An official website of the United States government
Assessment results show that passing rates in introductory courses and retention rates of first year students in the College of Engineering and Computer Science at The University of X, a predominantly Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), significantly dropped with the onset of COVID-19. These results and trends highlight the academic preparation of incoming students, particularly the new cohort of underrepresented Hispanic students from underserved and challenged communities in the region, who may not have the necessary skills (e.g., adaptability, persistence, and performance) for the rigor of engineering education. To address this challenge, an onboarding “boostcamp” was created for incoming and transfer students to bridge the transition from secondary education to higher education. The boostcamp primes students to overcome academic deficiencies, develop a critical skills portfolio, learn problem-solving techniques, build a sustainable community of mentoring support with faculty and students, and gain a template to sustain academic and professional success during their undergraduate education. The paper presents the boostcamp's design process steps, including curricular analysis, identification of areas for improvement, skills inventory, and blueprinting, as well as its initial implementation in the mechanical engineering program. The boostcamp was organized over a week and featured hands-on engineering activities, faculty and student talks, and engineering lab tours. It was based on a design thinking approach and structured around Challenge-based Instruction, innovation, design, and mentoring. Daily activities focused on promoting critical thinking, assertiveness in the face of adversity, informed decision-making, and task prioritization. Results indicate that the boostcamp increased student confidence and established a valuable network system among participants. Future work will focus on expanding the boostcamp to include students from other engineering and computer science departments and developing a template for other institutions with similar challenges.
more »
« less
Increasing Diversity and Student Success in Engineering and Computer Science through Contextualized Practices
Wright College, an open-access community college in northwest Chicago, is an independently accredited institution in the City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) system. Wright is federally recognized Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) with the largest enrollment of Hispanic students in Illinois. In 2015 Wright piloted a selective guaranteed admission program to the Grainer College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Students in the Engineering Pathways (EP) program follow a cohort system with rigorous curriculum aligned to UIUC. From this pilot Wright built programmatic frameworks (one-stop intentional advising; mandatory tutoring, near-peer, faculty and professional mentoring; and access to professional organizations) to support EP students. Initial results were positive: 89% transfer rate and 89% bachelor’s degree completion. Building from the EP frameworks, Wright obtained a National Science Foundation (NSF) HSI research grant to expand programs to non-pathway students. Through the grant, Building Bridges into Engineering and Computer Science, the college developed assessment tools, increased the number of 4-year partnerships, and designed and implemented an Engineering Summer Bridge with curriculum contextualized for the needs of the Near-STEM ready students. These students need one to four semesters of Math remediation before moving into the EP. The college measured the Bridge participants' success through analysis of Math proficiency before and after the Bridge, professional identity (sense of belonging) and self-efficacy (the belief that the students will succeed as engineers). Surveys and case study interviews are being supplemented with retention, persistence, transfer, associate and bachelor degree completion rates, and time for degree completion. The key research question is the correlation of these data with self-efficacy and professional identity measures. Preliminary Results: 1) Sixty percent (60%) of the Bridge participants eliminated the remedial Math requirement completely. (Increased Math proficiency) 2) Engineering admission and enrollment doubled. 4) Increased institutionalized collaborations: the creation of a more programmatic admission, advising, transfer, rigorous curriculum, and other student support services within the College. 5) Increased partnerships with 4-year transfer institutions resulting in the expansion of guaranteed/dual admissions programs with scholarships, paid research experience, dual advising, and students transferring as juniors. 5) Increased diversity in Engineering and Computer Science student population. Wright will share an overview of the Building Bridges into Engineering and Computer Science project, research design, expanded practices, assessments and insights from the development and implementation of this program. The developed frameworks will be applied to provide ALL students at Wright, and at CCC equitable Engineering and Computer Science education.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1832553
- PAR ID:
- 10172205
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Better understanding of how students achieve vertical transfer is vital for advancing equity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) majors. Among the many sources of barriers, delays, and complexities demonstrated in previous research as influencing vertical transfer outcomes, the transfer admission process has been generally neglected. Using a longitudinal, qualitative design, and drawing on transfer capital and field theories, this study investigated how community college students who are underrepresented in STEM fields successfully navigated admission to a four-year institution in a STEM major. Results indicated that students experienced transfer admission as risky and uncertain. They accrued transfer capital over time, in the form of knowledge about transfer admission and strategies to bolster their competitiveness, including regulating their coursework intensity and actively managing their GPAs. Although these forms of transfer capital helped students succeed in transferring, some strategies could backfire, causing unintended negative consequences, such as time-to-completion delays, excess credit accumulation, or disadvantages in securing admission. Results supported the contention that the transfer admission process is a pivotal, yet largely neglected aspect of student experience in STEM vertical pathways. Conclusions provide suggestions for further research and implications for institutional practice.more » « less
-
Using Financial Support to Create a Learning Community Among Diverse Community College STEM StudentsAlthough many California Community College students from underrepresented groups enter college with high levels of interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the majority of them drop out or change majors even before taking transfer-level courses due to a variety of reasons including financial difficulties, inadequate academic preparation, lack of family support, poor study skills, and inadequate or ineffective academic advising and mentoring. In 2009, Cañada College, a federally designated Hispanic-serving institution in the San Francisco Bay Area, received a National Science Foundation Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) grant to develop a scholarship program for financially needy community college students intending to transfer to a four-year institution to pursue a bachelor’s degree in a STEM field. In collaboration with the College’s Mathematics, Engineering, and Science Achievement (MESA) program – an academic, personal, and professional support structure has been designed and implemented to maximize the likelihood of success of these students. This support structure aims to create a learning community among the scholars through a combination of academic counseling and mentoring, personal enrichment and professional development opportunities, and strong academic support services. This paper describes how faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, student organizations, and partners in industry, four-year institutions, and professional organizations can be involved in creating an academic infrastructure that promotes academic excellence, leadership skills, and personal and professional growth among the diversity of financially needy STEM students in a community college.more » « less
-
For the last 10 years, our university has offered a two-semester bridge into a master's in computer science for people with undergraduate degrees in non-computing disciplines. Since its inception, the program has expanded to eight campuses across North America and has opened admission to students from all disciplines, including non-STEM disciplines. The bridge program has over 2000 currently enrolled students, with more than 50% women every year since 2020, and domestic enrollment has increased relative to direct entry master's students. Our data show that bridge students, including those with non-STEM backgrounds, perform comparably to direct entry students in terms of GPA. We attribute much of the program's success to institutional investment in resources specifically designed to meet the unique needs of bridge students. These resources include dedicated academic and career advising, co-curricular programming, and the hiring of full-time teaching faculty specifically recruited to teach these bridge students. This paper examines data pertaining to the bridge program and MSCS from 2013 to 2023; it includes analyses of the expansion of the bridge program to eight campuses in North America, the admission of students with non-STEM degrees to the bridge, the achievement of enrolling over 50% women and non-binary identifying students, the success of bridge students in the MSCS program and in obtaining job placements, and domestic student enrollment growth as compared to traditional direct entry master's students.more » « less
-
There has been a recent increase in awareness of the important role that community colleges play in educating future engineers, especially in broadening participation among students from underrepresented groups. However, budget problems at the state and national levels have resulted in continuing budget cuts in community colleges. With limited resources while responding to increasing variability of lower-division transfer curricula as required by four-year engineering programs, it has become increasingly difficult for small community college engineering programs to support all the courses needed by students to transfer. Meanwhile, transfer admissions have become increasingly more competitive because of budget cuts in four-year universities. As a result, prospective engineering students who attend community colleges with limited or no engineering course offerings are at a disadvantage for both transfer admission as well as time to completion upon transfer. This paper is a description of a collaborative project among community college engineering programs in California to address this problem by aligning engineering curriculum, enhancing teaching effectiveness using Tablet PCs, and increasing access to engineering courses through online education. The project includes a Summer Engineering Teaching Institute designed to assist community college engineering faculty in developing a Tablet-PC-enhanced model of instruction, and implementing online courses. The project also involves a partnership among California community college engineering programs to design and implement a Joint Engineering Program that is delivered online. This paper summarizes the results of the first two years of implementation of the project, and explores its potential to strengthen the community college engineering education pipeline in order to increase and diversify the engineering workforce.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34817
