Goals and Objectives
Goals
The goals of these initiatives are to complement and enhance the academic program of the Emerging Ethnic Engineers Program (E3) through the development of a structured program for increasing the interaction of E3 students and engineering faculty through departmental level support groups. It is to specifically:
- complement and enhance current E3 academic strategies by encouraging active participation in the E3 Program
- increase interaction of first and second year E3 students with their pre-junior, junior, and senior counterparts
- increase interaction of all E3 students with their college department faculty through a series activities and events
- assist students in first and second year E3 students in making the transition to their college department
- expand the successful E3 cooperative learning math and science courses to the sophomore year
Objectives
Research indicates that poor support systems (academic, social, and professional) are seen as the major contributing factors for low retention and graduation rates among underrepresented students. Studies indicate the importance of faculty involvement particularly with underrepresented students as key factor in providing a learning environment that it inclusive.
The objective of the faculty-mentoring program is to use it to address some of the historical barriers that affect the matriculation of the underrepresented students in the College of Engineering as it relates to faculty interaction11. We want to use this as a strategy to develop departmental level support groups that will:
- create critical mass of E3 students in the college departments who are in the same major
- recruit upper-class E3 students to assist in mentoring first and second year students.
- develop activities and events that will increase the level of substantive interaction between college faculty and E3 students
- encourage more E3 students to pursue graduation degrees.