Access for Engineering Excellence

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This project assists students with good but not honors status in the College of Engineering through programs and financial aid to enable better performance in their coursework and improve their grade standing to honors status. Specific goals include: improve midrange (GPA 3.0-3.4) student study skills and sense of group identity for engineering majors; improve the amount of student time available for coursework and special projects that expand the student experience in engineering; and improve opportunities for off quarters work experiences. The advantages of students gaining honors status include priority scheduling of classes, eligibility for selection in discipline honoraries, and eligibility for in-depth honors experiences such as honors internships and senior honors thesis research projects. Furthermore, students graduating with GPA 3.4 are better positioned for job placement and entrance to graduate programs. To achieve the goals, the project is providing a combination of financial scholarship aid to reduce job related workload, academic support programs, and extended access to off quarter internships. Approximately 50 students are anticipated to participate annually, with continuation in the program through graduation. Eligible students include undergraduate students from all years and fields of engineering. In addition, this project is a pilot project generating preliminary data to present to industrial sponsors who will be solicited to provide ongoing operating support for a long term program with more participants. The intellectual merit of the Access for Engineering Excellence includes the generation of new tracking data on the assessment of financial aid and academic support mechanisms to improve grades of midrange GPA students and to enable these students with more opportunities for rich undergraduate experiences and better positioning for post-graduation job placement and graduate school. The broader impact of the proposed project is a higher number of better educated engineers entering the workplace or graduate school. Furthermore, the target grade range for students in the project is rich with women and minorities, producing better prepared engineers in these groups.