The Development and Evaluation of a Series of New First-Year Engineering Courses

Abstract

The current Research-to-Practice, Work-in-Progress paper presents the development, launch, and preliminary evaluation of a series of four new introductory engineering courses at Princeton University School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS). The courses were designed to address the findings of a university-wide strategic planning process that revealed students’ dissatisfaction with the first-year engineering experience and a higher attrition rate of students from groups traditionally underrepresented in engineering. Early findings from an in-depth, mixed-methods evaluation reveal that the courses are succeeding in increasing students’ satisfaction with the first-year engineering experience and reducing the attrition rate of students from underrepresented groups.