Enhancing Undergraduate Civil Engineering Opportunities for Minority, Female, and Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Students

摘要

A student scholarship and enrichment program was established to help address pervasive problems of underrepresented minority, female and socioeconomically disadvantaged students enrolled in civil engineering degree programs and graduates serving in the civil engineering profession. The program is administered in the civil engineering department at The Citadel (Charleston, SC) and is supported through a grant from the National Science Foundation's Scholarships in Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (NSF, S-STEM) program. The program, Excellence in Civil Engineering Leadership for South Carolina (ExCEL-SC), provides scholarships to qualified students, within target demographic groups, who are pursuing a Bachelors of Science degree in civil engineering. Equally important, the ExCEL-SC program furnishes a variety of specific student support services focused on improving retention, developing principled leaders, and preparing graduates for successful careers. This paper presents an overview of program components being used to provide student enrichment, describes student cohort recruitment and selection criteria, presents initial statewide recruitment plan, tabulates student cohort demographics and freshman retention data, summarizes scholarship awards and on-going enrichment activities, presents initial ExCEL-SC program results, and summarizes corresponding program adjustments. Student performance data is analyzed and discussed with respect to trends and characteristics of successful and unsuccessful students.