The Use Of Requisite Check As An Academic And Curriculum Advisement Tool In Retaining Underrepresented Engineering Students

The School of Engineering at the City College of New York in preparing for its forthcoming ABET accreditation visit in 2004, is in the process of implementing a plan which incorporates both quantitative and qualitative approaches. As an urban institution of higher learning, one of the School’s missions is to provide education to a highly diverse student body, including traditionally underrepresented minorities, women, working adults, and immigrants in the greater New York metropolitan area. The first objective of implementing a plan to meet ABET 2000 criteria is to gather accurate and reliable information, both in scope and in depth, about the School’s present situation and its students’ unique needs. One method being used is a manual requisite check by the School’s Accreditation Advisors of the College’s automated registration system. The manual requisite check was first performed to identify and correct possible errors in an automated registration system but it turned out that performing manual requisite checks during the beginning of each semester for all engineering programs is a powerful tool in the academic and educational advisement of the School. This paper will focus on how this tool is being used to retain students from traditionally underrepresented groups in the School of Engineering at the City College of New York.