Investigating the Effect of Freshman Minority Engineering Student Participation in a Minority Summer Bridge Program on Engineering Self-Efficacy and Early Academic Success at a Predominantly-White Institution

摘要

The broad moniker STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) is and continues to be, the focus of many in education and in industry. To maintain its position as a technological leader, the United States must not only continue to produce high-quality STEM field graduates but accelerate this production. The priority of this effort is revealed by President Barack Obama's push to produce an additional one million STEM graduates within a decade and an additional 100,000 new teachers in these fields (Feder, 2012). The sheer number of graduates required to fill the projected jobs in STEM fields will require both increasing the number of students entering these fields but also reducing the rate that college students exit these fields.