CAREER FOCUS
Upping the Retention Game
Getting students into engineering is one thing, but keeping them there is entirely another.
Written by Robin L. Flanagan
WHILE THE DROPOUT RATE FOR ENGINEERS may not be higher than other majors, postsecondary education programs know that retention is crucial given the increasing need to drive innovation, design and build essential infrastructure, and tackle complex systems.
“In addition to keeping all the lights on and making sure the things that society already has keep working, graduating more engineers supports a stable and growing economy,” said Matthew Ohland, Dale and Suzi Gallagher Professor and associate head at Purdue University’s School of Engineering Education in West Lafayette, Ind.
How best to do that when roughly 50 percent of engineering students change majors or drop out before graduation?
The first step is to clearly communicate expectations.
Students “begin thinking that they can easily manage the rigor of the curriculum and the work that goes with it, but once they get into the program, they realize it is not something they bargained for,” said Ashok Agrawal, interim executive director and CEO of the American Society for Engineering Education.
When students are told upfront what will be required of them, however, they can wisely decide whether to pursue an engineering program before enrolling in one, noted Ohland. One way he suggested to do that is by working with national programs such as Project Lead the Way, a nonprofit organization that promotes pre-engineering courses for middle- and high-school students, and Engineering for US All, a research-based introduction to engineering course for high-schoolers.
Another strategy is to “make sure engineering isn’t any more difficult than it needs to be,” Ohland added. He has known instructors to echo “rhetoric that engineering is ‘haaard,’” while others ask students taking a test to reach beyond what they’ve been taught in the classroom. “On a homework assignment, it might be perfectly appropriate to ask someone to apply what they’ve learned to new things, but in a time-dependent, stressful exam situation, it doesn’t work well,” he added.
“People aren’t going to die if you’re on the borderline of passing someone in philosophy. But if you’re on the borderline of passing someone in engineering, that could have dire consequences depending on where they end up.”
—Matthew Ohland, Dale and Suzi Gallagher Professor and Associate Head of the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University
That said, Ohland acknowledged that simply passing engineering may be more difficult than achieving passing marks in other disciplines. “And that may be okay,” he said. “People aren’t going to die if you’re on the borderline of passing someone in philosophy. But if you’re on the borderline of passing someone in engineering, that could have dire consequences depending on where they end up.”
At the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering, the Keystone Program aims to provide early support to improve student retention and graduation rates. The program recruits the best faculty members to teach critical foundational courses emphasizing hands-on, project-based learning and interdisciplinary collaboration. It also gives those faculty members renewable three-year appointments with a salary increment and discretionary funds to support their work, as well as their own support from other personnel.
“Learners in their first year are different than learners in their third or fourth year,” said Ken Kiger, the engineering school’s associate dean for undergraduate programs.
First-year students also need to be given, along with general education courses, “classes that are more in tune with what engineering is about,” Agrawal said.
Meanwhile, students should be exposed to job fairs and internships, and opportunities to join professional societies, student identity groups, and competition teams, according to Kiger.
Competition teams, for instance, are an excellent way to turn the theoretical knowledge gained in the classroom into physical prototypes—a process that builds confidence as students work to turn early design failures into eventual successes, Kiger said. “They also give students something to talk about—and talk about passionately,” he added.
However, even taking all those options into account, there’s another truth to accept, and that’s that no matter how much time engineers spend trying to come up with an optimum design, “there’s always a sense that there’s a better design out there,” Ohland said. “It’s just something you have to live with in engineering. It’s what’s called tolerance of ambiguity. Some people handle it well, and some do not.”
With Generation Z being known for its interest in tackling complex social issues, Ohland advised encouraging students to take on projects that benefit the public at large—a reason many choose to go into engineering in the first place.
“At the end of the day, we’re trying to better the human condition and the world we live in,” he said.
Agrawal added: “Very few students who are joining engineering programs all of a sudden wake up one morning and say, ‘Oh yeah, I want to be an engineer.’ This is something they have talked about as their future career with parents, friends, teachers, and counselors. It is something that has been baked into them from early on.”
Robin L. Flanagan is an independent writer in Rochester, N.Y.
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