Just-in-Time Support: An Evidence-Based Academic-Student Affairs Part- nership to Enable Engineering Student Success

The current generation of engineering students enters college with very different experiences and expectations than students 15-20 years ago. As expectations on the college experience continue to rise, students believe they must not only excel in their academics, but they must also have a great internship, a life-changing international experience, be the leader of a student organization, and so on. It is worth asking: in what ways does the current generation of engineering students experience academic and personal stress in college, and how does this impact the ways in which institutions provision student support services? This paper reports on an evidence-based practice in a mid-sized engineering school within a large East Coast public, four-year university. This partnership responds to students who need different kinds of support and expertise as they confront both personal and academic challenges during the engineering studies. The initiative is composed of a unique collaboration between academic personnel [mainly the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs (ADUP), but also including rank and file faculty] and an Engineering Associate Dean of Students (EADoS) holding a PhD in Higher Education. The EADoS was embedded in the engineering school, physically collocated with the engineering undergraduate office, and served only engineering students (as compared to student affairs generalists from the Dean of Students Office). The EADoS engages with the ADUP, engineering faculty, and other staff as appropriate to provide just-in-time support and crisis management for engineering students experiencing all manner academic and personal challenges. In this paper, we report student academic outcomes data from the nearly 300 students we served over the past three academic years, with a particular focus on student outcomes achieved under the partnership model as compared to pre-partnership student outcomes. In addition to aggregate results across all students, we focus specifically on women and women of color in our analysis, and examine the differential positive impacts of the partnerships on these two important sub-populations in engineering. Our findings illustrate three key points. First, the engineering program’s rigor, pace, rhythm, and general expectations place unique stresses on students that non-engineering students may not experience. Second, the EADoS’s physical location and cross-training in engineering-specific issues is crucial to provisioning effective just-in-time support; we conclude that physical location and membership in the engineering school community both matter tremendously when provisioning support services. Third, we describe how student affairs expertise merges with engineering academic expertise to provide a comprehensive, holistic set of support services for the student; this approach yields better academic outcomes for students and moves them along a productive path to graduation at a higher rate than pre-partnership students. The results of this study illustrate the power and potential of close student affairs-academic partnerships for supporting engineering students. Introduction Academic institutions make enormous investments in student services including new dorms, athletic facilities, student health, cultural programming, the Greek system, student government, and the like. These investments make the university more attractive to students and parents, and they can certainly make the holistic education of young adults more rich and effective. The unglamorous but nonetheless critical side of student affairs, however, revolves around supporting students in need. Intervention with students in difficult circumstances has long been a part of the university’s mission, dating to the origins of residential colleges in which students and faculty lived and learned together in very close proximity. Modern universities provision support services to students in medical, personal, financial, and legal contexts, all of which require expertise and resources to deliver. These services can be perceived as “extra”, diverting precious financial, space, and other resources to non-academic functions. But in truth, the university in loco parentis must set up a safe and nurturing environment for learning and support students as they emerge into fully engaged, adult citizens of the world. This paper explores specific interventions for students in difficult circumstances—how students access them, how they are organized, who provisions them, and what outcomes students achieve. This evidence-based practice stems from a pilot program at our institution during academic year 2013-2014 in which a new student affairs-academic (SAA) partnership was created to support engineering students in need. In this paper, we focus specifically on student use of support services and their academic outcomes by demographic factors: academic major, gender, and race. The results suggest that this SAA partnership has provided specific positive benefits to women in the engineering school, with a powerful improvement in outcomes for African American women in particular. The setting for this evidence-based practice The institution. Our public, mid-Atlantic institution enrolls approximately 16,000 undergraduate students and is classified as “highly selective” in undergraduate admission. The university offers a comprehensive set of academic majors for undergraduates, as well as a rich and varied selection of coand extra-curricular activities. The undergraduate population is about 54% female, 6% African-American, 5.6% Hispanic, and 6% international students. Students are drawn from all 50 states and over 100 countries. The four-year graduation rate from the institution is over 85%, while the six-year graduation rate is over 90%. The institution organizes its student support services through the Office of the Dean of Students (ODOS), and uses a fairly centralize model to provision services. ODOS is located at the geographic heart of campus, away from the engineering precinct, and staffed with 7 full-time professionals whose advanced degrees are in higher education (PhD) or law (JD). Associate Deans of Students (ADoS) within ODOS provide compassionate support for students in all manner of difficult circumstances: family issues, financial difficulties, motivational problems, relationship struggles, grieving and bereavement, and so forth. While the main ODOS office does engage in programs for different student populations (transfer students, athletes, etc.), as well as provide programming for in-coming and current students (through the residence halls and Greek system), the main focus of this research is the routine provision of support to students in need. The engineering school. The engineering school consists of approximately 2,700 full-time undergraduate students who matriculate into a common first year program (“engineering undeclared”). After their first year, students enter into one of the 10 undergraduate majors offered by the engineering school. Entry into a major is a competitive process, mostly based upon GPA, and 10-15% of students each year do not gain entry into their first-choice major due to space limitations in the major. All undergraduate students have a faculty advisor who supervises course selection and generally serves as an advocate for the student. Beyond course advising, however, student support services within engineering are fairly centralized. The undergraduate office (UGO) handles a tremendous amount of walk-in service to students with questions both large and small. The UGO staff—two registrars--process transfer credit, provide routine advice, answer any and all student records questions, and support the entire student lifecycle from freshman orientation through graduation. The UGO is known among students as the central office where questions will be answered, accurately, and in a timely way. The UGO also supports students in various kinds of academic difficulties, and in turn these challenges often stem from the kinds of personal struggles mentioned above. As such, the UGO staff frequently work with ODOS staff, student health, the residence halls, etc. to support students and give them the information and support they need. In a given academic year, the UGO supports a huge number of students; some of the support services are provisioned quickly (issues are handled in a matter of minutes or hours), while others require more sustained interventions (measured in days or weeks). The national numbers speak for themselves: almost 30% of college-aged students report being depressed to the point of impaired functioning (which means perhaps 0.3 x 2700 = 810 students in engineering at our institution), over 20% report using marijuana at least monthly (about 540 engineers), about 1 in 150 have autism spectrum disorders (about 18 engineering students), and we could go on to include students who are suicidal, who come from very difficult personal circumstances, and so forth. The point is that within any large population of students, there will always be a population in need of some combination of personal and academic support, and the numbers are much, much larger than most faculty expect. The UGO supports hundreds of students every year in a wide variety of ways. Student support services: the genesis for this research. This research stems from a change in operating procedures in the UGO in engineering at our institution. Prior to the Fall 2013 semester, engineering school students in need of just-in-time support had to visit the engineering undergraduate office to access academic advice and support, plus the central ODOS to access personal support. We recognized several challenges in this arrangement, some of which related to our organizational structure, and others related to the physical layout of our campus. • Students went to two different places to access support services and advice. Engineering students could come to the