Increasing the Engineering and Computer Science Graduates

该项目由三个活动组成：一个新生桥梁计划，一个新生和转学生指导计划，以及一个新生住宿学习社区。 此外，转学生招聘计划提供了一个结构化的努力，与弗吉尼亚州社区学院，以促进社区学院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，代表性不足的工程专业学生的计划。 通过将这些课程扩展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课程的学生的整体毕业率。学生过渡计划使100名学生在大一之前在弗吉尼亚理工大学度过五周，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。 为期一周的转学生过渡计划确保他们与工程和计算机科学教师和工作人员建立牢固的初步联系。 该指导计划促进了同伴指导关系的发展，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，伽利略住宿计划允许200名新生成为相互支持的生活和学习环境的一部分。 我们的目标是增加新生和转学生第一至第二年的保留由3%-5%，每年的资助期，导致在85%的第一至第二年保留为每个组的最低水平。 这将转化为每年约300多名毕业生。 拟议的活动表明，本科院校如何通过广泛应用现有的做法，成功地提高所有本科生的保留率，这些做法是为解决工程专业学生保留率不足的问题而制定的。 传播拟议活动的结果，使其他本科院校能够了解如何在更大范围内实施这些方案。

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.