the morning, I headed down to Evanston to have lunch with Abby. We had been talking earlier in the week and had decided on Blind Faith Café, a vegetarian restaurant, for lunch. Those of you who know me might be surprised, but I thought I would give it a try. The short of it: I liked the ratatouille, and the macrobiotic plate didn’t look bad, either. I think I’ll head back down there again and try some more things from the menu, but don’t count on my giving up meat any time soon.