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1. Work in Progress: Building Career Goals and Boosting Self-efficacy in Engineering Students

   Jimenez, Manuel ; Guillemard, Luisa ; Bartolomei, Sonia ; Suarez, Oscar M. ; Lopez, Carla ; Quintero, Pedro ; Santiago, Aidsa ; Santiago, Nayda ; Cardona, Nelson ; Rodriguez, Manuel ( July 2021 , ASEE annual conference exposition)

   null (Ed.)

   This work in progress presents the development and implementation of an Individual Development Plan (IDP) for undergraduate and first-year master’s engineering students. The IDP was designed and tailored as one of several strategies to increase retention and graduation rates for engineering students participating in the Program for Engineering Access, Retention, and LIATS Success (PEARLS). This program provides scholarships to low income, academically talented students (LIATS), and promotes their academic success and on-time graduation. We show how the IDPs, paired with a faculty mentoring component are able to produce a powerful mechanism to boost LIATS actions, propelling them to become highly competitive engineering students. 

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2. Work in Progress: Formation of an engineering identity in first-year students through an intervention centered on senior design projects

   Richards, Abigail M ; Anderson, Ryan ; Myers, Carrie B ( July 2020 , ASEE annual conference exposition)

   Abstract This “work in progress” paper describes a multiyear project to study the development of engineering identity in a chemical and biological engineering program at Montana State University. The project focuses on how engineering identity may be impacted by a series of interventions utilizing subject material in a senior-level capstone design course and has the senior capstone design students serve as peer-mentors to first- and second-year students. A more rapid development of an engineering identity by first- and second-year students is suspected to increase retention and persistence in this engineering program. Through a series of timed interventions scheduled to take place in the first and second year, which includes cohorts that will serve as negative controls (no intervention), we hope to ascertain the following: (1) the extent to which, relative to a control group, exposure to a peer mentor increases a students’ engineering identity development over time compared to those who do not receive peer mentoring and (2) if the quantity and/or timing of the peer interactions impact engineering identity development. While the project includes interventions for both first- and second-year students, this work in progress paper focuses on the experiences of first year freshman as a result of the interventions and their development of an engineering identity over the course of the semester. Early in the fall semester, freshman chemical engineering students enrolled in an introductory chemical engineering course and senior students in a capstone design course were administered a survey which contained a validated instrument to assess engineering identity. The first-year course has 107 students and the senior-level course has 92 students and approximately 50% of the students in both cohorts completed the survey. Mid-semester, after the first-year students were introduced to the concepts of process flow diagrams and material balances in their course, senior design student teams gave presentations about their capstone design projects in the introductory course. The presentations focused on the project goals, design process and highlighted the process flow diagrams. After the presentations, freshman and senior students attended small group dinners as part of a homework assignment wherein the senior students were directed to communicate information about their design projects as well as share their experiences in the chemical engineering program. Dinners occurred overall several days, with up to ten freshman and five seniors attending each event. Freshman students were encouraged to use this time to discover more about the major, inquire about future course work, and learn about ways to enrich their educational experience through extracurricular and co-curricular activities. Several weeks after the dinner experience, senior students returned to give additional presentations to the freshman students to focus on the environmental and societal impacts of their design projects. We report baseline engineering identity in this paper. 

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3. Work-in-Progress: Inclusion of an Engineering Design Experience in First-year Introductory Engineering Courses at a Hispanic-serving Institution

   Alexander, M ; Mogiligidda, R ; Hicks, D. ( July 2021 , 2021 ASEE Annual Conference)

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   The first-year introductory engineering courses taught by three departments in the Frank H. Dotterweich College of Engineering at Texas A&M University-Kingsville have incorporated engineering design instruction and hands-on design projects in the last two years as part of NSF grant award #1928611. A primary objective of this grant is to increase the retention and persistence of minorities in the engineering programs by incorporating high-impact enrichment activities into courses early in the student’s academic career. A logical course to include high impact activities for first-year students is the introduction to engineering courses in the departments, which are titled “Engineering as a Career” (GEEN 1201), within the Frank H. Dotterweich College of Engineering. 

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4. Learning Communities: Impact on Retention of First-year Students

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34899  

   Darbeheshti, Maryam ; Schupbach, William ; Lafuente, Ariel ; Altman, Tom ; Goodman, Katherine ; Jacobson, Michael ; O'Brien, Shani ( June 2020 , 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   This completely evidence-based paper focuses on the impact of the “Engineering Learning Community” on the retention rate of the first-year students. The Engineering Learning Community (ELC) was launched in 2016 and works to increase student collaboration from day one, and to increase interest in engineering through an introductory design course for first year freshman students. ELC students not only take this design course but are matriculated into common first year Math and English courses. These attributes are thought to enhance the student’s ability to overcome the hurdles of their first year and improve their interest in completing a four-year degree at the Engineering College. Since then, three cohorts of ELC students have been observed through the lens of retention, and this study is intended to show how the ELC is affiliated with retention. The results from this study indicate that first year GPA is strongly related to first year retention at the Engineering College, and that students participating in the ELC are observed to have a higher GPA at the end of their first year when compared to the rest of the students in the Engineering College. In addition, interviews with ELC members further demonstrate the influence of a cohort-style learning community on first-year students’ experiences in higher education. 

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5. Learning Communities: Impact on Retention of first-year students

   Darbeheshti, Maryam ; Schupbach, William ; Lafuente, Ariel ; Altman, Tom ; Goodman, Katherine ; Jacobson, Michael ; O'Brien, Shani ( July 2020 , Zone 1 Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education)

   This completely evidence-based paper focuses on the impact of the Engineering Learning Communities” on the retention rate of the first-year students. The University of Colorado at Denver has recognized the need to increase retention rates at the Engineering College and has created a Learning Community to aid in this effort. The Engineering Learning Community (ELC) was launched in 2016 and works to increase student collaboration from day one, and to increase interest in engineering through an introductory design course for first year freshman students. ELC students not only take this design course but are matriculated into common first year Math and English courses. These attributes are thought to enhance the student’s ability to overcome the hurdles of their first year and improve their interest in completing a four-year degree at the Engineering College. Since then, three cohorts of ELC students have been observed through the lens of retention, and this study is intended to show how the ELC is affiliated with retention. The results from this study indicate that first year GPA is strongly related to first year retention at the Engineering College, and that students participating in the ELC are observed to have a higher GPA at the end of their first year when compared to the rest of the students in the Engineering College. 

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