Conference Session

Engineering Cultures and Identity

Collection

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Stephen Secules, University of Maryland, College Park; Andrew Elby, University of Maryland, College Park; Ayush Gupta, University of Maryland, College Park

Tagged Topics

ASEE Diversity Committee, Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods

those involved with the educational problem at issue. In this paper, we take up the long-discussed problem of struggling students inundergraduate engineering programs. Responses to the problem of struggling students have beenvaried; the following is a coarse literature review of some responses in order to position ourwork. Traditional quantitative retention research has documented the magnitude of the problemand clarified large-scale inequities in access to higher education in STEM based on gender, race,socioeconomic status (for example, Ong et al. and Seymour and Hewitt)2,3. This research oftendraws on a metaphor of the “leaky pipeline” to justify institutional remediation, includingsupport programs for racial, gender, and