| Abstract: | It is common knowledge that certain minority groups, African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans, are underrepresented in the Engineering programs in our Colleges of Engineering. As of 1990 these minority groups represented some 15.2% of engineering freshmen and 7.0% of the Bachelors degrees awarded in engineering across the nation. These percentages pale in comparison to minority representation in the population, reported by the Bureau of Census as 21.3%. The minority population is increasing rapidly and represents a viable resource to tap into to maintain the United States' technological advantages in the global marketplace. In light of this, many institutions, including Texas A&M University, have initiated Minority Engineering Programs (MEP) designed to attract and retain underrepresented minorities in Engineering. There are seven specific strategies that Texas A&M University uses to retain minorities in Engineering. These strategies have been institutionalized since the mid 1980s, but have not been formally evaluated, although anecdotal evidence exists to support their continued use. This researcher proposed to evaluate these strategies to determine which affect student success. Since these strategies may work in concert with other factors to which students are exposed, they were considered in the analysis. The steps in this evaluation were: 1. Administering the Pascarella Terenzini Institutional Integration Scale to minority engineering freshmen. This scale solicits information on the students' pre-entry attributes (Math SAT, SES information etc), and how well they were integrated into the academic and social milieu of the university. 2. Developing and administering an MEP Student Opinion Scale to obtain students' opinion of the quality of service they received from the MEP. 3. Correlating the items on these scales with students' freshman grade point averages to determine which factors contributed to student success as measured by their GPA. Some 101 of the 167 minority engineering freshmen from the 1992-1993 academic year who participated in MEP activities responded... |
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