5
Best Practices in Admissions

In the second session of day two of the workshop, four speakers described best admissions practices at their institutions: Tanya Ennis (University of Colorado Boulder), Diane Rover (Iowa State University), Eve Riskin (University of Washington), and Mike Brown (Rutgers University). Andrew Williams (University of Kansas) moderated a discussion among the speakers following their short presentations.

ENGINEERING GOLDSHIRT PROGRAM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER

The Engineering GoldShirt program,¹² begun in 2009, is not simply an admissions policy, explained Tanya Ennis, but rather a community-based holistic support program designed to recruit and retain students who show the ability to succeed despite having lower metrics than are typically required for admission to the university’s school of engineering. To support GoldShirt program students, the university focuses on aspects of community, academics, and resources. It has created a living and learning community that houses the students together in one residence hall on campus for their first two years, creating a supportive cohort. The students also have near-peer mentoring from more experienced students and must attend the summer bridge program, Ennis said. Academics focuses on “math and science readiness, and we coach students in terms of having an asset mindset and being able to battle stereotype threat,” said Ennis. Because many students are first-generation college students, the GoldShirt program also provides resources like study tables and “high-touch holistic advising with students to not only help them academically but to help them navigate the higher education landscape at the university.”

GoldShirt students receive scholarships based on contributing in the university community and the program holds a number of events designed to support the students’ community and their engagement with the larger engineering student body. “We know that learning happens through interactions, that it is a social phenomenon,” said Ennis, “so it is not okay to just open the door and let students in without providing this additional retention support.”

PARTNERSHIPS AND PRACTICES AT IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY

Earlier in the workshop, Diane Rover’s colleague Sriram Sundararajan spoke about college-level admissions policies and programs designed to increase diversity in the school’s engineering program. In her presentation, Rover focused on a program in the Department of

___________________

¹² https://www.colorado.edu/engineering/goldshirt

Electrical and Computer Engineering that was spurred by a 2013 challenge from the university’s College of Engineering: for each department to identify key diversity, equity, and inclusion needs and act to address them. Based on assessment by an external consultant, and with guidance from Iowa State’s Program for Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE), Rover and her colleagues submitted “proposals to the National Science Foundation to get funding to implement ideas and to gain more insights through research studies,” including a proposal to NSF’s Scholarships in STEM (S-STEM) program¹³ to fund a scholarship program for low-income students who are interested in engineering to attend either of two community colleges in the Des Moines area. The department has also received grants from NSF’s Revolutionizing Engineering Departments¹⁴ program to add a cybersecurity major and to recruit women and students from other historically minoritized and marginalized groups into the department and develop them as engineering leaders.

Rover noted that the department partnered with the WiSE program to leverage existing effective programming and practices. She explained that WiSE has emphasized student leadership development both by developing professional identity and helping students understand organizational issues, such as structural and cultural inequities, that might affect them during their careers as engineering professionals, similar to what the GoldShirt program is doing. WiSE also has well-established outreach and enrichment programs with precollege audiences, and these were helpful for marketing the department’s Electrical, Computer, and Software Engineers as Leaders (ECSEL) scholarship program.

The ECSEL application includes several essay questions on student activities, leadership interests, and goals. The essays are important in the selection committee’s holistic review process, and they also help the ECSEL program team better understand the background and motivations of the students coming into the department. Rover explained that the program recruits students from a variety of pathways into its majors because students choose the department’s majors at different times and in different ways. ECSEL awards scholarships to students coming straight from high school, transfer students, students entering after work or military service, current students in the department, and undeclared engineering students after their first year in college. “One of the strengths of the program reported by students is the community of scholars and their interactions with one another as well as with alumni and faculty mentors,” said Rover. The program also funds student participation at conferences to cultivate their sense of belonging and engineering identity.

On a final note, Rover said that external evaluation of the program by colleagues at Iowa State and scholars from other institutions has helped the department learn more about its students and how its community college partners influence recruitment and retention. “By bringing scholars into the program at various entry points, we have become acutely aware of the wide variety of student backgrounds, needs, and experiences,” Rover said, adding that by “sharing scholar stories, we are seeing our faculty become more aware of equity and inclusion issues as they relate to the classroom environment.” Through its community college partnerships, her department can now more closely follow and guide the journeys of its students. In closing, she acknowledged that the department has seen some gains in the percentages of students from underrepresented groups, but admissions data for the past year have gone in the wrong direction,

___________________

¹³ Information is available at https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5257

¹⁴ Information is available at https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=505105&org=NSF

particularly for women. “We know this has not been unique to us, and we are now reenergized to be in a better passion to review, respond, and sustain momentum,” said Rover.

WASHINGTON STATE ACADEMIC REDSHIRT PROGRAM (STARS)

The Washington STARS program, which started in 2013 as a collaboration between the University of Washington (UW) and Washington State University, was modeled after the GoldShirt program, explained Eve Riskin. The program reaches out to students across Washington state who come from first-generation or low-income backgrounds, focusing its recruiting efforts on public high schools where at least 30 percent of the students are on free or reduced-price lunch programs. This socioeconomic approach is allowed under Washington’s anti–affirmative action law, which prohibits using race, ethnicity, or gender in admissions decisions.

Riskin reported that the use of socioeconomic status has enabled the STARS program to admit into engineering “terrific students from diverse backgrounds,” including from populations historically minoritized in engineering. Among them, over 70 percent are first-generation students, and 84 percent are Pell Grant recipients.

The program includes two years of intervention and expects its students to graduate in five years, although some do so in four years. With the two years of support, Riskin said, “we’re seeing excellent retention,” with 77 percent of the first seven cohorts either still enrolled or already graduated with a degree in engineering or computer science. As a result of its success, the program now has received a permanent $500,000 annual commitment from the Washington state legislature. She added that an NSF S-STEM grant enabled her and her UW colleagues to start a RedShirt consortium with Washington State University, the University of Colorado Boulder, Boise State University, the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Illinois.

ADMISSIONS PRACTICES AT RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

As Tom Farris noted on day one of the workshop, Rutgers University has a long history of increasing students’ access to college, said Mike Brown, who reiterated that the school’s Engineers of the Future program was created to help low-income and first-generation students gain access to college and receive support to become successful engineering students. He explained that program staff evaluate each student when they enter the program to assess their leadership qualities, performance in high school, extracurricular activities, and overall academic preparation for college. Staff then use this information to identify how best to help each student as they begin and progress through the curriculum. Each student is assigned an advisor who stays connected to that student through graduation and who works with program staff to connect the student to opportunities in industry or graduate school, depending on the student’s aspirations.

Students are admitted to the program, said Brown, on the condition that they attend the program’s residential summer institute, which among other things allows staff to evaluate the students’ study habits and how they react to the stress of being in an intense program such as engineering. The summer institute also helps students develop their computer programming skills and engages them in the types of hands-on projects that they will engage in throughout their engineering education.

Once the academic year begins, staff work closely with the students on their academic plan, provide regular mentoring opportunities, and support any academic skill development the students need. If the students do not have internships for winter and summer breaks, the program provides funding for additional classes the students can take to reduce the time to graduation. Brown noted that the program also supports transfer and other students who do not arrive directly from high school.

DISCUSSION

Andrew Williams opened the discussion with a question from an attendee who asked if using the athletic term redshirt puts a negative stigma on these low-income students and if such terminology contributes to imposter syndrome. Ennis responded that her program was modeled after the athletic redshirt program because redshirt athletes are “still considered part of the team, even though it may be developmental in nature. [There is] not necessarily a negative connotation associated with that.” She added that the program stresses the notion that it is not a race, and that imposter syndrome in engineering arises in part from programs requiring that students graduate in four years. Phil Courey, Ennis’s colleague, added that the program has been explicit during the recruitment process that a student’s time to graduation depends on their performance and that their structured yet flexible curriculum is designed to have them graduate in five years.

Riskin pointed out that the STARS students have done so well that they tend to come in at the top of the grading curve in their chemistry, calculus, and computer science courses, and as a result she has not heard anyone worrying about imposter syndrome. In fact, faculty at her institution have embraced the STARS program because they see how well the students do and noted that students often bring friends with them to activities so that they too can benefit from the program. She said it is common to see clusters of students wearing their STARS sweatshirts around campus, suggesting they are happy being part of the program.

Brown added that the summer bridge program plays an important role in heading off imposter syndrome by giving the students common experiences before entering their first year of college. During the summer program, they meet older students who look like them and may even come from the same neighborhood, so they see firsthand that others of the same background entered university and are succeeding in engineering. In fact, many of the students feel almost as if they are sophomores when they start school because of their experiences in the summer bridge program. He noted, too, that the mentors and peers on campus encourage the newer students and mentor them through the first-year experience.

When asked whether he considered summer bridge programs a best practice, Brown said he would absolutely agree, citing their value for evaluating students, understanding their needs and the resources that will help them be successful in their first year or so, and providing them with some college experience before they enter their first year. The programs could also be considered a best practice for building a learning community with their peers. He noted that Rutgers obtained additional support for its summer bridge program to bring in more students given its success in preparing students to get a strong start in their college experience.

Rover added that there are many types of bridge programs offered by institutions around the country, so an institution needs to understand what it wants to accomplish by offering a bridge program. Each institution should be intentional about how to prepare its students given the specific culture at that institution.

Ennis described her school’s summer bridge program as a cornerstone that provides academic support and starts the important process of community building and engagement. She hears from graduating students about the role of the bridge program in their success and feeling that they belonged to a community. Courey added that the bridge program helps students build relationships with peers, faculty, and staff. He noted that the GoldShirt program has a 99 percent retention rate after the first year, which is “far and away above our college average.”

Williams then asked the panelists if the pandemic triggered any changes to their programs and if any of these changes would persist as schools return to in-person learning. Ennis said that her program had its challenges related to not having in-person contact to support community building, and Courey added that the “benefits of having to adapt to the pandemic are learning flexibility in different ways of providing access to experiences for students,” some of which may continue going forward. He added that “there are a lot of supportive faculty in our college and but there are still a lot of systemic barriers, when it comes to technology, access, structure of courses that have changed in the pandemic, and so we’ve had to be really responsive to that and it’s been challenging.”

Riskin observed that, while the pandemic was awful for everyone, it might have been “slightly less awful for the STARS students because they had so many staff dedicated to building this community virtually.” One action that helped transition the program online was the technology check that university staff conducted with every student to ensure that their internet bandwidth and device were sufficient for engaging completely in a virtual environment. This approach seems to have worked, she said, because the first-year students seem to be well connected with one another and 83 percent of the STARS students made the dean’s list in the winter quarter. She suggested that the extra attention the STARS students received during the pandemic might even have put them ahead of more privileged students, who might have better access to resources while at home but did not receive the same level of personalized attention from the college’s staff.

Rover noted that even in the virtual setting, her program’s staff continued to meet regularly online with their students and the program offered ongoing community-building events online. The students said they appreciated that time together, virtual though it was, because it let them connect with other students in their cohort and build relationships. She reported that the students performed well in the virtual academic environment, and added that the program started a reflection writing exercise that helped staff learn a little more about the students and helped the students learn about their strengths and assets.

The next question from the audience asked the panelists to describe their institution’s requirements for transferring into an engineering major. Brown responded that every public institution in New Jersey has an Educational Opportunity Fund program and that the programs all have a relationship with one another thanks to monthly meetings for the program directors and conferences. As a result, the community colleges understand the qualifications for students to meet admissions guidelines and transfer to a four-year institution. He added that the transfer students “have this additional support that’s here to help them get connected to a community, and any other resources that they need to help them transition into the university.”

The final question of the session noted that marginalized groups suffered a high level of stress during the pandemic that might affect their performance going forward and wondered how the speakers’ institutions are dealing with that stress. Ennis acknowledged that many students experienced a high level of mental stress and anguish, and said that her institution instituted a pass-fail option for many classes, which seemed to help some students. The university was

fortunate, she said, to have a generous corporate donor who provided funding specifically to support student mental health, so staff sent out yoga mats and hosted online yoga, Zumba, and chat sessions to support students. Program staff also sent items in the mail on a regular basis and checked in on students, and the program also offered some community-based counseling for students who were struggling with their mental health and wanted one-on-one attention.

Brown remarked that it was important during the pandemic to understand what students were facing as they went home to continue their studies. Their issues went beyond not having the necessary technology to having to share their laptop with siblings and parents. “It was a big challenge for a lot of students to do well in their individual courses,” he said.

To close the discussion, Williams asked each speaker for one piece of advice they would give to an institution that was considering adopting these types of programs. Rover said to take a team approach, make use of all resources available, including the academic affairs and student affairs offices, and tap into partnerships to bring in different perspectives that can support students. Ennis suggested using resources to help the students who need it the most and to remember that, while tracking four-year graduation rates might make sense for privileged students, “they do not make sense for students who did not grow up in privilege.”

Brown proposed looking at students holistically in terms of the resources they need and trying to centralize services and resources so that students do not have to spend a great deal of effort to find help. Courey agreed with the importance of providing holistic support and suggested partnering with those in power in the college or institution who can help enact that type of support.