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measures, including (but not limited to) instructor-driven classroom tests and
assignments, and student evaluations. Sometimes student achievement during the
academic year results in internal awards (such as making the Dean’s List) or external
awards, funding a student’s future education or other expenses. One of the measures of a
program’s success from the institution’s point of view is how many students continue on
for another year of the program. Like students, institutions assess the final outcomes by
graduation rates, percent employed who sought jobs, percent placed in graduate school.
The present study collected data on much of this process as students experience it,
following a cycle of one year for students at various stages of the undergraduate program.
Additional data collection has continued beyond the scope of the present study in order to
follow cohorts of students as they progress through the course of the entire program.
Once this data collection process is complete, the full model will be applied and
analyzed.
This report presents the results obtained for main elements of the process during the
academic year 2000-01. The general chart presented (Figure IIA-1) serves as a guideline
for the presentation of the results and the assumed interrelationships between the various
components of the study. As each component of the model is introduced, some discussion
of its importance and role in the process is included.
We have already described the population of Rowan engineering students in terms
of their demographic characteristics, family socio-economic background and pre-college
math and science background. In the following chapters, we first describe the initial
engineering self-confidence students bring with them to Rowan, and the engineering self-
IIA-72