Motivating incoming engineering students with diverse backgrounds: Assessing a summer bridge program’s impact on academic motivation

摘要

Student retention is a common concern in engineering education, and first-year retention is a priority in engineering colleges throughout the United States. In an effort to broaden participation, engineering colleges also seek opportunities to engage women and minorities as early as possible. In view of these situations, many colleges offer summer bridge programs that are intended to ease the transition from high school to college for incoming students-often students from groups that are underrepresented, such as women and minorities. Although the adoption of summer bridge programs is widespread in engineering, the literature surrounding the impact of these programs has theoretical limitations. This manuscript describes the use of an evaluation tool based on the MUSIC® Model of Motivation to investigate how concepts from current motivation research and theories can be used to assess a summer bridge program. Two student cohorts (N = 183) of an established summer bridge program that serves a diverse population were assessed. This research highlights how a summer bridge program can affect the motivation-related perceptions of underrepresented students. Because the MUSIC Model of Moti­vation captures a wide range of motivation constructs it makes it possible to investigate how different subgroups experience a summer bridge program. For example, this study found that male students rated their expectancy for success higher then female students, and represented students rated their expectancy for success higher than underrepresented students. Another key finding was the importance of expectancy for success and having a caring staff on underrepresented students.