2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Calculus is often identified as a barrier to student success in engineering and engineering technology programs. In previous research, overall success in the Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) program at Penn State Behrend was assessed in relation to students’ success in introductory engineering graphics courses. That work found a significant correlation between success in engineering graphics courses and successful completion of the major. At Behrend, enrollment in the MET program is contingent upon a student’s successful completion of a specific subset of courses taken during the first two years of study: college algebra, technical calculus, and algebra-based physics. This earlier work also examined the relationships between the entrance to major (ETM) requirements of physics and calculus and student success, finding that success in the major had a significant correlation with success in physics courses and a statistically significant, but appreciably weaker, correlation with success in calculus courses.

The initial study involved only 75 subjects; however, due to the lower correlation between student success and performance in calculus, further study is being pursued with a larger group of students. Data has been collected on ten years of graduates of the bachelor's degree MET program at Behrend to assess the relationship between overall student success and success in entrance to major calculus courses. This paper will also look at the correlation between other major-required courses and overall success in the MET program to recommend a combination of entrance-to-major courses that better predict overall student success.