Reinventing the first-year seminar and student support programs to decrease the number of failed grades in the first semester and to reach a 90 percent first-year retention rate

Abstract

Universities are focusing extensively on how to retain students at the university level and in engineering majors. First year students encounter much stress as they navigate living for the first time away from home, separating from their parents, and encountering a rigorous curriculum. Attachment theory has become the foremost theory in understanding affect regulation especially under stress. Students with insecure attachment styles tend to have deficits in social self-efficacy and tend to use maladaptive copy strategies to handle stress. Students with insecure attachments styles tend to have higher levels of depression and anxiety which negatively impacts their academic performance. At this university, engineering students who receive less than a 2.00 GPA their first semester in college averaged about a 30% first year retention rate and a 9% to 16% six-year graduation rate. Over 40% of the students are Pell grant eligible. This study looked at attempts at reducing stress in first year students in hopes to increase their first semester GPA by increasing advisor contacts and program support, and by re-inventing how the first year seminar functions so that it helps to quickly identify at-risk students. The results showed a decrease in the percentage of students receiving less than a 2.00 GPA their first semester, a decrease in loss of students from the fall semester to the spring semester, and a 90.5% retention rate for the 2015 cohort for the first time in the history of the college.