This grant supports a research-based intervention involving 25-30 schools of engineering intended to improve retention and graduation rates. Eligible for inclusion in the project will be engineering schools that are seriously interested in improving their retention and completion rates and whose deans attest to this goal and agree to provide the researchers with access to their students and needed data. At each participating school, a sample of students covering all years of the undergraduate experience will be chosen, with oversampling of women and underrepresented minority students. Student focus groups will be conducted at about half of the participating schools, with students separated by gender and race/ethnicity. Students leaving their engineering major in their first or second year at all schools will be surveyed and focus groups with some of these exiting students will be held. The surveys and focus groups will be designed to identify aspects of the campus climate that are known or expected to affect student retention and attrition, students' perceptions of the engineering career that awaits them upon graduation, and changes in their perception of this career. Schools will be provided with research results in a form that allows them to understand what is actually going on within their student bodies and to compare themselves with similar schools in the project. Each will also receive recommendations for how it could improve its campus climate as a basis for institutional change intended to improve retention and completion rates. The researchers will follow up with each participating school after six, twelve, and 24 months to see what institutional changes have actually been put in place and what effect these have had on the retention and completion rates at each school. Project Director: Suzanne G. Brainard, Executive Director, Center for Workforce Development.

To study doctoral student retention and attrition in departments at Louisiana State University. Project Director: Professor Susan K. Gardner, Department of Educational Leadership, Research, and Counseling, College of Education.