Minority student informed retention strategies

Diversifying engineering programs is a major goal for almost all universities because expanding the diversity of students will broaden and enrich the knowledge and experience associated with the science, technology, engineering and mathematics community. This study looked to explore those factors that contribute to minority students´ success and more precisely what contributed to their success the most so that recommendations could be made on how universities can improve their minority student retention. In order to do this, African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, and Native American undergraduate engineering students of various disciplines were interviewed using theoretically grounded qualitative methods. The transcripts were coded for patterns using NVivo qualitative analysis software and the patterns found are described in detail within this paper. These patterns gave us insight into the factors that contribute to minority students´ success and therefore lead to recommendations on ways for college campuses to encourage and foster their minority students´ success. The insights reported in this paper will hopefully help universities make changes that will greatly improve the success of their minority students in engineering majors.