Supporting Excellent Engineers (SEE)

The Supporting Excellent Engineers (SEE) program in the College of Engineering (CoE) at Michigan State University (MSU) is building a financial, academic, and social support structure to increase persistence and success for academically talented students (GPA > 3.0) with high financial need (Pell-eligible). SEE activities build upon existing support programs and structures in the CoE and at MSU. SEE Scholars are selected from eligible rising second-year engineering students with awards of $8,000 per year for students’ second and third years. At completion, SEE will have supported four cohorts of 9 students each. In addition to financial support, SEE provides research-based professional development and social cohort programming to assist students in building connections to the CoE and each other. Two explicit goals for the SEE Scholars program are for each Scholar to obtain an internship, co-op, or summer undergraduate research position and 100% retention and persistence of Scholars to graduation from the CoE. SEE support services are aligned with prior research on STEM persistence and psychological research on structures that support motivation. Leveraging ongoing assessments by members of the SEE team, the impacts of various financial and psychological supports are being examined. SEE is studying how being a SEE Scholar affects students’ feelings of belonging and motivation (e.g., self-efficacy, value, identity, and perceived cost), relative to their peers. The data collected will allow us to determine the effectiveness of our support activities in enhancing students’ retention and persistence to graduation on a small population of select students. To date, SEE has supported the persistence and success of 27 MSU engineering students. This paper will describe the SEE program and our ongoing programmatic and research efforts.