2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Significant numbers of first-year community college students place below Calculus-level mathematics and are underprepared for direct entrance to core prerequisite courses in an engineering baccalaureate degree curriculum. As a result, a potentially daunting and abstract sequence of math courses can dissuade otherwise promising candidates from the engineering profession. This NSF-IUSE project, launched in fall 2022, is a collaboration between engineering, mathematics, history, English, and physics faculty to create a two-quarter learning community experience for precalculus-level students entering our engineering transfer program at Whatcom Community College. The Engineering in Context Learning Community is a six-course curriculum that integrates contextualized precalculus, English composition, Pacific Northwest history, engineering orientation, and introductory problem solving and computing skills. The program employs high-impact practices including place-based learning, community-engaged projects, contextualized instruction, and undergraduate research to motivate foundational skill development, emphasize social relevance, and develop students' engineering identity, sense of belonging, and academic readiness.
The 2023-24 academic year marked the first pilot offering of the new learning community with an initial cohort of 19 students out of a capacity limit of 24. This paper and poster reports on early findings comparing persistence rates into the second-year curriculum between the first learning community cohort and our more general engineering student population. For example, 14 out of 19 (74%) cohort students enrolled in Calculus 1 within two terms of starting Precalculus 1. All 14 passed. This retention rate compares to 13 out of 30 (43%) for non-cohort students who were concurrently enrolled in Precalculus 1 and Introduction to Engineering. Only 11 of whom passed Calculus 1 on their first attempt.