|
 |
| Application Details |
|
|
|
| Retention Study |
Approximately ten years ago, our Dean for Undergraduate Studies indicated a desire to track the progress of engineering students and measure the College's ability to retain students. It is one thing to attract academically talented students but retaining these students is an entirely separate issue. Engineering students tend to leave the program and matriculate to programs in the colleges of science and business. Retention in general was of concern but there was a rising concern that the College retained female and minority students at a lower rate than students in general. The retention of females and minorities is particularly important in obtaining goals set by the Dean of the College. The retention of minorities is an issue because major corporations have made it abundantly clear that they intend to recruit students only from schools which demonstrate the ability to attract and retain minority students.
In order to address these concerns it was first necessary to determine at what level the College retained females, minorities and students in general. First a definition of a cohort had to be established so that we could compare students with similar characteristics. Then information had to be amassed that would allow the calculation of retention. The information necessary to address our retention concerns was buried in the University's operational mainframe computer. Programs and JCL were written to extract the required data, the data was downloaded to personal computers, a model was designed to measure retention, and programs were written to implement this model of retention.
This system allows us to measure retention statistics in terms of years completed at the University. For instance, we can tell how many students of a particular cohort were retained after one, two, or three years following their admission to Penn State. In addition, we can identify the colleges to which students students matriculated when they left Engineering. The system can produce statistics for cohorts affected by various positive or negative influences. For instance, the College could measure retention based upon factors such as admit campus, admit major, sex, ethnicity, predicted performance, and high school performance.
Utilizing this system we can determine if curriculum changes, introduced to provide design experiences early in a student's academic career, influenced the retention of students. The ability to measure the influences of curriculum changes on retention is important. Obviously, our students benefit when we can identify and correct negative influences on retention. Another driving force behind identifying influences on retention is the College's participation in a national organization of engineering education, the Engineering Coalition of Schools for Excellence in Learning (ECSEL). ECSEL's charter is to improve engineering curriculum in general. ECSEL wishes to enhance retention by developing a curriculum that is more interesting to first and second year engineering students. Injecting more design courses into the early stages of engineering education may increase retention. To measure the effectiveness of the ECSEL's program, retention must be measurable.
This system provides valuable insight regarding factors that influence retention of students. Some interesting metrics have been identified that were previously unsuspected by administrators. For instance, it was always assumed that the College had less success retaining female students than it did male students. The retention study proved this assumption to be incorrect. As is turns out, the College retains female students in more or less the same ratio as male students. Therefore, the College can expend more effort on recruiting female students since we know that we can retain them after they get into and engineering curriculum. |
[Return to Previous Page]
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
