engage1st - Creating First Generation Engineers

University Of Tennessee Knoxville, Knoxville TN

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal describes a collaborative program between East Tennessee Community Colleges and the University of Tennessee (UT) College of Engineering (UT_COE called engage1st to widen the pipeline of incoming first year engineering students from under-represented populations and to provide an intervention program that supports success for these students. The participating community colleges are Northeast State Technical Community College, Pelissippi State Technical Community College, Roane Community College, and Walters State Community College. Engage1st has the goal of attracting and graduating students with merit but not opportunity to engineering from those groups under-represented in the UT-COE. Data shows that students in engineering at UT are from families having an engineer in the immediate family or from locations where engineers live and work - overwhelmingly suburban locations and specific high schools. These students enter engineering having a model and an expectation of being an engineer and being successful at UT. Under-represented students are those from high schools in the institutional service area where there has not been a supply of engineering freshmen. Students in this target audience come from rural, urban, and inner-city settings and include Caucasians, African-American, and Hispanic men and women. Engage1st has four components: 1) recruiting of students while in high school, 2) academic preparation of students at community colleges for engineering school, 3) adaptation of students into the University academic and social setting, and 4) industry support for these students from their home counties thru summer internships and scholarships. The aim of the program is to provide a model for being an engineer and to foster the expectation of success in engineering at the University to create new first generation engineers. Students will be recruited as high school juniors and encouraged to take SMET preparatory courses as seniors. After high school, the students will attend a local community college for one year where they will take English and Chemistry, Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus and computer programming toward their BS in Engineering. Students will intern in their home county the following summer. Students will begin at UT in the engage freshman-engineering program and will live together and be taught as cohorts of 20 in Calculus and engineering classes. Students return to their home counties to intern the summer after their freshman year. In year 3, students enter their sophomore classes as mainstream engineering students. Affiliated programming and scholarships support the students throughout the program. The intellectual merit of this program lies in the redefinition of the engineering education entry problems and combination of existing expert resources as a solution. Engage1st combines the expertise of the community colleges in remediation of fundamental skills with the innovation of teaching freshman engineering in engage to academically deliver mainstream engineering sophomores at the conclusion of two years. These students must be taught to problem solve, and they need encouragement and the confidence from the community college year to move to UT. The broader impacts of the program are in workforce development of technical expertise in a manner that will, in time, increase the number of engineering graduates. This program develops first generation engineers (implying a new source of engineers in future generations) and does it by creating a pipeline into engineering in populations where there are not existing role models. Economically, this program starts to create that technical staff and to develop a technical career track for a future workforce.