About

David B. Knight currently serves as the interim dean for the College of Engineering and is a professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. His educational background includes a Ph.D. in Higher Education from Pennsylvania State University, obtained in 2012, a Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia in 2009, and a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia in 2006. His research focuses on promoting a systems view of engineering education, with an emphasis on improving the efficiency, effectiveness, and inclusiveness of the field. Knight established the Virginia Tech Data Enlightened Educational Practice (DEEP) Lab, which aims to be a leading research entity in engineering education. His macro-scale research leverages large-scale institutional, state, and national data sets, and considers the intersection between policy and organizational contexts. He currently serves as the co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Engineering Education.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Social Science
• Engineering
• Psychology
• Engineering ethics
• Engineering management
• Medical education
• Medicine
• Artificial Intelligence
• Management
• Demography
• Knowledge management
• Geography
• Public relations
• Management science
• Social psychology
• Epistemology
• Pedagogy

Selected publications

• BOARD # 405: NSF HBCU-UP: STEM Academy for Research and Entrepreneurship at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff

  2025-08-21

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Agentic Actions and Agentic Perspectives Among Fellowship-Funded Engineering Doctoral Students

  Education Sciences · 2025-10-15 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In the US and Europe, institutions, foundations and governments invest significant financial resources in doctoral fellowships. Unlike other graduate funding mechanisms, fellowships are typically not tied to specific projects or job responsibilities and thus may afford more agency to students. We examined how fellowship funding contributes to or undermines agency of doctoral student recipients. We interviewed 23 US engineering doctoral students primarily funded on a fellowship for at least one semester. We qualitatively analyzed the interviews, using inductive and deductive methods of coding. Participants described increased flexibility with their projects, advisor, and personal life; additional access to physical resources, people and networks, and research experiences; and feelings of internal validation and external recognition from fellowship awards. Contexts of advising, timing of fellowship, source of fellowship, financial circumstances, and fellowship structure influenced their experiences. Agentic perspectives and actions included choice of advisor and research projects, switching advisors if necessary, completing internships and visiting other labs, and enjoying a higher standard of living. Advisor support is a necessity for students funded on fellowships. Multi-year fellowships from external sources, in comparison to internal sources, more often supported agency. We make recommendations for institutions to structure and administer fellowships to better support students.

  PublisherDOI

• Senior Software Engineering Students’ Understanding of Design

  2025-08-21

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  PublisherDOI

• Grading on a Curve: Understanding Why Dual Credit Course Grades Differ Across Instructors and Delivery Contexts

  2025-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Understanding How Skill Development During Graduate School Can Prepare Students for Engineering Industry Career Pathways  

  2025-08-21 · 1 citations

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  PublisherDOI

• BOARD # 275: NSF IUSE: Advancing Student-Centered Teaching for Disciplinary Knowledge Building in Engineering

  2025-08-21

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Synergistic organizational influences: how universities strategically prepare graduate students for industry, government, and non-profit careers

  Higher Education · 2025-11-19

  articleOpen access

  Abstract A majority of engineering postgraduate students (Master’s and PhD) enter into jobs in industry, government, and non-profit organizations. However, most postgraduate programming is geared toward careers in academia. Our study examines how universities prepare engineering postgraduate students for careers outside of academia. We draw on interview data with administrators across 11 institutions and leverage an existing framework for organizational influences to identify how institutions leverage their organizational characteristics, organizational culture, and/or management strategies to prepare engineering postgraduate students for these careers. The highest-impact efforts were those that synergistically leveraged at least two organizational influences, such as utilizing an industry advisory board to design career-relevant curricula. We conclude with recommendations for how institutions can help their students be prepared for these career sectors.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• <scp>JEE</scp>'s role in publishing high quality engineering education research

  Journal of Engineering Education · 2025-07-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We interrogated the full submission-to-publication process to honor the resource limitations of authors, reviewers, and editorial board members and to reduce the overall time to publication. As of May 2025, the median time from initial submission to publication declined by 120 days relative to 2024 (a reduction of 28%) and by 208 days relative to 2023 (a reduction of 40%), and we anticipate further reductions given some of our recent process changes. Shifts in our processes have included the following: We continue to reflect upon and seek to improve how JEE serves the broader engineering education research community. If you are interested in joining the editorial board, please reach out to us—we are always working on building our team. And most importantly, we appreciate that authors from around the globe choose to share their work in JEE and keep it a top destination for high quality engineering education research. The JEE editorial board has the challenging task of selecting one article from a volume to recognize with the William Elgin Wickenden Award of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), named in honor of William Elgin Wickenden, engineer, educator, philosopher, administrator, and humanitarian. All articles published within a volume are automatically considered for the award. Congratulations to Darryl A. Dickerson, Stephanie Masta, Matthew W. Ohland, and Alice L. Pawley for their article “Is Carla grumpy? Analysis of peer evaluations to explore microaggressions and other marginalizing behaviors in engineering student teams,” which was published in the July 2024 issue (https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20606) for earning the 2024 William Elgin Wickenden Award of the American Society for Engineering Education! Many thanks to Senior Associate Editor Bill Williams and Deputy Editor Adam Carberry for co-chairing the selection process and Wickenden Award committee members Walter Lee, Alex Mejia, and Natalie Wint. We also appreciate the entire JEE editorial board for participating in this challenging task of identifying one paper to recognize out of an entire volume of excellent research contributions. The peer review process is a fundamental feature of JEE and a critical activity within the research process. As we have described previously (Knight & Main, 2024), the peer review process helps all of us vet and improve our ideas, communicate more clearly, and often times helps us draw out how findings represent unique contributions that extend, refute, or provide new insights within engineering education research. We do not believe that engaging in peer review should be thought of as a tack-on academic obligation. Rather, we believe engaging in peer review is an activity that is core to the mission of engineering education research and a professional responsibility of being an engaged member of the field. If you would like to join our reviewer database, please let us know here: tinyurl.com/ReviewForJEE. We enjoy highlighting a few members of the JEE community each year to recognize outstanding contributions. We would be remiss, however, not to acknowledge everyone in the community for helping continue to make JEE a top destination globally for sharing engineering education research. All of our authors, reviewers, editorial board members, and readers play critical roles, and we appreciate you. We are saying a fond farewell and thank you to our colleagues who have rotated off the editorial board over the past few issues. We deeply appreciate the service of Deputy Editor Denise Simmons, Senior Associate Editor Noah Schroeder, Associate Editor Brandon Collier-Reed, Associate Editor Camilo Vieira, Assistant Editor Brian McSkimming, and Senior Associate Editor Bill Williams. We are pleased to welcome several new members to the JEE Editorial Board: Christopher Wright as Associate Editor (Drexel University), Jacqueline Rohde as Associate Editor (Georgia Tech), Roland Tormey as Associate Editor (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland), Teresa Hattingh as Associate Editor (Engineering Council of South Africa), Cijy Sunny as Assistant Editor (Florida Gulf Coast University), Eunsil Lee as Assistant Editor (University of Buffalo), and Assad Iqbal as Assistant Editor (Purdue University). We also are pleased to announce that Catherine Berdanier was promoted to Senior Associate Editor (Pennsylvania State University), Angie Minichiello was promoted to Senior Associate Editor (Utah State University), and Cassandra McCall was promoted to Associate Editor (Utah State University).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Differential graduate student-advisor career mentorship for academic vs. non-academic careers

  2025-08-21 · 1 citations

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  PublisherDOI

• Exploring how personal and program characteristics inform the experiences of engineering students abroad

  Journal of Engineering Education · 2024-12-09 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Background As more universities seek to offer international experiences for engineering students, it is important to design such programs to effectively support student learning abroad. Previous research on study abroad has focused on a limited number of outcomes and therefore failed to consider the diversity of experiences students may have in the same program and the range of learning outcomes they may develop while abroad. Purpose We explored student experiences across multiple types of engineering study abroad programs to address the research question: How do the types of significant experiences students highlighted from their time abroad differ based on student and/or program characteristics? Method We interviewed 79 engineering students after completing their study abroad programs using the critical incident technique to identify significant experiences from their time abroad. We used multiple rounds of coding to characterize the critical incidents identified by students and then compared the frequency of our main themes across student and program characteristics. Results We found that student experiences differed across both personal and program characteristics, in particular students' prior travel experiences, program duration, and the destination's cultural distance from the United States. Conclusions Our findings can inform the design of global engineering programs, which should consider the impact of program characteristics on student experiences and employ a variety of pedagogies to accommodate differences in students' needs and prior experiences. We also argue that it is important to consider students' experiences more holistically in research and evaluation of global engineering programs.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Gatekeepers to Broadening Participation in Engineering: Investigating variation across high schools comparing who could go versus who does go into engineering

  NSF · $590k · 2017–2021

• Research: Collaborative Research: Non-Academic Career Paths of Master’s and PhD Engineers

  NSF · $191k · 2021–2026

• Strengthening the STEM Pipeline for Elementary School African Americans, Hispanics, and Girls by Scaling Up Summer Engineering Experiences

  NSF · $646k · 2016–2020

• Collaborative research: Variation in the awarding and effectiveness of STEM graduate student funding across teaching and research assistantships, fellowships, and traineeships

  NSF · $749k · 2015–2021

• Understanding and Diversifying Transfer Student Pathways to Engineering Degrees

  NSF · $293k · 2014–2018

Frequent coauthors

• Brian Novoselich

  United States Military Academy

  856 shared

• Walter Lee

  Purdue University System

  334 shared

• Maura Borrego

  140 shared

• Dustin Grote

  Clemson University

  118 shared

• Allison Godwin

  Purdue University West Lafayette

  78 shared

• Dina Verdín

  Arizona State University

  75 shared

• Andrea Ogilvie

  Mitchell Institute

  75 shared

• Maya Denton

  University of Oklahoma

  73 shared

Labs

• Engineering EducationPI

Education

• PhD, Higher Education

  Pennsylvania State University

  2012

• MS, Environmental Sciences

  University of Virginia

  2009

• MUEP, Urban & Environmental Planning

  University of Virginia

  2009

• BS, Environmental Sciences

  University of Virginia

  2006