2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In this research paper, we present results from a survey focused on student engagement with college, university, and local events, use of student resources, students’ general feelings of connection to the engineering college and the university, and their social engagement with peers and faculty. Retention, particularly of first- and second-year students, remains a challenge despite efforts to improve first-year programming and it is widely recognized that a sense of social belonging contributes to persistence in undergraduate engineering programs. Thus, it is important to evaluate student engagement with this programming and their sense of social belonging. The Engineering and Architecture College distributed a survey addressing these items to students in five introductory-level engineering, computer science, and architecture courses in fall 2021 (N=409) and fall 2022 (N=226). In this paper, we focus on results that highlight key differences between first-time freshmen and transfer students as well as engagement trends for the fall 2021 cohort of first-time freshmen, the first semester with in-person instruction after COVID-19, versus the fall 2022 cohort. Our aim is to better understand how engineering colleges can best serve their first-year student populations. Few significant differences were found between the 2021 and 2022 cohorts apart from higher resource utilization and slightly more frequent event attendance for the 2021 cohort, indicating that although many 2021 students transitioned directly from an online learning environment, they were approximately equally socially engaged and connected. The comparison between first-time freshmen and transfer students revealed that transfer students were significantly less likely to engage with peers and felt less connected to the university at large but were more likely to utilize college resources and felt equally connected to the engineering college. Overall, first-year students felt significantly less connected to the engineering college than the university at large despite the majority reporting attending engineering events and engaging with resources, peers, and faculty, indicating that further strategies are necessary to help all first-year students feel well-connected to engineering.