Improving retention of minority freshmen in engineering by applying the six sigma methodology

In response to the pressing need to increase the pool of future engineers, the engineering academia are focusing on improving the persistence rate of underrepresented minority students in the engineering program. This has led to various studies into the factors which affect the attrition of minority engineering students and which strategies can significantly reduce their attrition. This paper recognizes that addressing most of the factors which affect minority student attrition at freshman level will improve overall retention; and supports that the industry-based six sigma methodology can be adapted to solve or at least alleviate the retention problem. In addition, it identifies the freshman engineering process as a key process improvement effort under the six sigma initiative and recommends the selection of the freshman education process as a key sigma project which will result in a significant increase in the retention rates of the underrepresented minority students enrolled in the engineering program.