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1. Impacts Resulting from a Large-Scale First-Year Engineering and Computer Science Program on Students’ Successful Persistence Toward Degree Completion

   Ragusa, Gisele; Allen, Emily L.; Menezes, Gustavo B. (June 2020, ASEE Annual Conference Proceedings 2020)

   There is a critical need for more students with engineering and computer science majors to enter into, persist in, and graduate from four-year postsecondary institutions. Increasing the diversity of the workforce by inclusive practices in engineering and science is also a profound identified need. According to national statistics, the largest groups of underrepresented minority students in engineering and science attend U.S. public higher education institutions. Most often, a large proportion of these students come to colleges and universities with unique challenges and needs, and are more likely to be first in their family to attend college. In response to these needs, engineering education researchers and practitioners have developed, implemented and assessed interventions to provide support and help students succeed in college, particularly in their first year. These interventions typically target relatively small cohorts of students and can be managed by a small number of faculty and staff. In this paper, we report on “work in progress” research in a large-scale, first-year engineering and computer science intervention program at a public, comprehensive university using multivariate comparative statistical approaches. Large-scale intervention programs are especially relevant to minority serving institutions that prepare growing numbers of students who are first in their family to attend college and who are also under-resourced, financially. These students most often encounter academic difficulties and come to higher education with challenging experiences and backgrounds. Our studied first-year intervention program, first piloted in 2015, is now in its 5th year of implementation. Its intervention components include: (a) first-year block schedules, (b) project-based introductory engineering and computer science courses, (c) an introduction to mechanics course, which provides students with the foundation needed to succeed in a traditional physics sequence, and (d) peer-led supplemental instruction workshops for calculus, physics and chemistry courses. This intervention study responds to three research questions: (1) What role does the first-year intervention’s components play in students’ persistence in engineering and computer science majors across undergraduate program years? (2) What role do particular pedagogical and cocurricular support structures play in students’ successes? And (3) What role do various student socio-demographic and experiential factors play in the effectiveness of first-year interventions? To address these research questions and therefore determine the formative impact of the firstyear engineering and computer science program on which we are conducting research, we have collected diverse student data including grade point averages, concept inventory scores, and data from a multi-dimensional questionnaire that measures students’ use of support practices across their four to five years in their degree program, and diverse background information necessary to determine the impact of such factors on students’ persistence to degree. Background data includes students’ experiences prior to enrolling in college, their socio-demographic characteristics, and their college social capital throughout their higher education experience. For this research, we compared students who were enrolled in the first-year intervention program to those who were not enrolled in the first-year intervention. We have engaged in cross-sectional 2 data collection from students’ freshman through senior years and employed multivariate statistical analytical techniques on the collected student data. Results of these analyses were interesting and diverse. Generally, in terms of backgrounds, our research indicates that students’ parental education is positively related to their success in engineering and computer science across program years. Likewise, longitudinally (across program years), students’ college social capital predicted their academic success and persistence to degree. With regard to the study’s comparative research of the first-year intervention, our results indicate that students who were enrolled in the first-year intervention program as freshmen continued to use more support practices to assist them in academic success across their degree matriculation compared to students who were not in the first-year program. This suggests that the students continued to recognize the value of such supports as a consequence of having supports required as first-year students. In terms of students’ understanding of scientific or engineering-focused concepts, we found significant impact resulting from student support practices that were academically focused. We also found that enrolling in the first-year intervention was a significant predictor of the time that students spent preparing for classes and ultimately their grade point average, especially in STEM subjects across students’ years in college. In summary, we found that the studied first-year intervention program has longitudinal, positive impacts on students’ success as they navigate through their undergraduate experiences toward engineering and computer science degrees. 

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2. Board 414: Tracking the Progress Towards an Engineering Degree of Three Cohorts of Low-income Engineering Students Supported by a Track 3 Multi-Institutional S-STEM Grant

   Castles, Ricky; Venters, Christopher (June 2023, American Society for Engineering Education)

   With a project built on the Model of Co-Curricular Support for Undergraduate Engineering Students, in collaboration with three partnering community colleges was awarded a Multi-Institutional Track 3 S-STEM Grant in January 2020. The intention of the project was to recruit 2 cohorts of scholars with 40 students each. One cohort was to start their pursuit of an engineering degree in Fall 2020 and the other in Fall 2021. Each cohort was to be comprised of 20 students who started at as freshmen and 20 students who intended to get an associate’s degree from one of the partnering community colleges and transfer to a university to complete the BS in engineering. Despite some early challenges in recruiting students and implementing planned programs due to the Covid-19 pandemic, three cohorts of low-income students have been recruited and supported by scholarships valued at up to $10,000 per year. In addition to scholarship support, various other support mechanisms have been implemented including a week-long summer bridge program for incoming students, a peer mentoring program, a textbook lending library, faculty mentoring, and various collaborative programs involving career speakers, design challenges, and professional development opportunities. With the first cohort of students now entering their senior year and several community college students having already transferred to the university, this paper discusses the recruitment and retention of scholars, details of program activities, and the progress scholars have made towards an engineering degree. This paper also draws comparisons between the scholar cohorts and all students entering the engineering program in the same semester in order to identify differences in GPA and retention. 

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3. Quantitative and Qualitative Assessment of Large-Scale Interventions in a First-Year Experience Program

   Menezes, Gustavo B.; Allen, Emily L.; Ragusa, Giselle; Schiorring, Eva; Nerenberg, Paul (June 2019, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   In this Work-in-Progress paper, we report on the challenges and successes of a large-scale First- Year Engineering and Computer Science Program at an urban comprehensive university, using quantitative and qualitative assessment results. Large-scale intervention programs are especially relevant to comprehensive minority serving institutions (MSIs) that serve a high percentage of first-generation college students who often face academic and socioeconomic barriers. Our program was piloted in 2015 with 30 engineering students, currently enrolls 60 engineering and computer science students, and is expected to grow to over 200 students by Fall 2020. The firstyear program interventions include: (i) block schedules for each cohort in the first year; (ii) redesigned project-based introduction to engineering and introduction to computer science courses; (iii) an introduction to mechanics course, which provides students with the foundation needed to succeed in the traditional physics sequence; and (iv) peer-led supplemental instruction (SI) workshops for Calculus, Physics and Chemistry. A faculty mentorship program was implemented to provide additional support to students, but was phased out after the first year. Challenges encountered in the process of expanding the program include administrative, such as scheduling and training faculty and SI leaders; barriers to improvement of math and science instruction; and more holistic concerns such as creating a sense of community and identity for the program. Quantitative data on academic performance includes metrics such as STEM GPA and persistence, along with the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) for physics. Qualitative assessments of the program have used student and instructor surveys, focus groups, and individual interviews to measure relationships among factors associated with college student support and to extract student perspectives on what works best for them. Four years of data tell a mixed story, in which the qualitative effect of the interventions on student confidence and identity is strong, while academic performance is not yet significantly different than that of comparison groups. One of the most significant results of the program is the development of a FYrE Professional Learning Community which includes faculty (both tenure-track and adjunct), department chairs, staff, and administrators from across the campus. 

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4. Enhancing STEM Retention and Graduation Rate by Incorporating Innovative Teaching Strategies in Selected STEM Introductory Courses

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34574  

   Swain, Nikunja; Biswal, Biswajit; Kennedy, Eugene (June 2020, ASEE Conferences)

   Gate-keeping courses provide students with their first and formal exposure to a deep understanding of science. Such courses influence students' decision to pursue STEM education and continue their college experience. Our records indicate that the many STEM students perform poorly or marginally in the introductory required courses and decide to change their major to non-STEM degree programs. One way to address this is using active learning techniques. The objective of this paper is to describe our experiences with the use of few of the active learning techniques in introductory computer programming courses offered in our Computer Science Program. One of these programming courses are required of all computer science majors and other course is usually taken by engineering, technology and science majors. The findings presented in this paper may be used by interested parties involved in STEM curriculum. 

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5. Comparing Effectiveness of Peer Mentoring for Direct Admit and College- Ready Freshmen

   Cutright, Teresa J; Willits, Rebecca K; Ott, Donald W. (June 2020, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   The University of Akron has had two National Science Foundation (NSF) funded science, technology, engineering and mathematics scholarship (S-STEM) programs. The cohort of the first S-STEM program (2010-2015) were students that were directly admitted to their selected discipline’s department. The current NSF S-STEM cohort (2015-2020) is a mix of students who were either directly admitted to their major or college-ready students. The university classifies college-ready students as those who are ready for college but lack either a requisite high school GPA, ACT score or completion of a high school science or math course. Each program spanned five years with science disciplines typically graduating in four years and engineering students that participated in co-operative education graduating in five years. The final year of each S- STEM was used to provide peer mentoring in a pseudo-formal environment. In each, seniors who had already participated in the S-STEM program for four years mentored new freshmen for one year. This paper will describe demographics of each S-STEM cohort, the activities used during the peer mentoring, observable differences between direct admit and college-ready freshmen with respect to peer mentoring, and possible peer mentoring activities that can be implemented at other institutions. 

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