IntroductionRetention of engineering students from their freshmen year to graduation is an important issue facing engineering schools today. The academic difficulty of an engineering education takes a toll on enrollment and a significant percentage of students that enroll as freshmen engineers do not reach graduation. Increasing the percentage of students that persevere to graduation is one of the College of Engineering (COE) at New Mexico State University's (NMSU) main goals. The first goal to help students achieve this is the Freshmen Year Experience (FYE) program. Experiential learning methods are described by much of the literature as a way to further engage students in their coursework and to introduce freshman to some of the basic concepts of engineering. A form of "student-centered education" where the instructor acts as a guide to the experiential learning process is preferred over the traditional class lecture format according to Spencer & Mehler [10] . Hixson [4] refer to this as instructor "role-modeling," where the instructor advises and nudges the students through a thought process. The decisions are ultimately made by the students and they are the owners of their solution. The research presented by Ambrose [1] similarly advocates the use of experiential learning opportunities. To better provide students with timely feedback, the in-class methods of peer instruction, case studies, and simulations lessen the slow response time of traditional grading. Introductory level classes are described by Koenig [7] , that help develop and reinforce basic reasoning skills that are critical in carrying out projects, designs, and experiments later on in STEM coursework. These classroom exercises are designed so that they scale up in difficulty. Hixon [4] calls this a "spiral curriculum," and appears to be very useful with engineering design projects.Our FYE plan is based in part on implementing these experiential learning methods in conjunction with the retention strategies developed by the ECSEL coalition, Kalonji & Gretchen [6] . The FYE is only the first year of a complete four year plan for increasing student retention. The FYE transitions in the summer to include internships, employment opportunities, group activities, and pre-advising for the fall semester. Students who successfully make it to their second year will experience continued peer-mentoring in their sophomore course load to include assistance with English, Calculus and Physics. The summer prior to their second year the students are offered the same opportunities as the summer before the first year. Plans for the junior and senior years include students hiring as peer-mentors and providing opportunities for the students to participate in undergraduate research. To achieve our goals the FYE integrates student success strategies into many facets of the student's first year in college. An integral part of this comprehensive approach is the ENGR100 "Introduction to Engineering" course. The data reported in this paper reflects a first pass at our Page 2...
This is a Work in Progress (WIP) paper and will focus on the Freshman Year Experience (FYE) program implemented at New Mexico State University, a Hispanic serving institution. Due to the low retention rate of 63.9% for first-year, full time engineering students, prior to the 2014-2015 school year, (persistence from matriculation to their sophomore year) the College of Engineering (COE) made a decision to implement a FYE program. The program was designed to help retain students in the COE and in addition, provide students with strategies to succeed in college. The COE first-year student retention rate rose by 14.6% to a total of 78.5% from freshman year to sophomore year. The overarching goals for the program were to help facilitate the transition from high school to University learning environments. The program implemented problem based learning, flipped classroom instruction, discovery of student resources on campus, among numerous other FYE and engineering curriculum instructional strategies.We have made several key changes to the ENGR 100 course since the first semester of its implementation in the fall 2014. Some of these modifications include changing the mathematics co-requisite course to college algebra, in order to reach more students. We have also implemented a mandatory peer mentor led workshop for all students. Peer mentors provide the students with an upper classman peer who can provide support inside and outside of the classroom. In our paper we will continue to discuss specifics regarding the ENGR 100 course, peer mentoring, intervention strategies, and FYE components. Literature ReviewAccording to Kuh (2008) 1 freshman year experience programs are highly influential in improving student success and create positive impact on their pathway to a degree. Key components of successful FYE programs are utilizing learning communities. In addition Kuh (2008) recommends writing intensive curriculums that focus on writing across the curriculum to create a deeper sense of content through writing. One of the key components of the FYE program is the peer mentoring program. As stated by Rode and Kubic, in Johnson (2009) 2 peer mentoring can serve as a supportive liaison between the classroom, students, and faculty. In addition, mentoring can also provide beneficial college experiences for both the mentor and mentee, (Johnson, 2009). Because our University is a Hispanic serving institution, the program developers felt mentoring could play a strong role in retention of all students, including our minority students. According to Liang and Grossman (2010) 3 mentors can aide youth from diverse backgrounds. In addition, minority students who have had a mentor, show greater success in academics.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.