Undergraduate research experience: A tool for student pursuing a graduate degree in engineering

Many engineering programs across the country have witnessed large numbers of students leaving their engineering programs before graduation. Retention in most engineering programs has become a burning subject due to students' comments on the inaccessibility and unapproachable nature of the faculty. Against this backdrop, we initiated an undergraduate research experience program in the Virginia State University's Center for Biosystems and Engineering (CBE) in order to address and evaluate students' likelihood and performance in the Department of Engineering and Technology to pursue a graduate degree in engineering. We selected students with a cumulative GPA of 2.0 to participate in the program based on their persistence to obtaining an engineering degree. Although GPAs are the strongest predictors of persistence in engineering, our approach focuses on recruiting students who are eager and willing to learn. Along with the willingness to learn "how to learn", the participants must maintain a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0 and a minimum major semester GPA of 3.5. Students are placed in research teams where they are engaged in self-regulated learning, help-seeking, and peer-learning in all aspects of their engineering education program and conducting research in CBE. The faculty members who serve on the CBE research committee are personally available to students and aid in the transformation efforts of mentoring and retaining students in engineering. We evaluated whether our program was successful at meeting the intended outcomes of increasing the participants' likelihood of attending graduate school and pursuing careers in engineering. The approach used in this study could be employed in other undergraduate institutions, especially Historically Black Colleges and Universities, to increase engineering students' self-efficacy, academic confidence, and GPAs, and retention rates.