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This study examined undergraduate and graduate engineering students’ epistemological beliefs as a function of their educational level. Schommer’s (1998) Epistemological Questionnaire was used to assess the beliefs in quick learning, certain knowledge, fixed ability, and simple knowledge of 396 students attending two universities in Western Tennessee. Additional analyses examined the effects of background characteristics, such as gender, ethnicity, and high school grade point average. Results indicated that freshmen and sophomores were more likely than juniors and seniors to have beliefs in quick learning and certain knowledge above and beyond the effects of the background characteristics. There were no significant differences in graduate students’ and undergraduate students’ beliefs. The results of this study also indicate that engineering students’ beliefs are related to their advancement in problem-solving processes in an undergraduate engineering curriculum.

This longitudinal study (2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005) considers the impact of a freshman orientation course on the persistence of black and white students at a midsouthern university, as well its relationship with college achievement (GPA). Controlling for gender, race, high school GPA, and decided on major, logistic regression was used to assess persistence; multiple regression for evaluating college GPA. Though the orientation course had a positive impact on persistence to the second year and first year GPA (particularly for black students), it failed to have impact beyond the second year. Topical gaps in the course's content are considered as a possible influence in the lack of long-term persistence. Possible future research is discussed.A major goal for both colleges and students should be the final attainment of a degree. However, degree attainment statistics are not encouraging. For example, looking at those freshmen who entered college in the Fall of 1995, by June 2001, only 55.3% had actually graduated (U.S. Department of Education, 2003). Indeed, the chances that students will even graduate in 4 years from a "four-year institution," may be less likely now than in the past. Wirt et al. (2004) found that, for both freshmen who started in the Fall of 1989 and the Fall of 1995, after 5 years, only about 53% had received a bachelor's degree. In another study, of students who started college in 1994, only 36.4% of them earned a

Introduction. In the present study we examined the differences in volitional strategy use (i.e.,

Ethics has become an increasingly important issue within engineering as the profession has become progressively more complex. The need to integrate ethics into an engineering curriculum is well documented, as education does not often sufficiently prepare engineers for the ethical conflicts they experience. Recent research indicates that there is great diversity in the way institutions approach the problem of teaching ethics to undergraduate engineering students; some schools require students to take general ethics courses from philosophical or religious perspectives, while others integrate ethics in existing engineering courses. The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to implement the integration of ethics in engineering education that is pedagogically based on Kohlberg's stage theory of moral development.