Increasing the Engineering and Computer Science Graduates

该项目包括三个活动：新生的桥梁项目，新生和转学生的指导项目，以及新生的住宿学习社区。此外，一个转学招生计划提供了一个有组织的努力，与弗吉尼亚社区学院合作，促进社区大学毕业生成功过渡到弗吉尼亚理工大学。这些计划是基于现有的，非常成功的，针对代表性不足的工程专业学生的计划。通过将这些项目扩大到更多的新生和转学生，我们希望提高所有进入工程和计算机科学专业的学生的总体毕业率。学生过渡计划使100名学生能够在大一之前在弗吉尼亚理工大学度过五周的时间，学习他们必须做些什么来适应本科工程和计算机科学教育的严格要求。为转学生提供为期一周的过渡课程，确保他们与工程和计算机科学教职员工建立牢固的初步联系。辅导项目促进了同伴辅导关系的发展，帮助400名新生和60名转学生成功地谈判本科学位课程。最后，伽利略住宿项目允许200名新生成为相互支持的生活和学习环境的一部分。目标是在资助期内每年将新生和转学生的第一年到第二年的保留率提高3%-5%，从而使每个群体的第一年到第二年的保留率至少达到85%。这意味着每年将增加约300名毕业生。拟议的活动展示了本科院校如何通过广泛应用已开发的解决代表性不足的工程专业学生保留问题的现有实践，成功地提高所有本科生的保留率。计划活动成果的传播使其他本科院校能够了解如何在更大范围内实施这些计划。

The project consists of three activities: a bridge program for freshman, a mentoring programs for freshman and transfer students, and a residential learning community for freshman students. Additionally a transfer-student recruiting program provides a structured effort to work with Virginia community colleges to facilitate the successful transition of community college graduates to Virginia Tech. These programs are based on existing, and highly successful, programs for under-represented engineering students. By expanding these programs to a larger population of freshman and transfer students, we expect to improve the overall graduation rate for all students entering the engineering and computer science programs. The Student Transition Program enables 100 students to spend five weeks at Virginia Tech prior to their freshman year learning what they must do to adjust to the rigors of undergraduate engineering and computer science education. A weeklong transition program for transfer students ensures that they establish a firm initial connection to engineering and computer science faculty and staff. The mentoring program facilitates development of peer mentoring relationships that assist 400 freshmen and 60 transfer students to negotiate undergraduate degree programs successfully. Finally, the Galileo residential program allows 200 freshmen to be a part of a mutually supportive living and learning environment. The goal is to increase the freshman and transfer student first to second year retention by 3%-5% each year of the funding period, resulting in a minimum of 85% first to second year retention for each group. This should translate into approximately 300 more graduates annually. The proposed activities are demonstrating how undergraduate institutions can successfully increase their retention of all undergraduate students by broadly applying existing practices that have been developed to address under-represented engineering student retention. Dissemination of the results of the proposed activities is enabling other undergraduate institutions to understand how to implement these programs on a larger scale.