Factors Impacting Retention and Success of Undergraduate Engineering Students

Factors impacting student persistence in engineering were examined to assess the impact of a long-term student success initiative for freshman students at a large urban university. Institutional data, classroom observations, faculty interviews and assessments were utilized to determine probable causal factors interacting in predicting student persistence for the first two years of university engineering, and persistence to graduation. Results show that classroom observations as measured by the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) instrument and faculty attitudes towards student-centered instruction as measured by the Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI) instrument were closely related. It was generally found that teachercentered instructors had lower RTOP scores while student-centered instructors had higher RTOP scores. In the second area of student persistence, the first result was that, of the roughly 50% of students that departed from engineering prior to graduation, 85% of them did so within the first two years while only 15% left in the last two to four years. It was also found that the impact of first time freshman's first mathematics class on persistence and graduation was dramatic. For first-time-freshman students with A or B in a math course above calculus I, 80% persisted to graduation, while students whose first math course was calculus I had 65% persistence to graduation and for students whose first math course was below the level of calculus I had only 35% persistence to graduation. For students at any level who withdrew or received a grade of C or lower, their chances of graduating from engineering were less than 20%. The third area was co-curricular student support programs, experiences, and activities such as Undergraduate Teaching Assistants, Tutoring Center, Supplemental Instruction, and Student Residential Communities; and co-curricular experiences include Undergraduate Research, E2 Freshman Camps, and Professional Societies. The impact of these support programs was shown using an interrupted time series analysis. Persistence growth rates grew from about .98 per year prior to success programs being instituted to 1.6 per year following institution of the reforms. This occurred in spite of the fact that first-time freshman enrollments more than doubled over the studied period. Overall, the results to date indicate that there is a strong need for faculty professional development to shift pedagogy more toward student-centered learning, entering students need to be calculus ready and the students would likely benefit from more effective teaching in early math courses, and finally co-curricular activities appear to improve students' sense of belongingness as well as helping develop students' engineering professional identity.