College of Engineering • College of Human Sciences • College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Initiatives

The SEEC project is driven by five distinct teams, each responsible for attaining specific objectives. An Executive Team comprised of members of each objective team meets regularly to discuss progress and identify crosscutting opportunities.

Learning Village Team

Building a learning village that enhances student connections and creates ISU connections for community college pre-engineering transfer students is the overarching objective of the Learning Village Team. Composed of faculty, staff, and students from DMACC and Iowa State, the team is achieving its objective through establishing activities between DMACC and ISU that include peer mentoring, social networking, and a new engineering orientation course (EGR 100), which is currently in its second semester at the DMACC–Ankeny campus. To further this team’s goal, opportunities for second-year students will be increased as will the offerings for transfer students and other learning community students at ISU. DMACC is also establishing a three-semester linked course sequence in their pre-engineering program to bring more meaningful curricular connections to the pre-engineering students.

Advising Team

ISU and DMACC faculty and advisers serve on the Advising Team. This group’s primary goal is to develop and enhance academic advising and mentoring programs for precollege, community college, and university students. This objective is being achieved through the review, revision,and development of advising resources, professional development for community college advisers and faculty, development of the Engineering Admissions Partnership Program (E-APP) with Iowa’s community colleges, and development of transfer peer mentor and intervention programs.

Networking Team

Identifying and executing recruitment strategies that target academically able or promising math or science high school and community college populations, with an emphasis on recruiting female and underrepresented minority students, is the directive for the Networking Team. The focus of this objective is on programs or strategies that are currently deemed promising but under-developed and assuring that information, communications, and training are gender appropriate, culturally sensitive, and relevant. To carry out their mission, this team is building an informed network of formal and informal educators (including alumni, extension personnel, and community-based programs) to create awareness and interest in engineering as a career option. The team is also providing scholarship and education financing information to enable students’ goals of becoming an engineering student at Iowa State or pre-engineering student at DMACC or their community college of choice!

Curriculum Team

First- and second-year learning experiences are being reviewed and enhanced by the Curriculum Team. Emphasizing relevance, retention, rigor, student success and engagement, and classroom climate, this team addresses student learning at both DMACC and ISU in concert with the Learning Village and Advising Teams. There is an ongoing review of transfer programs of study and courses, including distance education. New opportunities for student professional development, service learning, and undergraduate research are being designed. This team puts the final piece in the puzzle by exciting students about engineering with introductory experiences and successfully starting them on a path toward an engineering degree.

Evaluation Team

Evaluating project effectiveness and improving project activities are the tasks of the Evaluation Team. This requires that the team work closely with the other teams to help ensure that progress continues toward attaining SEEC goals and objectives. The Evaluation Team also reports the accomplishments of SEEC to the National Science Foundation and to the broad community of engineering educators.

SEEC Data Brief: Basic Program — Empirical Research Results (PDF)
December 2011

SEEC Data Brief: Data Collection and Analysis Project—Retention (PDF)
November 2011

SEEC Data Brief: Engineering Transfer Student— Graduate Profile (PDF)
October 2011

SEEC Data Brief: How Learning Communities Affect Retention (PDF)
September 2011

SEEC Data Brief: Measuring the "SEEC Effect:" Engineering Transfer Student Retention & Success (PDF)
March 2011

SEEC Data Brief: Engineering Admissions Partnership Program (E-APP) (PDF)
November 2010

SEEC Data Brief: Engineering Orientation (EGR 100) (PDF)
November 2010

SEEC Data Brief: SEEC Engineering Transfer Student Profile (PDF)
July 1, 2010

Collaborating with: