Background: The wellbeing of college students today is at risk because of rising occurrences of mental health issues in higher education. Concurrently, undergraduate students perceive engineering courses and programs to be among the most arduous, and least welcoming and accommodating, in higher education. Although research related to mental health and wellbeing (MHW) in engineering is growing, a systematic review of this research has yet to be conducted.Purpose: This systematic literature review identifies and synthesizes empirical scholarship related to the MHW of undergraduate engineering students.Scope/Method: Specified search terms and inclusion criteria were used to identify 34 empirical studies related to engineering undergraduates' MHW. Content and qualitative thematic analyses were conducted to characterize and synthesize trends in research quality and outcomes across studies.Results: Undergraduate engineering students experience a variety of mental health issues that negatively affect their experiences in engineering education. Stress is the most prevalent mental health issue identified; anxiety, depression, and post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are also reported. Heavy academic workloads, sleep issues, and the nature of engineering education culture are identified as impediments to MHW in engineering education.Conclusions: Although MHW in engineering is a growing area of research internationally, current MHW research in engineering is nascent and focused on the characterization of student mental health issues. Researchers underutilize qualitative and mixed‐methods approaches, longitudinal and experimental designs, guiding frameworks, and robust sampling techniques. Academic and mindfulness interventions, as well as the use of mental wellness constructs from positive psychology, show promise for supporting MHW in engineering.

The Corona Virus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) catalyzed a global shift to distance education known as an emergency transition to remote teaching (ERT). While prior research investigates students' experiences during traditional online learning, fewer studies examine students' affective responses (i.e., feelings, emotions) to those experiences, particularly when remote learning is unexpected and unplanned. To understand how science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) undergraduates responded affectively to the COVID-19 ERT, researchers generated open-ended survey data with 1340 undergraduates (253 female) in 27 courses across seven U.S. institutions. Using an inductive qualitative approach, researchers developed a three-tier thematic model to synthesize the self-reported reasons underlying participants’ affective responses to the COVID-19 ERT. Findings reveal a complex mix of positive and negative emotional responses among participants that included frequent occurrences of feelings of stress and uncertainty traced to a variety of external, internal, and contextual factors. Implications for STEM teaching practice are discussed.

Engineering education is perceived to be a tough field of study with detrimental effects on the mental health of undergraduate engineering students. High levels of anxiety and depression are reported among this population. Overall, mental health research is often biased toward looking at mental health from a deficit perspective and investigating mental health as a negative phenomenon. This trend also persists in engineering education research. The purpose of this exploratory study, therefore, is to investigate the condition of subjective wellbeing (SWB) of undergraduate engineering students to understand the factors that they perceive as positively contributing to their overall wellbeing in an engineering college environment. Qualitative data from eight undergraduate engineering students interviewed in fall 2021 in the college of engineering at a land grant public institution in the western USA were thematically analyzed. The resulting 11 themes were then re-grouped and conceptualized into 7 factors (faculty support, learning experiences, support environment, financial support, engineering practice opportunities, task organization, and task orientation) for clear mapping, understanding, and explanation. The outcomes from this research have positive implications for the SWB of undergraduate engineering students, with support from their educational institutions.