A Scholarship Program to Increase Retention in Engineering (ASPIRE): Improving Work-Study-Life Balance

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This project is to fund a scholarship program for engineering students at the University of New Haven. The goal is to improve retention, particularly in the sophomore and junior years, for engineering students who show academic potential but are at risk of not completing their studies due to financial concerns and/or life-work-study balance issues. This will be accomplished by: providing scholarships for sophomore and junior level matriculated students based on both financial need and merit; recruiting and providing scholarships to community college transfer students; providing support services including peer tutors, conferences, lectures, presentations, and career planning workshops; and increasing student engagement in college- and university-wide activities that contribute to persistence. These activities will also contribute to the longer-term goal of improved four or five-year graduation rates.The broader impact of the project includes: increasing diversity by recruiting community college transfer students; improving STEM exposure to middle and high school audiences through the scholarship program's service learning activities; strengthening collaborations with industry for internships and career planning; and developing student support services that ultimately benefit the broader student body as well as the scholarship recipients. The results of the program will be disseminated to enable other researchers and institutions to consider programming options that may be useful to them.