Create learning communities to enhance success for students with diverse academic preparation background

Learning communities have been demonstrated to improve student success, particularly for first-time, first-year students making the transition from high school to college. At Western Michigan University (WMU) College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS), the challenge to creating learning communities is the diverse academic preparation background of the first-time, first-year students, as indicated in the first-semester mathematics placement. Another challenge to creating learning communities is the lack of a common first-year engineering curriculum or core for the 15 undergraduate engineering and applied sciences programs. In addition to student learning communities, the WMU-CEAS program to improve student success and retention includes a faculty learning community and revision of several first-year science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses. In this paper, the details of the process for creating learning communities for students with diverse academic backgrounds will be presented, and the improvement in first-year STEM courses will be described. Preliminary results indicate CEAS students placed in learning communities have a higher successful course completion rate (grade=/>C) of first-year STEM courses than the comparison group of non-learning community students, and the second-year and third-year retention rates to CEAS have improved by about 10% above the historic retention rates of the college.