MULTICULTURAL ENGINEERING RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION AT A LARGE URBAN UNIVERSITY

摘要

The University of Houston serves a diverse population of students including many First-Generation-in-College (FGIC) students and many from groups traditionally underrepresented in the engineering workforce. Students who enroll in engineering generally must work to finance their education. As a result, four-year graduation rates are low, especially among African American and Hispanic students. To address the issue of low participation and low success for students of color, particularly women, in engineering fields, the college has developed a multicultural learning community framework with a number of related support structures. This learning community is named the Program for Mastery in Engineering Studies (PROMES) and represents the Multicultural Engineering Program (MEP) for the university. Participation is voluntary and multidisciplinary, and the community numbers approximately 500 undergraduates, i.e. 15-20% of the total population of engineering undergraduates. This integrated framework of recruitment and retention activities supports the college of engineering's mission of increasing student participation and student success among underrepresented groups. The scope of programs within this multicultural community framework includes unique outreach collaborations with local school districts, nonprofits, and corporations to expose youngsters to exciting math, science, and engineering design activities led by engineering undergraduates. It also includes a residential summer engineering program for precollege students and their undergraduate engineering student mentors. Once admitted to engineering, incoming college students gain access to a system of academic Best Practices that includes first-year common cohorts for math, science and engineering courses, collaborative learning workshops, academic success tools, personal skills enhancement, formalized peer mentoring, and service learning. Returning and transfer students access supplemental collaborative learning workshops in support of sophomore- and junior-level engineering courses. These are peer-led problem-solving sessions that meet for three hours each week to reinforce concepts from difficult lecture courses such as Circuit Analysis, Thermodynamics, Statics, Applied Electromagnetics, and Chemical Processes. This model -- building cohorts of students in common courses, bringing engineering undergraduates into active leadership roles in building a community of scholars, instilling a value of "reaching back" to encourage precollege students to pursue high education, placing upper division students into peer mentoring relationships with incoming students, emphasizing academic Best Practices at all levels, and empowering students through peer-led supplemental instruction in high failure rate sophomore and junior engineering courses - has proved successful in retaining at-risk students who might otherwise not persist in engineering.