Krause, S. J., & Middleton, J. A., & Judson, E., & Ernzen, J., & Beeley, K. R., & Chen, Y. (2015, June), Factors Impacting Retention and Success of Undergraduate  Engineering Students  Paper presented at 2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Seattle, Washington. 10.18260/p.24095

\bibitem{asee_peer_24095}
  Krause, S. J., \& Middleton, J. A., \& Judson, E., \& Ernzen, J., \& Beeley, K. R., \& Chen, Y. (2015, June), \emph{Factors Impacting Retention and Success of Undergraduate  Engineering Students}
  Paper presented at 2015 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Seattle, Washington.
  10.18260/p.24095

Stephen J Krause, James A Middleton, Eugene Judson, John Ernzen, Kendra Rae Beeley, and Ying-Chih Chen.  "Factors Impacting Retention and Success of Undergraduate  Engineering Students".  2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Seattle, Washington, 2015, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2015.  https://peer.asee.org/24095 Internet.  10 Jul, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_24095}
  Stephen J Krause, James A Middleton, Eugene Judson, John Ernzen, Kendra Rae Beeley, and Ying-Chih Chen.
  "Factors Impacting Retention and Success of Undergraduate  Engineering Students".
  \emph{2015 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Seattle, Washington, 2015, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2015.
  https://peer.asee.org/24095 Internet.  10 Jul, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_24095
author = "Stephen J Krause, James A Middleton, Eugene Judson, John Ernzen, Kendra Rae Beeley, and Ying-Chih Chen"
title = "Factors Impacting Retention and Success of Undergraduate  Engineering Students"
booktitle = "2015 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2015"
month = "June"
address = "Seattle, Washington"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/24095}
number = {10.18260/p.24095}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Factors Impacting Retention and Success of Undergraduate Engineering StudentsEngineering student persistence and retention to graduation usually ranges from 45% to 55% for most publicinstitution engineering colleges. As such, a major goal of this NSF CHANGES (Championing EducationalChange through Assessment for the Next Generation of Engineers' Success) project has been to explore some ofthe major student and institutional factors that impact persistence. This includes the extent to which evidence-based instructional practices have been implemented at a major southwestern university. A web-enabledassessment framework and processes have been implemented and are generating information from students andfaculty participating in the study. A major emphasis is on courses and faculty teaching them for lower levelfreshman and sophomore general and disciplinary core engineering courses, as well as foundational courses ofmath, chemistry and physics. Recent activities and results are described below for the three areas of facultybeliefs, student performance and retention, and student co-curricular activities.Faculty beliefs were measured with the Faculty Learner Centered Attitudes Beliefs Protocol (FCABP) whichsurveys faculty on their learner-centered beliefs. Data from a total of eight STEM instructors showed a widevariation of faculty beliefs that spanned from mainly student-centered to mainly teacher-centered. To furtherassess the degree of student-centered teaching, the same faculty were also interviewed and observations made oftheir classroom teaching practice using the RTOP (Reformed Teaching Observational Protocol) instrument.Although the sample size was relatively small, the interview results generally aligned with the survey results.There was roughly a linear relationship between the RTOP classroom observations and the results of theFCABP. It was generally found that instructors who were more teacher-centered had lower RTOP scores thaninstructors who were more student-centered. In the second area of student persistence, the first result was that, ofthe roughly 50% of students that departed from engineering prior to graduation, 90% of them did so within thefirst two years while only 10% left in the last two to four years leading to graduation. It was also found that theimpact of first time freshman first math class on persistence and graduation was dramatic. For first-time-freshman students with A or B in a math course above calculus I, 80% persisted to graduation, while studentswhose first math course was calculus I had 65% persistence to graduation and students whose first math coursewas below the level of calculus I had only 35% persistence to graduation. For students at any level whowithdrew or received a grade of C or lower, their chances of graduating were less than 20%. The third area wasco-curricular student support programs, experiences, and activities such as UG TAs, Tutoring Center,Supplemental Instruction, Student Residential Communities, and co-curricular experiences. Such experiencesincluded Undergraduate Research, E2 Freshman Camps, and Professional Societies. The impact of these supportprograms was found to be that, two-year persistence improved from 51% to 58% over a five-year span fromwhen the student support programs were initiated. This occurred in spite of the fact that first-time freshmanenrollments almost doubled over that five year span from 658 to 1195 students. Other factors for which data isstill being gathered include departmental and interdepartmental culture effects on student persistence. Overall,the results to date indicate the following. There is a strong need for faculty professional development to shiftpedagogy more toward student-centered learning. Entering students need to be calculus ready and the studentswould likely benefit from more effective teaching in early math courses. Finally student support programs andco-curricular activities appear to improve students' sense of belongingness, as well as help develop students'engineering professional identity. These and other additional results will be more fully described and discussedin the full paper.                                                         1
AU  - Stephen J Krause
AU  - James A Middleton
AU  - Eugene Judson
AU  - John Ernzen
AU  - Kendra Rae Beeley
AU  - Ying-Chih Chen
CY  - Seattle, Washington
DA  - 2015/06/14
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Factors Impacting Retention and Success of Undergraduate  Engineering Students
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/24095
DO  - 10.18260/p.24095
ER  -