A Holistic Student-Centered Approach to Retaining and Graduating Engineers at a Midwest University

This work in progress describes a comprehensive set of activities geared towards incoming freshman engineering majors to help them transition to the university setting and set a good foundation for their early mathematics courses. The activities undertaken in this NSF-supported STEP grant can be classified in the following major areas: (i) enhancements in the delivery of mathematics courses to improve the rate of success, (ii) engaging students to the engineering community as early as possible through mentoring and other activities, and (iii) improving the freshman engineering course to invoke lasting interest in engineering. The project is now in its third year. The passing rates in the Calculus courses showed noteworthy improvements and more so, the percentage of students earning grades of A or B increased significantly. In particular, the passing rates in Calculus I for students involved in the project compared to those who are not are 69.7% and 56.7%, respectively. The corresponding passing rates for Calculus II are 84.2% and 66.7%, respectively. In addition, the percentage of students who earned grades of A or B for those involved in the project compared to those who are not are 46.4% and 35.0%, respectively in Calculus I and 57.3% and 38.7%, respectively in Calculus II. Adjustments continue to be made to achieve the project goals. Furthermore, as the project activities required significant coordination among different campus offices and academic departments, changes are made in processes to facilitate collaboration. The project activities have contributed to our improved retention rates and even helped us recruit more and better prepared students.