A Strategic Plan to Improve Engineering Student Success: Development, Implementation, and Outcomes

Motivated by flat undergraduate student performance metrics, and an ever-increasing focus on student success at University and state levels, a benchmark study found that best-practice student success processes had not been adopted in the College Engineering at NC State University. A structured strategic plan to improve these metrics was developed and implemented for the Fall 2012 cohort. This paper describes the strategic and tactical elements of the linked collegespecific changes implemented. Included is a description of the intended purpose of each link and the observed impact on student performance metrics. This paper should be a great value to engineering programs interested in understanding the student success strategies implemented at NC State University and their impact. A. Introduction In the College of Engineering at NC State University, measures of student success such as retention, matriculation, and graduation rates had remained largely unchanged for decades. A benchmark study, and review of the literature, on student success in undergraduate engineering education revealed several practices not adopted within the college. From this insight a set of processes/programs aimed at pre-college, first-time fulltime, and transfer students were developed into the College of Engineering Student Success Strategic Plan. In developing the strategic plan four organizing themes emerged: messaging, structural, support, and community. Table 1 provides details of the strategic plan themes. B. Strategy Details The structure chosen to improve student experiences and performance in the college included elements as given above in Table 1. Details are provided below. B.1. Messaging Theme This theme concerns how the college messages about engineering to various audiences. This includes the type of work engineers do, studying engineering, preparing for careers in engineering, the nature of engineering work and its impact, and how engineers intersect with others in society to drive progress and prosperity. In this regard, the 2008 NAE publication Changing the Conversation: Messages for Improving the Public Understanding of Engineering [1] both informed and motivated thinking about how the college interacted with constituencies and intended and unintended messages. The 2008 report, which itself builds on the 2002 NAE Report Raising Public Awareness in Engineering [2] is summarized as follows [3]: The overall conclusion of this report is that the public image of engineering and engineers must appeal to the optimism and aspirations of students and must be all inclusive. In the past, the image of engineers has been focused mostly on white males and messages have emphasized the preparation necessary for engineering careers, especially math and science. This NAE report [...] recommends the engineering community begin immediately to plan and initiate a coordinated communications campaign to interest young people from all backgrounds in engineering careers by appealing to their desire to find hands-on solutions to problems that can make a difference in the world and improve people’s lives. Table 1: Linked Student Success Strategies Strategic Theme Phase/Interaction Activities/Programs Purpose Messaging Pre-College K-12 outreach activities Engr. summer camps Teacher training Change messaging