2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The S-STEM project entitled “Creating Retention and Engagement for Academically Talented Engineers (CREATE)” was designed to support low-income, high achieving students achieve academic success, persist to graduation, build self-efficacy, and develop engineering identity. The scholarship-based cohort program is located within the College of Engineering at a large western land-grant university and recruited two cohorts of 16 based on academic talent and demonstrated financial need [1 – 6]. The program has retained 25 of the original 32 students (referred to as scholars) with six new scholars filling vacancies, leading to a current total of 31 scholars in the program. Current scholars identify as 21 male, 10 female, 18 white, 7 Hispanic, 1 Black, and 5 Asian. Program numbers mirror similar enrollment trends to the College with the following exceptions: higher female and students of color enrolled. The scholars in both cohorts participated in a rigorous set of curricular and co-curricular activities that included enrollment in a summer bridge program, proactive advising, tutoring in engineering courses, peer and faculty mentoring, career and graduate school guidance, cohort building activities, theme seminars, funded undergraduate research experiences, and goals workshops.
Cohort 1 started during the fall 2019 semester and cohort 2 started a year later during fall of 2020 and had different first-year experiences as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Scholars from both cohorts participated in bi-semester quantitative surveys and end-of-semester focus groups which allowed them to describe how they were using resources provided by the CREATE program, and how they were developing as engineering students. These focus groups were transcribed, group coded using directed content analysis, and underwent thematic analysis where themes and patterns were then discussed with the larger project team who had close interactions with the scholars.
We present qualitative findings that illustrate the lessons learned in operating this program for four years and successfully supporting 12 cohort 1 scholars to graduation: Lessons learned at the end of four years include: (1) Proactive advising could be done for all four years as it remained useful in helping scholars stay on track to graduation and reaching their career goals; (2) Progress reports used as part of proactive advising promoted beneficial interactions between scholars and faculty, and hence reduced barriers to future interactions for the scholar; (3) Scholars could have a peer mentor for just the first two years, unless they are matched by their majors. The exception to this is first generation scholars who benefit from peer mentors for the first three years; (4) Scholars should have faculty mentors for all four years as they derive emotional support early on and then career and goals support later in the program; (5) Placement in summer bridge programs that facilitate shared, group experiences could be used to support a long-lasting and resilient shared sense of community within the cohort; (6) Cohorts could include scholars all from the same major as scholars described challenges keeping in contact with or feeling connected to scholars in different majors once they stopped taking the same common classes. (7) The College of Engineering career services director who was part of the CREATE program management team could have been involved earlier to better support the scholars as they think about and work towards goals early on. These lessons learned have implications for future programs looking to develop their own cohort or mentorship programs at their institution.
References
1. K. Scalaro, I. Chatterjee, A-M. Vollstedt, J.L. Lacombe and A. Kirn, “A two-step model for the interpretation of meaningful recognition”, Proceedings of the 2021 ASEE Annual Virtual Conference, July 26-29, 2021.
2. K. Scalaro, I. Chatterjee, A-M. Vollstedt, J.L. Lacombe, A. Kirn, “Is this the real life? Exploring how virtual learning environments influence engineering identity”, Proceedings of the Frontiers of Engineering Conference, 2021, October 13-16, 2021, Lincoln, Nebraska.
3. K. Scalaro, I. Chatterjee, A-M. Vollstedt, J.L. Lacombe, A. Kirn, “From knowledge to doing: Changes in performance/competence beliefs of developing engineers”, Proceedings of the 2022 ASEE Conference & Exposition, June 26 – 29, 2022, Minneapolis, MN.
4. I. Chatterjee, K. Scalaro, A-M. Vollstedt, J. Lacombe, A. Kirn, “S-STEM: Creating retention and engagement in academically talented engineers”, Proceedings of the 2021 Virtual ASEE Conference & Exposition.
5. K. Scalaro, I. Chatterjee, A-M. Vollstedt, J.L. Lacombe, A. Kirn, “Engineering interests dynamic major pathways”, Proceedings of the 2023 ASEE Conference & Exposition, June 24 – 28, 2023, Baltimore, MD.
6. K. Steinhorst, R. Young, K. Scalaro, I. Chatterjee, A-M. Vollstedt, J. C. LaCombe, and A. Kirn, “Creating social capital: Developing resources in a cohort program”, abstract submitted to the 2023 ASEE Conference & Exposition, Baltimore, MD, June 2023.