Title: WIP: What's your major? First-year engineering students' confidence in their major choice
In this work-in-progress study, the engineering identities of students enrolled in a first-year engineering (FYE) program were surveyed to investigate whether students identify with engineering (in general or with a specific engineering major) during their first year and how differences in identities impact intent to persist in engineering. Literature suggests a strong engineering identity is linked to student retention and can positively impact a student’s trajectory within an engineering program. To investigate these interactions, a survey was distributed at a large public institution in the southeast at the beginning and end of the Fall semester. Most students reported they had decided on a specific engineering major even in the beginning of their first engineering course. While students are relatively confident in that major choice at the beginning of the year, their confidence increased by the end of the semester. Future work will invite students for interviews to elucidate understanding in how a student’s views of the engineering profession affect their FYE experience and the role the FYE curriculum has in their anticipated engineering major and themselves as engineers. more »« less
Ehlert, Katherine M.; Rucks, Maya; Martin, Baker A.; Orr, Marisa K.
(, 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings)
null
(Ed.)
This complete research paper documents how confidence in choice of intended major and self-regulated decision-making competency influence whether a student changes their intended major while participating in a compulsory first-year engineering (FYE) program. Initial major, confidence in that major choice, and self-regulated decision-making competency were documented in the Fall of 2017 for students matriculating into a FYE program. Student enrollment in a major in the Fall of 2018 was connected to this data. Retention in any engineering major and in the student’s intended major were analyzed using logistic regression.
This work-in-progress paper focuses on a redesigned first-year experience (FYE) program at [University Name], aimed at increasing student success and retention. While the retention of undergraduate engineering students is essential for addressing the global demand for qualified engineers, first-year retention rates remain a significant challenge. This paper will explore how the redesigned program addresses this challenge. Initially, a project-based Engineering 101 course was revamped in 2016 but showed limited improvement in retention rates, stabilizing around the mid-60% range. In 2021, the program was further restructured into a comprehensive, multi-semester experience named the "[School Mascot] Design Experience," expanding its scope to include students of all majors. The redesigned program integrates the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) Entrepreneurial Mindset framework, emphasizing curiosity, connections, and creating value [1], with Stanford d.school’s Design Thinking model [2]. This approach engages first-year students through multidisciplinary teamwork, peer mentorship, and professional competency workshops, aiming to nurture both academic success and lifelong learning skills. Preliminary results reveal promising trends, with retention rates increasing to 77% in the academic year 2022-2023, representing a significant improvement over prior iterations and exceeding the college’s average by 6% and the university’s average by 5%. This study further explores the correlation between program components and their influence on retention and examines the following research questions: RQ1: How much has this redesigned FYE increased student retention? RQ2: Are students who continue to the spring semester retained at a higher rate? RQ3: To what extent does participation in the redesigned program increase students’ self-reported dimensions of curiosity? RQ4: How does the curiosity level compare between retained students and those not retained?
Challenge or problem-based learning help students develop deeper content understanding and enhanced STEM skillsets and provide opportunities for learning across multiple contexts. Educational interventions that include active learning, mentoring, and role modeling are particularly important in recruiting and retaining female and minority students in STEM. With this framework in mind, we implemented the Vertically-Integrated Projects (VIP) model at a public urban research university in the 2022-2023 academic year with the goal of helping participating students increase engineering and STEM identity and other psychosocial outcomes. This paper reports the results from the first year of our VIP program. At the beginning and end of the academic year, participants completed measures of engineering identity; engineering self-efficacy; engineering mindset; intention to remain in the engineering major; intention to have a career in engineering; and STEM professional identity. Wilcoxon Signed Ranks (N=10) tests showed no statistically significant differences on any of these measures. Participants also responded to 20 items assessing their perceptions of their level of knowledge and skills in a variety of areas relevant to their experience in the VIP program. Wilcoxon Signed Ranks tests (N=10) revealed some statistically significant differences between pre- and post-test. Specifically, students tended to see themselves as having greater knowledge or skills in planning a long-term project, communicating technical concepts and designs to others, designing systems, components, or processes to meet practical or applied needs, understanding computer hardware and systems, working on a multidisciplinary team, and making ethical decisions in engineering/research. Finally, at the end of the Spring semester, participants rated the extent to which they perceived the VIP program helped them to develop their skills on the same 20 items. Most participants believed the VIP program helped them to develop each skill either somewhat or a great deal. Overall, while participation in the VIP program did not influence student engineering identity, self-efficacy, mindset, or major/career intentions, it was associated with increased self-perceived abilities on six specific skills. Additionally, most participants agreed that the VIP program helped them develop 20 skills at least “somewhat.”
Richards, Abigail M; Anderson, Ryan; Myers, Carrie B
(, 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.
Hassler, Ryan; Nathan, Rungun; Scanlon, Marietta; Cohan, Catherine
(, American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) 2025 Annual Conference)
Most first-year engineering students are initially paired with non-engineering advisors and typically only enroll in one engineering course during their first year. However, undergraduate research is vital for enhancing critical thinking skills and boosting STEM persistence, as highlighted by Kuh (2008) and Brown et al. (2015). Recognizing this gap, we initiated "Sprouting Research from Day 1," which paired S-STEM scholars during their second semester of college with engineering faculty research mentors. Faculty mentors met bi-weekly with their mentees to discuss individual research interests and then every other week as part of a group session about broader research concepts. To gain insights into the motivations and expectations of the faculty mentors, a focus group was conducted at the end of the semester. The transcript of that meeting was analyzed using the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (Kaplan & Garner, 2017). Findings suggest mentors were motivated by the DEIB nature of this initiative, a modest financial incentive, and a desire to build deeper connections with scholars. They viewed the program primarily as a teaching opportunity, expecting scholars to be self-motivated and research inclined. Mentors noted that a better alignment of research projects with student aspirations and a more focused semester-end deliverable (e.g. REU application) would enhance the program's structure. Finally, the need for professional development for faculty was identified as crucial to scaling up the initiative. That suggestion led to the development of a five-part professional development workshop series on how to better engage first-year students in research which is currently being delivered. Feedback from this series will be analyzed and used to help foster a stronger research culture from the start of a student’s undergraduate engineering education.
Ehlert, Katherine M., Orr, Marisa K., and Grigg, Sarah Jane. WIP: What's your major? First-year engineering students' confidence in their major choice. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10213556. 2018 First-Year Engineering Experience Conference Proceedings .
Ehlert, Katherine M., Orr, Marisa K., & Grigg, Sarah Jane. WIP: What's your major? First-year engineering students' confidence in their major choice. 2018 First-Year Engineering Experience Conference Proceedings, (). Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10213556.
Ehlert, Katherine M., Orr, Marisa K., and Grigg, Sarah Jane.
"WIP: What's your major? First-year engineering students' confidence in their major choice". 2018 First-Year Engineering Experience Conference Proceedings (). Country unknown/Code not available. https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10213556.
@article{osti_10213556,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {WIP: What's your major? First-year engineering students' confidence in their major choice},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10213556},
abstractNote = {In this work-in-progress study, the engineering identities of students enrolled in a first-year engineering (FYE) program were surveyed to investigate whether students identify with engineering (in general or with a specific engineering major) during their first year and how differences in identities impact intent to persist in engineering. Literature suggests a strong engineering identity is linked to student retention and can positively impact a student’s trajectory within an engineering program. To investigate these interactions, a survey was distributed at a large public institution in the southeast at the beginning and end of the Fall semester. Most students reported they had decided on a specific engineering major even in the beginning of their first engineering course. While students are relatively confident in that major choice at the beginning of the year, their confidence increased by the end of the semester. Future work will invite students for interviews to elucidate understanding in how a student’s views of the engineering profession affect their FYE experience and the role the FYE curriculum has in their anticipated engineering major and themselves as engineers.},
journal = {2018 First-Year Engineering Experience Conference Proceedings},
author = {Ehlert, Katherine M. and Orr, Marisa K. and Grigg, Sarah Jane},
editor = {null}
}
Warning: Leaving National Science Foundation Website
You are now leaving the National Science Foundation website to go to a non-government website.
Website:
NSF takes no responsibility for and exercises no control over the views expressed or the accuracy of
the information contained on this site. Also be aware that NSF's privacy policy does not apply to this site.
An official website of the United States government
