An evaluation of academic scholarship programs by program and ethnicity

Abstract

Since 2002, Academic Scholarship Programs, supported by the National Science Foundation, have been held in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. The purpose of these programs is to graduate the students in good academic standing, to broaden their understanding of engineering, and to have the students go right on to graduate school full-time after obtaining their Bachelor's degree, with an emphasis on women and minority students. The scholarship students all have unmet financial need. These programs include both transfer and non-transfer students. Since women and minority students are overrepresented in community colleges (CCs), working with CCs and their transfer students can help increase diversity among engineering and computer science students. The paper includes a brief description of these successful programs and how they encourage and support the students to do well academically as well as broaden their general knowledge about engineering, including resumes, internships, research, networking, portfolios, career planning, graduate school, industry (through industry speakers with graduate degrees), and academia. This paper details the Fall 09 semester program and the end of the semester evaluation. This study includes 79 current students in the programs. The evaluation completed by these students measures how well the program covered the topics of graduate school, research, networking, engineering careers, portfolios, engineering contributions, communication skills, and study skills. The analysis for this study will include differentiation between three programs and minority and non-minority students in a new study. To date over 90% of the students in these programs have been retained through graduation in engineering or computer science. Over 30% of the CC transfers and 40% of the non-transfer students have gone on to graduate school. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2010.