2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In this paper we describe a study, involving three universities, that considers various factors related to more equitable attainment of engineering degrees. Equity in this case refers to students from all backgrounds having similar outcomes in terms of their ability to earn an engineering degree within four years. The need for an increasing supply of engineering graduates is well understood as a necessary component for sustaining innovative industrial growth, national security, and global competitiveness, among other areas of national need requiring engineering talent. Furthermore, it is also now well understood that diverse engineering teams will generally produce better designs. Thus, there are both capacity and quality arguments supporting this work. In order to address these issues, this study will consider the vast unrealized reservoir of potential diverse engineering talent that could be more fully developed by providing more efficient and effective pathways to degree completion.

The universities engaged in this work are the University of Arizona, the University of California-San Diego, and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The design of the study was organized around three principles, (1) Collaboration: the study designers and administrators would work to facilitate a multi-institutional taskforce-based improvement effort focused on the roles that curriculum and instruction play in engineering student success; (2) Disciplinary Focus: using an asset-based approach, the study participants would leverage disciplinary expertise and best practices; (3) Student Centered: The study design must foster reflection on engineering curricula, possibly leading to reforms producing improvement in equitable student success outcomes, in alignment with each universities’ strategic plan.

The study design involves a consideration of the various instructional and structural complexity factors that may contribute to delays in student progression through engineering degree programs. In order to initiate this work, curricula from twenty different colleges of engineering across the country were collected, and then partitioned according to discipline. The five specific disciplines under consideration in this study are: Aerospace Engineering, Civil Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. Faculty and administrators from each of the three schools were provided with curricular complexity analyses according to their discipline. These analyses revealed the large variability in curricular structure and student success outcomes within each of these disciplines. Faculty and administrators formed subcommittees according to these disciplines and were asked to look for best practices and potential barriers, and to consider avenues of reform of their own programs according to curricular structure or instructional practices.