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The Adjunct Academy at City Tech: Academic Support for First Year

Engineering Students at an Urban College

Yasemin Jones, Elaine Maldonado

College Learning Centers

New York City College of Technology, CUNY

Abstract

Urban students in engineering programs can face certain challenges including: 1) Inadequate academic preparation for college 2) Family and work responsibilities and 3) Lack of in-school support in the formation of their academic/ professional identities. The Adjunct Academy at City Tech (CUNY) project was created to improve the lives of adjunct, engineering faculty and engineering students. These are two important groups at NY City College of Technology (City Tech, CUNY), a diverse school in the northeast. Program details and early first semester outcomes will be discussed.

Introduction

The under representation of minority groups in high end technical, engineering fields continues as an issue of concern for engineering educators and college administrators. According a 2002 report by the GE fund 1, African Americans and Latinos make up less than 4 percent of the engineering workforce. Successful college programs are those that address institutional factors such as faculty involvement and its relationship to student achievement and performance. A new program, the Adjunct Academy at City Tech, has been created in order to improve retention and graduation of underrepresented students and improve the culture of faculty commitment to students.

The program, currently in its first three weeks of its first semester (i.e., as of this report) is a three-year federal government (FIPSE) funded effort. Details of the project’s structure and early “results” will be shared and should be of particular interest to other schools of technology with diverse student populations and large teaching pools of adjunct instructors.

The adjunct experience

Throughout the 1990s, three out of four new faculty members were appointed to non- tenure positions2. Despite this trend, studies have shown that informal student

Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education

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Jones, Y., & Maldonado, E. (2005, June), The Adjunct Academy At City Tech: Academic Support For First Year Enginnering Students At An Urban College Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--15606