2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Presenting a work in progress, this paper describes ongoing efforts to support dual degree students through a peer mentoring program embedded in the first-year curriculum within an electrical and computer engineering (ECE) department. Dual degrees are one of many reasons (e.g., changes in majors, transfers, career changes, stop-outs, etc.) that first-year-in-engineering may not be synonymous with first-time-in-college. As enrollment patterns continue to change across higher education, it is imperative that engineering programs are prepared to support students and the variety experiences and needs they bring to the classroom.

In this work, we describe efforts to support students in transition pursuing a dual-degree engineering pathway between a liberal arts college and [University Name’s School Name]. Dual-degree students come to [University Name] with prior college experience and will continue to develop connections at two different campuses throughout their student careers, which may have implications for their feelings of belongingness.

The course in focus, [Course Name], is designed to be taken in the first year that students matriculate into their major. The course enables students to explore the ECE curriculum within the context of real-world career opportunities, simultaneously providing students with individualized academic planning and early professional development. A peer leader fellowship is facilitated in parallel to [Course Name], in which first-year engineering students select mentors from a pool of paid, trained, upper-level ECE students. The goal of the fellowship is to provide easily accessible mentorship from students who have gone through similar experiences and have common academic interests within the expansive ECE curriculum. The specific research question driving this study is, “How does peer mentorship contribute to a sense of belonging within a discipline and a new campus for first-year engineering students in a dual-degree program?”

We will collect focus group, survey, and interview data from two semesters of students and peer mentors. In Fall 2022, we will conduct a focus group with current peer leaders to prepare for the arrival of dual-degree students the following semester. The focus group will target peer mentors’ conceptualizations of their role in supporting first-year students, the challenges they have encountered as peer mentors, and their effective mentoring practices. Insights from the focus group will inform the subsequent iteration of peer mentor training in Spring 2023, when the dual-degree students enroll in [Course Name] alongside the other first-year engineering students. During the spring semester, we will conduct beginning- and end-of-semester surveys with the dual-degree students, as well as conduct end-of-semester interviews with the students and their peer mentors. The student data will address their experiences with their peer mentors and their perceptions of belongingness within ECE, within engineering in general, and within the broader [University Name] community. The peer mentor interviews will help us understand how the mentors applied their training in practice.

We will consolidate these multiple streams of data to develop a nuanced perspective of the potential value (and challenges) of peer mentorship programs as engineering programs consider the myriad matriculation avenues of “first-year” students. We will make the training materials available to help disseminate the lessons learned and recommendations for practice.