Correlates of the SAT in Minority Engineering Students

Abstract

Project Preserve is a program designed to retain minority engineering students who have experienced academic difficulty (Morning & Fleming, 1994). The NASA-funded effort channeled African American and Latino engineering students who had failed their freshman year in predominantly White institutions into three schools noted for their support services for minorities, for their willingness to restructure those services, and for variation among institutional variables: Xavier University of Louisiana, California State University at Northridge, and City College of the City University of New York. The principal investigator (CM) coordinated efforts to find students in academic difficulty and to monitor their progress in the new environments where faculty mentors served as project directors providing support and guidance. The project demonstrated that by the conclusion of a 5-year program, 64% of over 100 would-be dropouts were still retained in engineering. Furthermore, there was evidence of cognitive development, bonding to faculty, and institutional bonding, as well as institutional variations in these outcomes. At a time when 67% of minority engineering students drop out (ABET, 1991; Landis, 1991), the question is, how does Project Preserve work? In a review of support programs in engineering Morning (1988) found that parity in majority and minority student retention was achieved when three program features were present: (1) attention to cognitive development, (2) close relationships with faculty and staff, and (3) a sense of community and bonding to the institution. In practice, Project Preserve attended to cognitive development by offering faculty workshops in critical thinking concepts (Whimbey & Lochhead, 1986; Resnick, 1987; Sevenair et al., 1987; Heiman & Slomianko, 1988) and providing students with Efficacy Training workshops (Howard & Hammond, 1985). Close relationships to faculty were achieved by requiring weekly faculty meetings, although there were institutional differences in the success of the bonding (see Morning & Fleming, 1994). A sense of community and bonding to the institution was fostered by requiring students to work on campus. This approach is consistent with major theories of retention that emphasize a sense of membership in the academic community, the quality of student-faculty interactions, and a student-centered campus culture (Tinto, 1975, 1987; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1977; Pantages & Creedon, 1978; Beal & Noel, 1980; Forest, 1987; Noel, 1987; Kalsner, 1991), as well as approaches to the retention of minority students in science emphasizing academic acceleration and the application of cognitive theory (Lincoln, 1979; Fullilove & Treisman, 1990; Gordon, 1986; Sims, 1992). The lingering question for Project Preserve as well as the retention literature is, to what extent is persistence due to institutional factors and to what extent to student factors? The evaluation of Project Preserve found that both student and institutional factors appear to be at work. Students were selected for the program if their test scores, academic records, and high-school courses were indicative of success in engineering. Indeed, Morning & Fleming (1994) found that Project Preserve students at entry were, compared to norms for other minority students, bright, motivated, and scientific in inclination. However, they were also test anxious, lacking in study discipline, and had been preoccupied with social life in their previous engineering schools. Institutional differences in the retention rates after two years of the program - varying from 36% to 79% to 80% - were attributed to degree of faculty involvement, with the least involvement at CCNY and the most at CSUN and Xavier University. Thus, student and institutional factors appear to interact to produce retention outcomes. The project also undertook a correlational analysis of major performance measures among students at entry with evaluation measures of academic and social adjustment further to understand the factors affecting retention. …