2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Students beyond the traditional college age are becoming an increasingly prominent undergraduate population at colleges and universities, where most institutional services are typically designed to meet the needs of traditional college students. This trend brings challenges for institutions as they adapt their systems to better serve this growing student group. Understanding these students’ experiences helps institutions to align resources and practices. In this study and consistent with recent scholarship, we refer to this group of students as post-traditional students. Post-traditional students are defined in the literature as individuals who meet one or more of the following criteria: delaying college enrollment by one year or more, attending college part-time, supporting themselves financially while enrolled, working full-time while enrolled, having dependents other than a spouse, being single parents, or having earned a GED or another equivalency certificate in place of a high school diploma. This study examines post-traditional undergraduate engineering students’ experiences with institutional support services. It is a part of a previously funded collaborative, multi-year research project. Data for this study were collected and analyzed from a survey of 117 post-traditional undergraduate engineering students at a Hispanic-Serving Institution, a large public university located in a Southeastern state.

Key findings indicate that among ten types of student support services available on campus, students were most aware of academic advising, tutoring, student organizations, and financial aid and/or scholarship services, which were identified as the top four support services at the university. These were also the services students reported using almost always. In contrast, they were least aware of the food pantry and writing center/lab services on campus. Additionally, students reported that their three biggest challenges during the current school year were related to managing stress, burnout, or other mental health-related issues, meeting financial needs, and keeping a balance between family, work, and study. Besides family members, students most frequently discussed their academic interests, course selections, or academic performance with academic advisors and assigned faculty, which highlights the crucial roles of these individuals in motivating and retaining engineering students. The study offers important implications for improving institutional support services and policies to enhance learning and campus experiences of post-traditional engineering undergraduate students.