Using An Industrial Engineering Tool To Improve Engineering Student Attrition

Bright students are leaving Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) programs. In the landmark study, “Talking About Leaving'', Seymour and Hewitt suggest that each institution should examine its own set of factors as to why students leave these programs, and then take appropriate action. Previous research has identified multiple reasons for the student retention problem including attitudes toward the engineering field, student’s self-confidence levels, quality of instructor interactions, and robustness of the STEM curriculum: for example engineering in comparison to other non-STEM majors such as liberal arts or business. Engineering student attrition due to poor attitudes, perceived coursework difficulty, and departmental polices that effect this behavior are clearly concerns for engineering institutions. Lovitts (2001) suggests that more standardized quantitative measures for departmental environments need to be created, and more appropriate quantitative measurements need to be applied to studying STEM student attrition. There is a need to conduct objective longitudinal studies that prevent attrition as opposed to the subjective retrospective studies done in the past. This study demonstrates a methodology that will begin to fulfill this need. The Statistical Evaluation of Cognitive Turnover Control System (SECtCS) methodology was designed to perform objective longitudinal studies on turnover and is founded on Industrial Engineering principles of statistical process control, Engineering Management theories on motivation, and Industrial Psychology test instrument development techniques. This paper reports the results of a study conducted at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln that used this methodology to evaluate measures affecting sophomore engineering students’ attrition. Results presented on the first two phases of this methodology demonstrate how burnout and turnover measures affect attrition in the College of Engineering & Technology (CoE&T) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) and may point to interventions that show promise in reducing engineering student attrition. INTRODUCTION Academic organizations spend millions of dollars each year to recruit students to the STEM majors. The National Science Foundation and other organizations have allocated funds to increase the enrollment of STEM students. This research, if proven valid, may be applied to the efforts to reduce the turnover of students leaving this field and allow money spent by academic organizations to be better utilized in the retention effort. Administrators may be able to avoid negative consequences to universities and students by identifying the STEM students who are experiencing high levels of Cognitive Turnover. P ge 10399.1 “Proceedings of the 2005 American Society fr Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education” Jones (2001) defined Cognitive Turnover (CT) as a mind-set that is created by a combination of turnover cognitions brought about by the negative impacts of burnout. Turnover is the voluntary cessation of membership in an organization by an individual who receives current or future compensation for participating in that organization (Mobley 1982). Turnover has cognitive indicators that predicate eventual departure. Chemiss (1980) defines burnout as “a syndrome of inappropriate attitudes toward others and toward self often associated with uncomfortable physical and emotional symptoms” Maslach (1976) observed that burnout “appears to be a factor of organizational turnover, absenteeism, and low morale. While everyone may manifest this mind-set periodically, excessive CT (eCT) may be detrimental to the individual and the organizations they belong to. Subtle acts such as absenteeism, poor quality, and lack of discretionary effort are related to burnout and are usual predecessors before a person quits an organization and becomes another turnover statistic. This research theorizes that eCT condition occurs when a person is absorbed with the thoughts of turnover created by organizationally driven burnout. For engineering students non-committal type behavior may originate from student stress and burnout created by class structure, administrative neglect, or lack of advisory support. Hence, an eCT will have lower than expected grades and experiences due to the lack of commitment. SECtCS BACKGROUND The Statistical Evaluation of Cognitive Turnover System (SECtCS) methodology was created by the primary investigator (Jones 2001) and was previously used to measure and evaluate Cognitive Turnover (CT) in engineering knowledge workers. The results demonstrated four valid constructs for a heterogeneous group of engineers across multiple companies. Results also included Statistical Process Control Charts that demonstrated both “in control” CT respondents and “out of control” CT, or eCT respondents The SECtCS methodology is grounded in three research areas, Industrial Engineering (IE), Engineering Management (EM), and Industrial Psychology (IP). The three research areas provide important aspects to the methodology and are uniquely integrated. Figure 1 shows the SECtCS methodology and the integration of the research areas. Fig 1: SECtCS Methodology