Chasing the Holy Grail: Pushing the Academic Persistence of Highly Motivated, Underprepared URM Students Pursuing Engineering

This paper presents quantitative and qualitative data to examine motivation to persist amongst African American and Hispanic/Latino undergraduate engineering students. Psychological factors including “grit”, self-determination and social cognitive career theories are used to explore self-efficacy, goal orientation and perception of institutional culture as mediators of academic achievement. A significant part of this paper analyzes responses to interventions designed to support retention of students lacking the math background to “hit the ground running” upon entering a large, public predominantly white institution (PWI)’s college of engineering, with a disproportionate number of minorities in the underprepared category. Targeted retention interventions for first year students yielded statistically significant improvement in math course progression, particularly for minority students. Overall attrition decreased by 10% in two successive years. Recent research suggests positive student outcomes can be achieved by transforming institutional culture to ensure minority student success. A preliminary within group comparison of minority engineering undergraduates (N=50) at two campuses a PWI and a Historically Black College and University/Minority Serving Institution (HBCU/MSI) indicated 75% were satisfied with their choice of institution. However interesting differences emerged regarding perceived marketability of their engineering degree (higher at PWI), perceived welcome at the institution of choice (higher at HBCU/MSI), and perception of opportunities to network with faculty to conduct research (higher at HBCU/MSI). It is anticipated these culturally aligned findings will contribute to efforts to identify and adopt the individual, college and university level practices most likely to support minority engineering persistence. Context & Background National leadership and STEM outreach to produce talent for the knowledge economy are at the highest levels, with the President of the United States championing STEM education in eight consecutive “State of the Union” addresses (2008-2016). The result has been an important resurgence in awareness of STEM careers, particularly in engineering, as reflected in the quadrupling of size of a large public university’s College of Engineering the past 10 years. However in spite of the growth, the college’s struggle to graduate more engineers mirrors longstanding challenges to reduce attrition, retain and graduate students of all backgrounds, ethnicities and genders. Efforts to ensure student progression in the degree are highly dependent on academic achievement. It is well documented that American cultural and linguistic minorities (African American, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American) receive less rigorous preparation in high school (Figueroa, Hurtado & Wilkins, 2015), exacerbated by continued erosion of math numeracy in K-12 education in general. The primary question this paper answers is the extent to which student determination to succeed successfully mitigates an academic disadvantage when bolstered by institutional investment in cognitive (learning) and non-cognitive (supplemental curricular) support. Exploring relationships between students’ psychological and personality profiles (confidence and goal orientation), and the contextual environments they navigate can offer rich feedback on achieving a specific career goal (Lent, Brown and Hackett, 2000). This paper suggests that math remediation is critical, but must be done in an institutional context that successfully leverages student determination to succeed. Results in this paper are based on efforts to support underrepresented student retention at a predominantly white engineering institution (PWI). Prior to beginning this analysis, the estimated cumulative attrition rates were such that for every 100 students who started in Engineering, about 75% were retained after the first year, and 45% after the second year. In total, due to a variety of reasons including financial burden, only 18% were obtaining baccalaureate degrees in four years. In comparison to the rest of the university, the freshman retention rate across the university is approximately 89%, and on-time (e.g. four year) graduation rates have ranged between 38-67% depending on the program. The traditional faculty argument that “admitting poorly prepared students” is the reason for dramatic attrition has diminished given increasingly competitive university admissions. For the period 2011-2013, quantitative data was available for N=1,484 students and retrospective analysis for ethnicity and math placement yielded 11.9% who identified as African American, 2.5% who identified as Hispanic. While differences in gender yielded no discernible differences in math placement, SAT math scores and GPA in initial math course, incoming African American and Hispanic engineering students had significantly lower SAT scores than their white and Asian counterparts, but were still above the national average for that period (engineering admission SAT-M=566, minority engineering SAT-M=543 vs. national average SAT-M=514). However, SAT math scores were not reflected in actual math placement, and 42% of all incoming engineering students were placed below Calculus I, at least one semester behind their higher placed peers and in many cases, at least full one year behind. Incoming minority engineering students were most likely to be placed in lower level math courses, delaying progression in the degree. Thus, the decision to invest in retention reflected the disconnect between a nationally standardized test, the university’s math placement tests and the socio-emotional dissonance minority students experienced when advised attaining an engineering degree would take longer (and cost more) than originally expected. As a result, the engineering college elected to better support “high potential” but “mathematically underprepared” students by implementing cognitive and non-cognitive interventions this paper will present. It is hoped that the results will benefit other engineering colleges seeking to improve minority student outcomes using evidence-based measures.