2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The Frank H. Dotterweich College of Engineering at Texas A&M University-Kingsville presented a 3-week long Summer Bridge Program (SBP) virtually in the summers of 2020 and 2021, and then in hybrid mode in 2022, as part of and NSF Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) 5-year grant. The hybrid offering of the SBP in 2022 entailed approximately 50% of participants attending virtually through synchronous Zoom sessions, and the remaining 50% attending in person at Texas A&M University-KIngsville. Improving student motivation and retention for underclassmen students was a primary motivation of the work reported herein, since challenges to persistence for Hispanic students at community college, university, and graduate levels have been noted in higher education research. This Work-in-Progress paper presents insights into impacts upon students based on their participation virtually or in-person in the embedded design project in the SBP.
A major component of this SBP was team-based design projects conducted over 2-½ weeks of the program, with projects centered around faculty disciplines of chemical, civil, mechanical, electrical, and industrial engineering and computer science. The design projects for the 2022 hybrid SBP included chemical engineering projects on liquid/liquid extraction, solar-powered water pump, and desalination economics, two civil engineering projects on steel truss bridge design, two electrical engineering / computer science projects on a line-following robot, four mechanical engineering projects on 3D modeling and printing, an industrial design project on model airplanes, and a computer science project on optimization programming. The remote participants were provided time during the daily program meetings to work with their group members and faculty mentor through Zoom, while the in-person participants met face-to-face with their faculty mentor. The latter participants also had greater access to hands on material and laboratory equipment.
Online pre- and post-participation surveys were administered to assess program outcomes. The surveys were completed by 37 participants in 2020, 49 in 2021, and 46 in 2022. Responses solicited addressed experience and ability in respect to general engineering skills, understanding of discipline specific concepts and licensure, and, for summer of 2022, topics discussed in seminars by library and career services personnel. Analysis of the pre- and post-participation data facilitated assessment of learning achieved by participants. Substantial and statistically significant increases in understanding were noted each year. No differences were found by gender, ethnicity/race, or instructional modality (remote vs. online). These findings, replicated across three years and with different instructional formats, demonstrate the efficacy of the SBP offering.
The SBP will continue as part of the NSF grant for another two years, thus feedback on this Work-in-Progress paper from the engineering education community is desired. This work was funded by National Science Foundation grant 1928611.