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Presentation
Impact of First-Year Initiatives on Retention of Students: Are There Differences in Retention of Students by Ethnicity and Gender?
CoNECD - The Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity Conference (2018)
  • Patricia R Backer, San Jose State University
  • Joseph Green, WestEd
  • Bryan J Matlen, WestEd
  • Cindy Kato, San Jose State University
Abstract
Project Succeed is a campus-wide initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Its focus is to improve the 5-year graduation and retention rates and close the achievement gap for Under-Represented Minorities (URMs) across all majors at San José State University (SJSU). In addition, SJSU has a high percent of first generation students. We have several thrusts under this project: block scheduling, Faculty/Staff Mentor program, expanding Peer Educators, developing a First Year Experience Program, and developing more student living learning communities. This project is in its fourth year and we have analyzed each project effort with respect to its impact on the retention of freshmen and sophomore students. In this paper, we will analyze the overall results of our efforts as well as describe the retention rates of URM students in our project. We will compare the retention of students participating in block scheduling with students not active in our project to see if there are differences in retention and academic performance for engineering majors.
Publication Date
April, 2018
Location
Crystal City, VA
Comments
© 2018 American Society for Engineering Education. 
This article originally appeared in the proceedings of the 2018 CoNECD - The Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity Conference, and can also be found online at this link.
Citation Information
Patricia R Backer, Joseph Green, Bryan J Matlen and Cindy Kato. "Impact of First-Year Initiatives on Retention of Students: Are There Differences in Retention of Students by Ethnicity and Gender?" CoNECD - The Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity Conference (2018)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/patricia_backer/47/