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Engineering graduates have significant opportunities for meaningful careers and social mobility, yet there needs to be more support for financially disadvantaged, academically gifted students. To improve these circumstances, we have introduced the Engineering Persistence project, an NSF-funded S-STEM scholarship program, at Rowan University. This project provides a group of students, selected by financial need and academic talent, with scholarships up to 10,000 USD per year, depending on financial need. In addition to these scholarships, we integrated a support system that includes interventions to support first-year engineering students’ social and professional growth in their degree plans. We include in this paper the data collection and analysis process for the first year of this project, including the administration of the pre-survey, and the exploratory factor analysis conducted on the resulting data. This work in progress research paper aims to validate an instrument to assess the impact of an integrated support system on students’ persistence in Rowan’s engineering students.
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This content will become publicly available on June 22, 2026
Engineering Persistence: Assessing Initiatives for First-Year Engineering Students
This empirical research full paper describes a project aimed at increasing graduation rates among low-income, academically talented engineering students by implementing first-year student initiatives. The project, supported by an NSF-SSTEM (National Science Foundation Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) grant at a Northeastern US institution, is in its second year of a four-year plan. Grounded in Tinto’s conceptual model of student motivation and persistence, the project emphasizes early interventions, which are critical for low-income students facing external challenges that may impact their decision to stay in college or enter the workforce. We developed and integrated the SSTEM project aiming to increase four key elements, which based on Tinto will also increase persistence. The SSTEM project includes scholarships, an Engineering Learning Community (ELC) that promotes cohort-based learning and living, mentorship, and participation in personal and professional development seminars. Additionally, inclusive practices have been integrated into first-year engineering lab courses to improve curriculum accessibility. This paper evaluates the validity of an instrument designed to assess the project's impact on students’ college experiences and persistence. It builds on prior exploratory factor analysis (EFA) research by presenting confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) findings to further validate the instrument.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2221511
- PAR ID:
- 10634706
- Publisher / Repository:
- 2025 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition
- Date Published:
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- persistence, instrument validation,
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Montreal, QC, Canada
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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