nationwide. These are often designedfrom scratch and tend to be “personal courses” – designed by instructors to cover what they feelis important. Therefore, while they may be prerequisites to second-year courses, first-yearengineering programs are not necessarily integrated into the curriculum. Further, since they areoften designed with little consideration for existing models, overall outcomes and content varywidely. This leads to, first, the issue of course developers “reinventing the wheel” as successfulmodels are not adequately disseminated. The problem is exacerbated by a lack of definition offirst year models: a developer may know what they want in a course, but how do they find acourse with similar outcomes with nothing more than “first-year
them butto inspire them to succeed. By the end of the battle Jane and the Dragon were best friends. That is something what wasonce an enemy now became allies. The battle taught them to respect each other and to trust oneanother. The same can be said about knowledge. The same materials they are struggling with inthe classroom with become the tools of their trade in the future, and they will learn to respecteach science and the value it adds to engineering. In the end Jane returns to become a hero. The same people that made fun of her in thebeginning now respect her. Thus, do not let your present conditions predict your futurepossibilities.DOES IT WORK?As the Table 7 shows, the changes we made to the Freshman Curriculum including focusing
. Page 24.882.1 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2014 Management and Assessment of a Successful Peer Mentor Program for Increasing Freshman Retention1.0 AbstractThere is no single magic bullet for the retention of freshman engineering students upon entranceinto a rigorous course of study required of today’s engineering curriculum. Rather it is a multi-faceted approach of strategies each designed to aid the transition from an often-times easy highschool experience to one in which a student is overwhelmed with the difficulty andresponsibilities of a full-time student.One such strategy that has been implemented at LeTourneau University is a peer mentoringprogram which pairs
orientation course consisting of thefollowing requirements: Meeting with an advisor early on (first 3 weeks) to establish a relationship and to handle any current or potential problems Learning about campus resources such as tutoring Learning about the curriculum requirements and registration for the spring semester Provide information regarding stress, time management, study skills for engineering Introduced to student engineering organizations clubs Introduced to the engineering majors in the college Required to attend the career fair to help clarify their goals and interests, to help them learn more about engineering, and to prepare them for internships Write a resume for preparation for applying