Academic Persistence in STEM Education: New Metrics for Analysis

• In Event: 2484 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 23. STEM achievement and Persistence

Abstract

This study explores the research question “Given the diversity of students, and using an intersectional approach to understand their academic trajectories in engineering education, what new metrics expand our understandings of the student experience within a dynamic academic ecosystem?” This study presents a quantitative perspective of engineering student pathways and outcomes disaggregated by discipline, race/ethnicity and sex. The study includes 111,925 engineering students from eleven U.S. universities, including first-time-in-college and transfer students who ever majored in the most common engineering disciplines: Chemical, Civil, Electrical, Industrial, and Mechanical Engineering. Contemporary data visualization methods are used to display quantitative data and clarify their complexity. This work provides a description of a system that captures the intersectionality of race/ethnicity, sex, and discipline. We capture these insights with new metrics such as “migration yield” (attraction of a department). With these metrics, we uncover dynamic information about the successes of students who migrate between and among the top five engineering disciplines. The migration-yield metric coupled with contemporary data visualization methods provide insights into the student experience not afforded by the conventional pipeline and pathways models. Considering engineering education as an ecosystem of disciplines tells stories of complexity and nuance, opening up possibilities for dynamic new research.

Authors

• Michelle Madsen Camacho, University of San Diego

• Matthew Ohland, Purdue University

• Susan Lord, University of San Diego, Engineering