Motivation and Success in Engineering

Declining enrollments in engineering programs, pressure from state legislatures, and accreditation have made student retention a major issue. Community building, mentoring and learning style models are some of the approaches used to improve retention. Retention studies have shown that high school grades and admission tests (SAT scores) are two of the more reliable pre-college indicators of success in engineering, although, there are exceptions. Some students with marginal math and science aptitude succeed against the odds, while others with more than adequate aptitude fail. We will explore, in this paper, the role of motivation as an ingredient of success at both ends of the spectrum of student ability. We will make suggestions on ways to discern and increase student motivation, thereby retaining those students at risk of failure. Introduction Typically, one-third to one-half of the entering engineering students will leave the major in the first two years due, primarily, to academic failure [1]. Many papers have been written on strategies for retaining students in the major. Some of these approaches depend on team building and socialization [2], some on adapting teaching to student learning styles [3] and some on student advising [4]. The underlying goal of these approaches is to retain students, who are at risk of academic failure, by improving their grades. We have observed that the three most important factors in predicting a student's success in engineering are: aptitude, motivation (work ethic and interest) and preparation. Retention studies [1] [5] [6] [7] [8] show that admission exams (SAT-M (Math)) are a good pre-college statistical indicator of aptitude in engineering. However, there are students whose scores indicate a high likelihood of success, who do not graduate with an engineering degree or any degree. There are also students whose scores indicate a low likelihood of success, who do graduate with an engineering degree. This paper focuses on motivation, one of the two factors not investigated in [1]. We will explore some indicators of motivation in an electrical engineering program. We will also offer some approaches that we have used to enhance the motivation of at-risk students with the goal of improving retention. Aptitude Indicators Retention studies usually focus on aptitude indicators such as high school grades and admission tests. Studies have looked at other factors such as interest, background, race, gender, etc. but they are not as 1 Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The Citadel, 171 Moultrie Street, Charleston, SC 29409. 2 Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The Citadel, 171 Moultrie Street, Charleston, SC 29409.