Boosting engineering identity of rising sophomore engineering majors through service learning based bridge program

摘要

The BOOST program (Bridge Opportunities Offered for the Sophomore Transition) was developed to strengthen Engineering major students' professional identity and boost their motivation and perseverance to persist through the challenge and rigor of the Engineering program. Teams of rising sophomores, along with junior- or senior-level peer mentors, spent six weeks of their summer innovating, creating, and working collaboratively on Engineering projects which served their local community. BOOST partnered with three highly impactful urban service-focused community organizations - two non-profit organizations and a public elementary school. Despite most BOOST students being first-generation college students, and no BOOST student having had any previous engineering design experience prior to participation in the program, the students completed three substantial design projects which were all very well received by the community partners. Assessment results indicate that students greatly benefited from participating in design projects, providing service to their community, working in teams, peer mentorship, and interaction with faculty advisors. Most noticeably, BOOST students' engineering innovation and creativity scale increased by 50% (p<.01) according to pre-post-BOOST comparisons on Ragusa's ECPII validated scale. In addition, BOOST students appeared to be more STEM-focused after BOOST than their matched control counterparts. Furthermore, the BOOST experience appeared to provide some immunity to the typical "sophomore slump", as the BOOST group's GPAs dropped from pre-BOOST (first couple terms of freshmen year) to post-BOOST (last term of freshman year through their first term of sophomore year) by 49% less than their matched control group's average GPA. Taken together, the quantitative results and the qualitative feedback provided by the community partners indicate that the BOOST experience helped BOOST students to identify better as engineers and to attain the intrinsic motivation and innovativeness that breeds successful engineers.