A chemical engineering success course for transfer students

Abstract

Our department has developed a one-credit course, which is designed to assist in the successful transition of transfer students from their previous community college or university to our institution. It focusses on developing and understanding the skills needed and the academic expectation to achieve success at an Honors University. This course is taken by transfer students, simultaneously with our material & energy balance course. Prior to the development of this course, our department identified that most of our transfer students did not have the required computing skills, which are needed to be successful in our upper-level courses; therefore, some of the classes/assignments of the success course focus on MATLAB programming. The transfer success course has been taught for the last four years by the same faculty member who teaches the material and energy balance course. This paper will describe the success course structure, content and assessment. In addition, the graduation and retention rates will be presented for transfer students who have and have not taken the success course.