Sharing Exemplary Admissions Practices That Promote Diversity in Engineering: Proceedings of a Workshop (2023)
Chapter: 8 Final Remarks
8
Final Remarks
To conclude the workshop, planning committee chair Darryll Pines provided his highlights from the presentations and discussions. The first panel discussed the movement to test-optional and test-blind admissions, prompted in part by the COVID-19 pandemic but also by the numerous studies indicating that standardized test scores do not predict student success, retention, and graduation outcomes. This panel also introduced the ideas of holistic and comprehensive application review.
The second panel described programs at select universities to recruit, retain, and graduate diverse students. This panel provided useful insights on the important role of partnerships between two- and four-year institutions in student success, and introduced the workshop attendees to the perspective that no student is average, creating the imperative to meet students where they are as learners and adapt systems to help them excel.
Panel three focused on transfer and 3+2 programs, and the speakers again talked about the importance of successful partnerships and collaborations with other institutions as a key to success. They also discussed barriers to success, including not having common course numbering, which makes it difficult to ensure proper mapping of coursework between primary and secondary institutions.
Panel four reviewed some best practices, which included summer bridge programs, redshirt programs, mental health support resources, holistic support programs that help retain students, and financial support through degree completion. Speakers also noted the importance of working within state admissions policies.
The fifth panel, on research on admissions, noted that addressing bias in admissions might be accomplished with a comprehensive review with the possibility of changing campus policies. One research study suggested that leadership and GPA were strong indicators of success in undergraduate engineering education for women; other results showed the benefits and challenges associated with holistic application review. Four main characteristics of effective holistic review were cited: comprehensiveness, contextualization of performance metrics, being systematic in the review process, and being mindful of equity. The challenges to holistic review include that it is difficult to execute because humans with inherent biases are involved and that it includes partnerships with the institutional enrollment management function.
The highlights of the final panel, on data science, noted the importance of being cautious when trying to use data to inform decisions without understanding the source of the data and their context. Data tools can help humans with some of the repetitive tasks involved in decision making, but they are not ready to be used to consider contextual variables and other characteristics of students and will not be in the near future. This panel cautioned that ground truth labels come from humans and that human biases can affect the decisions that data tools produce. The panel also expressed caution about education technology and urged attendees to ask hard questions when companies pitch their services.
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