Goldshirt Transitional Program: Creating Engineering Capacity And Expanding Diversity Through A Performance Enhancing Year
- Conference
- Location
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Louisville, Kentucky
- Publication Date
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June 20, 2010
- Start Date
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June 20, 2010
- End Date
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June 23, 2010
- ISSN
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2153-5965
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Minorities in Engineering
- Page Count
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16
- Page Numbers
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15.627.1 - 15.627.16
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--15886
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/15886
- Download Count
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684
Paper Authors
Tanya Ennis University of Colorado, Boulder
TANYA D. ENNIS is the current Engineering GoldShirt Program Director at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science. She received her M.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Tanya most recently taught mathematics at the Denver School of Science and Technology, the highest performing high school in Denver Public Schools.
Jana Milford University of Colorado, Boulder
JANA B. MILFORD is professor of mechanical engineering and faculty advisor for the Engineering GoldShirt Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She holds a Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University and a J.D. from the University of Colorado School of Law. Her research and teaching focus on atmospheric chemistry and transport modeling and air quality management.
Beth Myers University of Colorado, Boulder
BETH A MYERS is assistant to the Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence at the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She holds a B.A. in biochemistry and is a graduate student in the Engineering Management Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her interests are in quantitative and qualitative research and data analysis.
Jacquelyn Sullivan University of Colorado, Boulder
JACQUELYN F. SULLIVAN is founding Co-Director of the Integrated Teaching and Learning Program, and Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science. She received her Ph.D. in environmental health physics and toxicology from Purdue University. She founded and leads CU’s extensive K-12 Engineering Initiative and spearheaded the Engineering GoldShirt Program. In 2004 she founded the ASEE K-12 Division and in 2008 received NAE’s Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education.
Diane Sieber University of Colorado, Boulder
DIANE SIEBER is an Associate Professor in the College of Engineering and Applied Science and received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University. She is Director of the Herbst Program of Humanities in Engineering, and a University of Colorado President’s Teaching Scholar.
Daniel Knight University of Colorado, Boulder
DANIEL W. KNIGHT is the engineering assessment specialist at the Integrated Teaching and Learning Program in CU’s College of Engineering and Applied Science. He holds a B.A. in psychology from the Louisiana State University, and an M.S. degree in industrial/organizational psychology and a Ph.D. degree in counseling psychology, both from the University of Tennessee. Dr. Knight’s research interests are in the areas of retention, program evaluation and teamwork practices in engineering education.
Ann Scarritt University of Colorado, Boulder
Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract
GoldShirt Transitional Program: Creating Engineering Capacity and Expanding Diversity through a Performance-Enhancing Year Abstract
At our nation’s universities, too few rural, low-income, underrepresented minority and first- generation students pursue engineering degrees, and most well-prepared women show little interest. Because inadequate pre-college academic preparation is a known critical barrier to university-level engineering admission, one pathway for engineering colleges to increase their undergraduate student population diversity is to commit to boosting the performance of under- prepared high school graduates admitted under transitional status.
The Engineering GoldShirt Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder, supported by National Science Foundation funding, provides a performance-enhancing year for under- prepared students directly admitted to the engineering college. The highly-structured approach closely monitors student performance against seven goals. One goal is to increase student interest in, and knowledge of, an engineering career — supported by creating a strong community among GoldShirt students and the larger college population. Another goal is to ensure that students are prepared to academically perform in a traditional engineering program after their transitional GoldShirt year. By achieving all Program goals, we seek to create a national model for significantly boosting recruitment, retention and graduation of under-prepared students in engineering.
The Engineering GoldShirt Program enrolled its first cohort of 16 highly-motivated yet under- prepared students in fall 2009. In the pilot group, 11 represent the first-generation in their families to attend college, 13 are underrepresented minority students, and seven are female. This paper describes the College of Engineering and Applied Science’s unique approach to expanding opportunity for students from historically underrepresented groups to succeed in engineering, and shares the lessons learned thus far about recruitment, admissions, curriculum development, course placement, and student support services — all strategies suitable for adoption by other engineering colleges. This includes eye-opening admissions process changes learned through our efforts to more inclusively identify students’ potential for success, as well as other expected and unexpected pilot year outcomes.
The GoldShirt strategy described in this paper moves beyond competitive university recruitment efforts focused on the limited pool of best prepared and highly-sought-after US minority high school graduates — students who will likely join the engineering workforce regardless of what college they attend. The GoldShirt strategy aims to create engineering capacity from within the next tier of capable high school graduates. Using these multi-faceted approaches to augment the preparation of high-potential, underrepresented students, engineering colleges can more broadly serve the next generation and our nation.
The Preparation Gap
The University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder) is a public institution with more than 30,000 students, two-thirds of whom are Colorado residents. The College of Engineering and
Ennis, T., & Milford, J., & Myers, B., & Sullivan, J., & Sieber, D., & Knight, D., & Scarritt, A. (2010, June), Goldshirt Transitional Program: Creating Engineering Capacity And Expanding Diversity Through A Performance Enhancing Year Paper presented at 2010 Annual Conference & Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky. 10.18260/1-2--15886
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