skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Attention:

The NSF Public Access Repository (PAR) system and access will be unavailable from 10:00 PM to 12:00 PM ET on Tuesday, March 25 due to maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


This content will become publicly available on June 1, 2025

Title: Effect of Organizational Change on Student Retention and Engagement
Engineering and computer science disciplines remain substantially under-represented in Hispanic, African American and women students. Relative to the population demographics reflecting approximately 50% women, 60% white non Hispanic/Latinx, 13% African American, 19% Hispanic and 1.3% Native American, engineering demographics reflect underrepresentation. While recent trends reflect significant gains, women remain under-represented in engineering. Based on the ASEE EDMS system, in 2022, women earned 25% of engineering degrees and under-represented students (URM=African American, Hispanic, native American and Pacific islanders) earned 21% of degrees. From a first time in college enrollment in a university perspective, URM freshmen accounted for 27% of all freshmen enrollment. Within that the African American student population was at 6% and Hispanic at 13%. The gap between freshmen enrollment at the Universities and higher percentages at graduation reflects the trend that URM students are entering the University experience beyond the freshmen level making the transfer student engagement and retention a key need. In this paper we explore systematic organizational change in communicating the degree pathways to a graduation in engineering and engaging students sequentially from enrollment through graduation. We explore these in the prepandemic, post-pandemic, new HSI designation macro changes in the University. The results indicate that students are benefitted from having administrators, faculty and full-time staff work synergistically to communicate information that can be accessed by students without needing an appointment/commute and to grow a students pathway to lifelong learning through research is best enabled through student-student direct engagement.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2122917
PAR ID:
10546496
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
ASEE Conferences
Date Published:
Format(s):
Medium: X
Location:
Portland, Oregon
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ; ; ; ; ; (, PLOS ONE)
    Prunuske, Amy (Ed.)
    Online education has grown rapidly in recent years with many universities now offering fully online degree programs even in STEM disciplines. These programs have the potential to broaden access to STEM degrees for people with social identities currently underrepresented in STEM. Here, we ask to what extent is that potential realized in terms of student enrollment and grades for a fully online degree program. Our analysis of data from more than 10,000 course-enrollments compares student demographics and course grades in a fully online biology degree program to demographics and grades in an equivalent in-person biology degree program at the same university. We find that women, first-generation to college students and students eligible for federal Pell grants constitute a larger proportion of students in the online program compared to the in-person mode. However, the online mode of instruction is associated with lower course grades relative to the in-person mode. Moreover, African American/Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Native American, and Pacific Islander students as well as federal Pell grant eligible students earned lower grades than white students and non-Pell grant eligible students, respectively, but the grade disparities were similar among both in-person and online student groups. Finally, we find that grade disparities between men and women are larger online compared to in-person, but that for first-generation to college women, the online mode of instruction is associated with little to no grade gap compared to continuing generation women. Our findings indicate that although this online degree program broadens access for some student populations, inequities in the experience remain and need to be addressed in order for online education to achieve its inclusive mission. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; (, ACM Transactions on Computing Education)
    null (Ed.)
    Although computing occupations have some of the greatest projected growth rates, there remains a deficit of graduates in these fields. The struggle to engage enough students to meet demands is particularly pronounced for groups already underrepresented in computing, specifically, individuals that self-identify as a woman, or as Black, Hispanic/Latinx, or Native American. Prior studies have begun to examine issues surrounding engagement and retention, but more understanding is needed to close the gap, and to broaden participation. In this research, we provide quantitative evidence from the Multiple-Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development—a longitudinal, multi-institutional database to describe participation trends of marginalized groups in computer science. Using descriptive statistics, we present the enrollment and graduation rates for those situated at the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender between 1987 and 2018. In this work, we observed periods of significant flux for Black men and women, and White women in particular, and consistently low participation of Hispanic/Latinx and Native American men and women, and Asian women. To provide framing for the evident peaks and valleys in participation, we applied historical context analysis to describe the political, economic, and social factors and events that may have impacted each group. These results put a spotlight on populations largely overlooked in statistical work and have the potential to inform educators, administrators, and researchers about how enrollments and graduation rates have changed over time in computing fields. In addition, they offer insight into potential causes for the vicissitudes, to encourage more equal access for all students going forward. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; (, Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice)
    The persistence and attrition of underrepresented minority (URM) students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) continues to remain a steadfast problem in education and the workforce. Research has shown that educators, administrators, and policy makers all play a vital role in shaping the future generation of STEM education, programs and the workforce, however, much of the research is deficient in providing URM student perceptions on how key factors such as student engagement, financial support, higher education preparation and institutional environment all impact their persistence in the STEM pipeline. This study employs qualitative research methods, semi-structured interviews and casual conversations to gain insight on common trends for the persistence of four (2 males, 2 females) URM students that were enrolled in a 2012 Summer Bridge Program at Mississippi State University (MSU), a predominately large white institution (PWI). Within this study, emphasis will be placed on the engineering branch of STEM. The research found that small diverse organizations such as NSBE and IMAGE along with financial support in the form of scholarships and alumni waivers, and pre-freshmen summer engineering programs such as Summer Bridge played a major role in URM student persistence in engineering disciplines. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; ; (, Urban education research and policy annuals)
    null (Ed.)
    To continue as global science and technological leaders, the United States is motivated to create a diverse, engineering workforce. One way of diversifying the engineering workforce is to address the disparity of women engineers. Although concerted efforts to improve retention rates of women in engineering are ongoing, women have earned only 5.6% of all undergraduate engineering degrees, with only 1% attributed to African American women (NSF, 2015b). African American women are commonly included in racial or gender-focused studies on persistence; however, few studies assess the effect of multiple identities to persistence. This exploratory study examined the relationship of persistence, measured by intent to persist, to multiple identities (social, professional, and racial) of African American female engineering students. Forward regression analyses were conducted and results indicated that the participant’s mathematical identities were more salient to them than their racial or gender identities. Also, the values these women placed on being an engineer and belonging to the group were principal aspects of their professional identity. Additionally, negative affect and stereotype threat were found significant predictors of intent to persist. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, Journal of Engineering Education)
    Abstract BackgroundDespite many initiatives to improve graduate student and faculty diversity in engineering, there has been little or no change in the percentage of people from racially minoritized backgrounds in either of these groups. Purpose/HypothesisThe purpose of this paper is to counter the scarcity fallacy, in which institutions blame the “shortage” of qualified people from traditionally marginalized backgrounds for their own lack of representation, related to prospective PhD students and prospective faculty from traditionally marginalized groups. This study identifies the BS‐to‐PhD and PhD‐to‐tenure‐track‐faculty institutional pathways of Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino engineering doctorate recipients. Design/MethodUsing the US Survey of Earned Doctorates, we tracked the BS‐to‐PhD institutional pathways of 3952 Black/African American and 5732 Hispanic/Latino engineering PhD graduates. We also used the Survey of Doctorate Recipients to track the PhD‐to‐tenure‐track faculty pathways of 104 Black/African American and 211 Hispanic/Latino faculty. ResultsThe majority of Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino PhD graduates in this study did not earn their BS degrees from Top 25 institutions, but rather from Not Top 25, non‐US, and minority‐serving institutions. The results also show the relatively small proportion of PhD earners and faculty members who move into highly ranked institutions after earning a bachelor's degree from outside this set of institutions. ConclusionsThe findings of this study have important implications for graduate student and faculty recruitment by illustrating that recruitment from a narrow range of institutions (i.e., Top 25 institutions) is unlikely to result in increased diversity among racially minoritized PhDs and faculty in engineering. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email