Leaving Engineering: Lessons from Rowan University's College of Engineering

Journal of Engineering Education, Jan 2006 by Hartman, Harriet, Hartman, Moshe

In the fall, students have been asked about their family background, high school preparation and achievement, support by significant others for their engineering pursuit, preferred learning styles, self-confidence in themselves as students and as engineering students, perception of problems for women and men pursuing scientific, mathematical and engineering careers, their expectations about completing the major at Rowan, financial concerns, and their expectations of what a job in engineering will give them. In the spring, many of the questions are repeated, including their selfconfidence in themselves as engineering students, their plans for the future, their perception of problems in the field for women and men, and their expectations about jobs; thus, changes in these respects over the course of the year can be measured. In addition, they are asked to evaluate programmatic features such as the engineering clinic, group work, lab work, workload and many other aspects of the program; the interpersonal climate of faculty-student and peer relations; and their satisfaction with the major. In the current research project, to study how the features of Rowan's engineering program are related to retention, survey responses of students who began with a major in engineering but subsequendy left engineering for another major ("leavers") were compared to students who began with a major in engineering and stayed in engineering ("stayers").

Being able to use this survey data to compare stayers and leavers is a major advantage over previous studies that have been done in this topic. Huang and Peng [7], basing their analysis on the Beginning Postsecondary Students (BPS) Longitudinal Study, incorporates a large national sample and are able to relate retention to family, individual, and institutional factors; however, their study combines science and engineering students, and is limited in the individual and institutional factors measured, particularly as pertain to engineering students. Adelman [1] based his study on a large national sample of student transcripts (High School and Beyond data), to decipher the paths students take in and out of engineering; however, he used only minimal data on "satisfaction with higher education" and no data on orientations to engineering, specific reactions to program elements, self-confidence, or future plans. Seymour and Hewitt [4] interviewed 335 students who were or who had been science, mathematics or engineering majors at seven different institutions. However, they relied on student's recollections for reasons they left their science, mathematics, or engineering majors, without the availability of extensive data collected prior to switching out. While Felder, Felder, Maurney, Hamrin and Dietz [13] did do a longitudinal study, their entire sample is 124 students in chemical engineering alone; and limited data are collected from them since the major focus was on reaction to differences in classroom procedures. Goodman et al. [6] also did a longitudinal study, but their sample, while national, is only of female students; further, because their study was Web-based, over 40 percent of the sample, especially those who left engineering, chose not to respond to the study.