Supporting Excellent Engineers (SEE)

Michigan State University, East Lansing MI

Investigators

Abstract

The Supporting Excellent Engineers (SEE) program in the College of Engineering at Michigan State University will build a financial, academic, and social support structure to increase retention and success for academically talented students with demonstrated financial need. The project will provide scholarship funding to reduce the unmet financial burden for these students during their 2nd and 3rd academic years, a critical period during which students transition from taking courses mostly outside the College to taking mostly courses in their chosen engineering discipline. SEE scholars will be selected based on their first-year academic performance and their financial need and, along with the scholarship funding, will receive targeted academic and professional development support designed to support motivation and feelings of belonging. The goal will be for each scholar to obtain an internship or co-operative education experience and for 100% of scholars to persist and graduate from an engineering major. SEE support efforts will be designed to prepare students for their first engineering job and enhance their feelings of belonging, engineering identity, and motivation to persist and succeed. By selecting students who have had the opportunity to demonstrate success in their first year on campus, the SEE selection process will give talented but underprepared students an equal opportunity to compete with peers who had stronger K-12 support structures. The data generated by the project will be widely applicable to colleges of engineering seeking approaches to maximize retention and success for all students. SEE will support eligible students with awards of $8,000 per year for their 2nd and 3rd years, with support of four cohorts of nine students during the proposed work. Internal research indicates that second and third year students have significantly lower feelings of belonging to the College of Engineering, lower motivation in engineering (e.g., self-efficacy and value for engineering), and higher perceived costs (effort, opportunity, and psychological) associated with pursuing studies in engineering. This project will use surveys and focus group interviews to measure the effects of being a SEE scholar on students' feelings of belonging and motivation (e.g., self-efficacy, value, identity, perceived cost), relative to other peer students. SEE will provide research-based professional development and social cohort programming to assist students in building connections to the College of Engineering and one another. SEE support services will be aligned with prior research on STEM persistence and psychological research on structures that support motivation. Data collected will inform optimal support strategies in enhancing undergraduate engineering students' retention and persistence to graduation.