Low-income students are underrepresented in engineering and are more likely to struggle in engineering programs. Such students may be academically talented and perform well in high school, but may have relatively weak academic preparation for college compared to students who attended better-resourced schools. Four-year engineering and computer science curricula are designed for students who are calculus-ready, but many students who are eager to become engineers or computer scientists need additional time and support to succeed. The NSF-funded Redshirt in Engineering Consortium was formed in 2016 as a collaborative effort to build on the success of three existing “academic redshirt” programs and expand the model to three new schools. The Consortium takes its name from the practice of redshirting in college athletics, with the idea of providing an extra year and support to promising engineering students from low-income backgrounds. The goal of the program is to enhance the students’ ability to successfully graduate with engineering or computer science degrees. This Work in Progress paper describes the redshirt programs at each of the six Consortium institutions, providing a variety of models for how an extra preparatory year or other intensive academic preparatory programs can be accommodated. This paper will pay particular attention to the ways that institutional context shapes the implementation of the redshirt model. For instance, what do the redshirt admissions and selection processes look like at schools with direct-to-college admissions versus schools with post-general education admissions? What substantive elements of the first-year curriculum are consistent across the consortium? Where variation in curriculum occurs, what are the institutional factors that produce this variation? How does the redshirt program fit with other pre-existing academic support services on campus, and what impact does this have on the redshirt program’s areas of focus? Program elements covered include first-year curricula, pre-matriculation summer programs, academic advising and support services, admissions and selection processes, and financial aid. Ongoing assessment efforts and research designed to investigate how the various redshirt models influence faculty and student experiences will be described.
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Work in Progress: Applying Transition Theory to an Exploration of the High-School-to-College Transition Experiences of Students from Underrepresented Ethnic/Racial Groups
Student support programs within colleges of engineering often aim to assist students during their transition from high school to college. While studies of this transition can characterize experiences that could support the design of these support programs, research commonly focuses on the broader student population, where engineering students are often the minority. To further improve student support programs in engineering, particularly those designed for students from traditionally underrepresented populations, additional research is needed to understand the transitional experiences of first-year engineering students. The purpose of this paper is to explore the applicability of a theoretical framework from adult development (i.e., Schlossberg’s Transition Theory) to examine the high school-to-college transition of engineering students from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. In the work-in-progress paper, we describe the theoretical constructs that appear most applicable in this context as we begin coding data from a series of three interviews with each participant. Our results will advance the engineering education community’s understanding of the applicability of Transition Theory for examining the transitions of students into engineering and inform future work.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1704350
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10092336
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity (CoNECD) Conference
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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