Long, H., & Liu, J., & Sturgess, J. R., & Sosa-Molano, J. R., & Berhane, B. T., & Secules, S. (2025, June), Examining Academic Success and Retention of Post-Traditional Students in Engineering Undergraduate Programs  Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . https://peer.asee.org/56463

\bibitem{asee_peer_56463}
  Long, H., \& Liu, J., \& Sturgess, J. R., \& Sosa-Molano, J. R., \& Berhane, B. T., \& Secules, S. (2025, June), \emph{Examining Academic Success and Retention of Post-Traditional Students in Engineering Undergraduate Programs}
  Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada .
  https://peer.asee.org/56463

Haiying Long, Jingjing Liu, Joseph Ronald Sturgess, Julian Rodrigo Sosa-Molano, Bruk T Berhane, and Stephen Secules.  "Examining Academic Success and Retention of Post-Traditional Students in Engineering Undergraduate Programs".  2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada , 2025, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2025.  https://peer.asee.org/56463 Internet.  20 Aug, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_56463}
  Haiying Long, Jingjing Liu, Joseph Ronald Sturgess, Julian Rodrigo Sosa-Molano, Bruk T Berhane, and Stephen Secules.
  "Examining Academic Success and Retention of Post-Traditional Students in Engineering Undergraduate Programs".
  \emph{2025 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada , 2025, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2025.
  https://peer.asee.org/56463 Internet.  20 Aug, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_56463
author = "Haiying Long, Jingjing Liu, Joseph Ronald Sturgess, Julian Rodrigo Sosa-Molano, Bruk T Berhane, and Stephen Secules"
title = "Examining Academic Success and Retention of Post-Traditional Students in Engineering Undergraduate Programs"
booktitle = "2025 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition "
year = "2025"
month = "June"
address = "Montreal, Quebec, Canada "
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/56463}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - The purpose of this WIP paper is to examine the unique characteristics and challenges faced by underserved post-traditional students (formerly known as non-traditional students) in undergraduate engineering programs. The number of post-traditional students in higher education has increased rapidly during the past decade. Scholars have argued that many undergraduate students have characteristics of post-traditional students, therefore, post-traditional students have become the typical undergraduate students on college campus (Chen, 2017). In this context, the term “post-traditional” has replaced “non-traditional” to describe this population used to describe non-traditional students. The literature has identified a few key characteristics of post-traditional students, such as individuals who start college at age 25 or older, attend college part-time, and have dependents. Despite the large number of post-traditional students, researchers in higher education and engineering education have devoted limited attention to this population. Additionally, extant scholarship has not unpacked the differences between this group of students and traditional students with respect to gender, race, and socioeconomic status. This study aims to fill this gap in the literature by investigating how post-traditional student characteristics and their demographics as well as the interactions of these variables affect students’ academic performance, persistence, and four-year graduation rates in engineering undergraduate programs. It uses the institutional deidentified data in the 2023-2024 academic year of students in the undergraduate engineering programs at a large Hispanic-Serving Institution in the Southeastern U. S. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, mean differences, linear and logistic regressions, and moderation analyses. 
Our key findings indicate that
1) Students who are male, part-time, in underrepresented minority groups (e.g., Black, Hispanic) or   have Pell eligibility tend to have lower cumulative GPA; Within the underrepresented minority groups, Asian students had the highest cumulative GPA, followed by Hispanic students, students of two or more races, and Black students.
2) Students who have two post-traditional student characteristics, including starting college at 25 or older or part-time students are less likely to enroll in the next semester; 
3) Students’ enrollment status (part-time vs. full-time status) had significant interactive effects with a few predictor variables, such as starting age and Pell eligibility, on outcome variables. It significantly moderates the relationship between students’ starting age and both cumulative GPA and four-year graduation rates. For post-traditional part-time students, there was a positive relationship between starting age and cumulative GPA, while for traditional full-time students, this relationship was negative. In contrast, part-time status negatively influenced four-year graduation rates in that part-time students who began college at 25 years or older were significantly less likely to graduate within four years than a traditional full-time student starting at the same age. 
The findings of this study enhance our understanding of the differences between traditional and post-traditional students. By acknowledging the unique characteristics of post-traditional students, HSIs and other minority serving institutions can better support their academic success and persistence, contributing to a more equitable and diverse engineering workforce. 

AU  - Haiying Long
AU  - Jingjing Liu
AU  - Joseph Ronald Sturgess
AU  - Julian Rodrigo Sosa-Molano
AU  - Bruk T Berhane
AU  - Stephen Secules
CY  - Montreal, Quebec, Canada 
DA  - 2025/06/22
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Examining Academic Success and Retention of Post-Traditional Students in Engineering Undergraduate Programs
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/56463
ER  -