Russell A. Long

Engineering matriculation paths: Outcomes of Direct Matriculation, First-Year Engineering, and Post-General Education Models

Longitudinal data from ten U.S. institutions are used to characterize outcomes of three matriculation models: Direct Matriculation to a specific major (DM), First-Year Engineering programs (FYE), and Post-General Education Programs (PGE). Both DM and FYE programs show high persistence rates, but FYE programs are less likely to attract transfer students and switchers. FYE graduates are the most likely to stick with their first choice of major (after completing FYE requirements), followed by DM graduates who begin in undesignated engineering (taking extra time to decide), then DM graduates who choose their major as part of the matriculation process, and then PGE graduates. FYE students also have the shortest time to graduation. We conclude that encouraging students to associate with engineering or an engineering discipline from the start, yet maintaining the curricular flexibility to allow alternate entry points onto the engineering path improves persistence, accessibility, effectiveness of major choice, and time to graduation.

Understanding engineering transfer students: Demographic characteristics and educational outcomes

Transfer students make up a significant share of engineering college graduates, yet their persistence is seldom studied, largely because of the lack of longitudinal data. This analysis used longitudinal data from 11 universities enrolling large numbers of engineering students to investigate the demographic characteristics and educational outcomes of transfer students in engineering relative to non-transfers. We find that students who transfer to four-year engineering programs are more likely to come from under-represented minority groups (URMs) and less likely to be women, although both groups are over-represented at two-year colleges. The findings confirm existing research indicating that, on average, non-transfers outperform transfer students, and non-URMs outperform URMs. But we also find that URM transfers, and especially Black transfers, are no less successful than nontransfer students - indicating that the transfer pathway is an effective bridge to a four-year degree. This is partly true for women transfers who do as well as men but are outperformed by women non-transfers. Finally, we find significant variation in outcomes between full- and part-time students, which may be driving the observed differences by transfer status. Our results should inform debates regarding the efficacy of the transfer pathway in engineering, particularly for women and URMs.

Introducing “stickiness” as a versatile metric of engineering persistence

A new metric, “stickiness,” is proposed, tracking longitudinally all students who have contact with a discipline to determine the likelihood those students will “stick” to that discipline and graduate in it. This metric has the versatility to be relevant for students making contact with engineering through a variety of pathways. Stickiness exhibits significant disciplinary differentiation. Whereas earlier work has shown that Industrial Engineering is the most successful at attracting and retaining students, the disciplinary distribution of stickiness shows that Industrial Engineering is exceptional. Disaggregating by race/ethnicity and gender, much larger variations in stickiness are observed (as much as 48 percent), and positive and negative outcomes are identified where students in particular subpopulations are more or less likely to stick than expected. Aggregated by race/ethnicity and gender, the stickiness of transfer students ranks the disciplines in the same order as the stickiness of first-time-in-college students, but transfer stickiness exhibits less disciplinary variation and transfer students in all disciplines exhibit higher stickiness than first-time-in-college students.

Work in progress - the effect of engineering matriculation status on major selection

This study focuses on how the approach to engineering matriculation affects choice of major. Using the eight institutions represented in the Multiple-Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development, we compared the majors at matriculation and at the third semester of 1) students who are directly admitted to a discipline 2) students who enter mandatory first-year engineering programs and 3) those who enter colleges of engineering without specifying a major preference. Preliminary findings indicate that students in formal FYE programs are more likely than the direct admits to choose Mechanical, Civil, Computer, and Industrial engineering and less likely to choose Chemical, Electrical, or Materials engineering as their first major. Students who enter as engineering undesignated are more likely to choose Civil, Industrial, and Other engineering and less likely to choose Mechanical, Electrical, Computer, and Materials engineering as their first major than direct admits.

Work in progress - effect of climate and pedagogy on persistence of women in engineering programs

Our goal is to determine how climate and pedagogy affect the persistence of women in undergraduate engineering programs via a longitudinal, multi-institutional, and multivariate study. We focus on the nine institutions of the southeastern university and college coalition for engineering education from 1987 to 2004. The study uses three related data sources: the multiple-institution database for investigating engineering longitudinal development (MIDFIELD), two climate surveys, and three teaching practices surveys. We will conduct new analyses on these existing data as well as new studies focusing on research questions relating climate, pedagogy, and persistence. This triangulated and longitudinal approach provides a powerful historical context to help explain changes and successes in persistence that will reach multiple stakeholders, scaffolding earlier qualitative studies with quantitative results that can inform policymakers. Here, we introduce our study and present initial results related to our first research question.

Getting better with age: Older students achieve higher grades and graduation rates

This study uses longitudinal data from eleven public, research universities in the U.S. to compare grades in required courses, graduation rates, and final cumulative grade point average of traditional (TRS) and nontraditional (NTS) students who ever declared engineering as a major. There have been national calls for increasing the numbers of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees in the U.S., and nontraditional students represent a large potential source of STEM majors. Engineering is studied separately because it has been found to be different than other STEM disciplines. The participating institutions are representative of large public universities that offer a large majority of U.S. engineering degrees. Understanding the choices and outcomes of nontraditional students can inform the process by which the students earn their degrees. Our results show that NTS earn grades that similar (but consistently higher) to those earned by TRS in Science, Mathematics, Engineering courses and have similar cumulative final grade point averages. NTS also graduate in six years at higher rates than TRS. By recruiting and matriculating more NTS, engineering programs can increase six-year graduation rates and graduate more engineering students.

Gaining Access or Losing Ground?: Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Students in Undergraduate Engineering, 1994–2003

Expanding access to engineering for underrepresented groups has by and large focused on ethnicity/race and gender, with little understanding of socioeconomic disadvantages. In this study, we use economic, human, and cultural capital theories to frame and then describe access to undergraduate engineering degree programs and bachelor’s degrees. Using individual student-level data from 10 universities from the Multiple-Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development (MIDFIELD) and aggregate school-level data (i.e., free-lunch status) from the Common Core of Data between 1994 and 2003, we first describe students who enter engineering programs by peer economic status (PES) with attention to gender, ethnicity/race, and SAT Math score. Second, a subset of the data is analyzed to describe access to bachelor’s degrees in engineering by PES using graduation rates. The findings show an increase in access to engineering degree programs by disadvantaged students, but that access to engineering bachelor’s degrees may be constrained, and especially for underrepresented ethnic/racial groups. The data highlight variable PES differences that accrue in engineering at entry and upon graduation (6 years later) across ethnic/racial groups; these differences have implications for broadening participation. Recommendations for future research and improving engineering access at the secondary and postsecondary levels are discussed.

Looking upstream: Identifying and describing the entry points into engineering transfer pathways

Research on transfer students identifies the specific reasons why students embark on the transfer pathway. Our study adds to this literature with its focus on understanding the broader context of transfer pathways and the relative timing of the decisions to transfer and to major in engineering. Our goal is to identify the entry points into the transfer pathways and how the decision to transfer interacts with the decision to major in engineering. We focus on student intentions and the alterations to their planned pathways. To achieve our goal we analyzed 47 in-depth interviews of traditional-age engineering transfer students from three research universities. The results reveal four distinct transfer pathways characterized by different levels of intentionality and diverse decision making sequences. The findings have important implications for broadening the transfer pathway into engineering.

Performance trajectory of students in the engineering disciplines

The purpose of this study is to examine differences in student performance among engineering disciplines, as measured by term GPAs. Results indicate that: 1) Women outperform men in most engineering disciplines; 2) Student performance starts low at the freshman level, drops slightly at the sophomore level, and then increases over the junior and senior levels (without controlling for mortality); 3) Significant differences in GPAs remain between majors after controlling for relative SAT score, academic class level, race, and gender; 4) After controlling for major, relative SAT score, academic class level, and race, the gender gap in performance grows even larger.

Making the Multiple Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development (MIDFIELD) more accessible to researchers

The Multiple Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development (MIDFIELD) is expanding to include 113 institutions and is being redesigned and archived to be more accessible to researchers. This special session will describe how researchers can better use or gain access to MIDFIELD. At the conclusion of the session participants should be able to: describe MIDFIELD including common data elements, discuss how new variables can be derived from MIDFIELD, understand what is necessary to access the data on the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research, and define quantitative and qualitative data types and structures and outline research questions and methods of personal interest to them.