Just-in-time support: An evidence-based academic-student affairs partnership to enable engineering student success

Abstract

The current generation of engineering students enters college with very different experiences and expectations than students 15-20 years ago. As expectations on the college experience continue to rise, students believe they must not only excel in their academics, but they must also have a great internship, a life-changing international experience, be the leader of a student organization, and so on. It is worth asking: in what ways does the current generation of engineering students experience academic and personal stress in college, and how does this impact the ways in which institutions provision student support services? This paper reports on an evidence-based practice in a mid-sized engineering school within a large East Coast public, four-year university. This partnership responds to students who need different kinds of support and expertise as they confront both personal and academic challenges during the engineering studies. The initiative is composed of a unique collaboration between academic personnel [mainly the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs (ADUP), but also including rank and file faculty] and an Engineering Associate Dean of Students (EADoS) holding a PhD in Higher Education. The EADoS was embedded in the engineering school, physically collocated with the engineering undergraduate office, and served only engineering students (as compared to student affairs generalists from the Dean of Students Office). The EADoS engages with the ADUP, engineering faculty, and other staff as appropriate to provide just-in-time support and crisis management for engineering students experiencing all manner academic and personal challenges. In this paper, we report student academic outcomes data from the nearly 300 students we served over the past three academic years, with a particular focus on student outcomes achieved under the partnership model as compared to pre-partnership student outcomes. In addition to aggregate results across all students, we focus specifically on women and women of color in our analysis, and examine the differential positive impacts of the partnerships on these two important sub-populations in engineering. Our findings illustrate three key points. First, the engineering program's rigor, pace, rhythm, and general expectations place unique stresses on students that non-engineering students may not experience. Second, the EADoS's physical location and cross-training in engineering-specific issues is crucial to provisioning effective just-in-time support; we conclude that physical location and membership in the engineering school community both matter tremendously when provisioning support services. Third, we describe how student affairs expertise merges with engineering academic expertise to provide a comprehensive, holistic set of support services for the student; this approach yields better academic outcomes for students and moves them along a productive path to graduation at a higher rate than pre-partnership students. The results of this study illustrate the power and potential of close student affairs-academic partnerships for supporting engineering students.