Individuals, institutions, and society are affected by whether or not students persist in college; therefore, persistence and retention on college campuses is an important topic for higher education systems. However, little research has been done on program retention. Since engineering as a profession is expected to increase, it is imperative to have students persist in the major.
The primary purpose of this study is to determine the influence of selected demographic and academic characteristics in the decision of first time in college (FTIC) traditional-age undergraduates who declare engineering as their major at admission to persist in the curriculum from second to third year at a small private university in the southeastern portion of the United States.
The target population for this study was defined as the first time in college (FTIC) traditional-age undergraduate students who declared engineering as their major when they were admitted in the fall 2005 and 2006 semesters. For the research instrument, 20 independent variables were collected from Admissions, Student Financial Services, the Registrars, and Academic Services databases and transferred to a computerized recording form.
Using stepwise multiple discriminant analysis, the researcher identified a significant model that increased the researchers ability to accurately explain the persistence of FTIC traditional-age undergraduate students who declared engineering as their major when they were admitted. The model correctly classified 79.1% of the cases, which was a 58.2% improvement over chance.
The researcher recommended further studies to increase the percentage of correctly classified cases by integrating these variables with others to further explain persistence/non-persistence. Variables she suggested were the amount of the students financial aid portfolio, as well as high school math courses taken by the student and the grades he/she earned.
The researcher found that many of the non-persisting students had pre-college academic success, and so the researcher recommends that the institution conduct exit interviews to find out why these students chose to not persist in Engineering. She also recommends the implementation of a learning community, a living and learning environment that combines social and academic integration for the students.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-11102009-171301 |
| Date | 12 November 2009 |
| Creators | Wildman, Kelli Elaine |
| Contributors | Wiley-Patton, Sonja, Burnett, Michael, Johnson, Geraldine, Verma, Satish, Johnson, Earl |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-11102009-171301/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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