Asee peer logo

Work-in-Progress: Developing a Research Plan for a Retrospective Analysis of the Effect of Bridging Courses on Student Success in Graduate Studies

Download Paper |

Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Chemical Engineering Division (ChED) Technical Session 3: Work-in-Progress Part 1

Tagged Division

Chemical Engineering Division (ChED)

Page Count

5

DOI

10.18260/1-2--44412

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/44412

Download Count

114

Request a correction

Paper Authors

biography

Matthew Cooper North Carolina State University, Raleigh Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-1060-4628

visit author page

Dr. Matthew Cooper is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University where he teaches courses in Senior Design, Unit Operations, Transport Phenomena, Material & Energy Balances and Mathematical/Computational Methods. Dr. Cooper’s research interests include effective teaching, process safety education and conceptual learning. He also hosts the In The (Fume) Hood chemical engineering education podcast.

visit author page

biography

Lisa G. Bullard, P.E. North Carolina State University, Raleigh

visit author page

Dr. Lisa Bullard is an Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University. She obtained her BS in Chemical Engineering at NC State in 1986 and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1991. A faculty member at NC State since 2000, Dr. Bullard’s research interests lie in the area of educational scholarship, including teaching and advising effectiveness, academic integrity, chemical engineering instruction, and organizational culture.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University has developed a two-course “bridging course” sequence intended to provide students with an undergraduate degree other than ChE (e.g. physics, chemistry, biology) with the knowledge and skills needed to be successful in ChE graduate school. Prior to the development of these courses, students without an undergraduate degree in ChE were still admitted to graduate study at North Carolina State University, but anecdotal evidence indicated the students tended to struggle in their core graduate coursework. The overall goal of this work is to determine the impact, whether positive or negative, of bridging course sequence completion on the success of students without undergraduate ChE degrees in ChE graduate school; this work-in-progress paper intends to solicit feedback on study design from the ASEE ChE Division community. The NC State bridging courses have been offered 15 times since 2018, comprising a total of 121 enrolled students; 77 of these students went on to complete core graduate coursework at NC State. This set of 77 students comprises an experimental sample that will be compared against a cohort of 155 students who completed graduate coursework at NC State without an undergraduate degree in ChE but did not take the bridging courses (e.g. before the bridging courses were available or decided against taking the bridging courses). Comparisons intended to be made across these data sets include graduate coursework GPA (overall and only core courses) and graduation rate (for MS and Ph.D.). It will also be determined if there is any correlation between student performance in the bridging courses with their performance in later graduate coursework.

Cooper, M., & Bullard,, L. G. (2023, June), Work-in-Progress: Developing a Research Plan for a Retrospective Analysis of the Effect of Bridging Courses on Student Success in Graduate Studies Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--44412

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2023 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015