2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Complete Paper: There is an emergent call for engineering higher-education programs to increase the perceived value of an undergraduate education. Many institutions are focusing on methods to increase engineering students' persistence and decrease time to graduation.. Engineering program belonging is developed to measure the extent to which students feel supported, respected, and included by their colleagues, mentors, and faculty in engineering. The sense of belonging is a critical factor that can significantly affect student engagement, satisfaction, and retention in engineering programs. Although providing an academic environment that contributes to student sense of belonging, in general, is important, it is also critical to pay attention to the specific subgroups of students that may require different kinds of institutional attention. Recent trends and institutional data have suggested that the level of math that an engineering student has attained upon entering the program is a significant predictor for persistence and time to matriculation. Math readiness is a critical component of success for undergraduate students, particularly those entering fields that require a strong mathematical foundation, such as engineering, physics, computer science, and economics. Students with different levels of math readiness may feel a different sense of belonging. Therefore, institutes of higher learning need to consider specific areas of focus in curricular development or extra-curricular programming that can contribute to students’ sense of belonging, which will contribute to their success and persistence.

This research aims to explore the differential engineering sense of belonging among undergraduate student groups, including 1- students who want to persist in engineering, leave the engineering program, or leave college, and 2- students with different levels of math readiness. We also explore different levels of math readiness within white and non-white student groups. This research paper uses multiple comparison analyses between undergraduate student groups to uncover differences in reported sense of belonging and to examine if differences in belonging are influences in student matriculation in the second year. This study uses the engineering program belonging instrument that was developed to measure areas where students feel supported and included by their colleagues, mentors, and faculty. This quantitative study analyzes an online administered self-reported survey collected from more than 8,700 undergraduate students within the first several weeks of an introductory General Engineering program from fall 2015 to spring 2020. Results suggest significant differences in most engineering sense of belonging subsets between engineers who persist in engineering compared to students who want to leave engineering or college. Furthermore, results identified significant differences in some of the students’ engineering sense of belonging subsets between students with math readiness in comparison with students with no or high level of math readiness. These findings highlight engineering sense of belonging as a leading indicator of matriculation and reinforce calls to provide supplementation for students in engineering programs who have not completed adequate mathematical instruction prior to entering their first year.