A grant from the Texas Workforce Commission aims not only to help underrepresented students at the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering better navigate demanding coursework, but enhance their success through mentoring.
The $330,000, yearlong grant is part of the Texas Youth in Technology Strategic Workforce Development Initiative. The third consecutive grant of its kind earned by engineering professors at UH, it is centered on increasing enrollment and the retention of students at the college.
“By combining peer mentoring with workshops and scholarship opportunities, we believe we can better retain, and ultimately, graduate more engineers,” said Kathy Zerda, instructional and research assistant professor and an investigator on the grant.
The programs funded by the grant are three fold. Among them—10 academic excellence workshops for mostly 2000 level courses. Typically meeting twice a week, top engineering students are recruited to facilitate these study groups.
“This is basically a study group for a class where students are grouped into teams of four or five that work together not on the normal homework problems, but others that are similar,” said Kathy Zerda, an assistant professor and investigator on the grant.
Her records of workshops covered by previous TWC grants, Zerda said, show the students who participate receive a final class score that is one half to a full letter grade better than those who do not enroll. Along with improved grades and a better understanding of course material, the grant affords qualified workshop participants that earn a B- or better in their class a $300 book scholarship.
Similarly to the workshops, the grant pays for the time of an additional eight undergraduate students who will serve as peer teachers in introductory engineering courses and outside the classroom in professional developments seminars, forums, panel discussions and the like.
Despite its benefits for the campus community, the grant is not meant solely for UH students. It is also intended to use engineering students to reach out to high school students to get them excited about engineering and science. With it, youth at Phillis Wheatley, Cesar E. Chavez, Jack Yates and Eastwood Academy high schools will get help preparing for academic competitions and district sponsored robotics projects as well as be tutored in math and science.
“This grant takes learning far beyond the classroom,” said Fritz Claydon, lead investigator on the grant and the college’s associate dean for administration and research. “It lets youth in the community connect with mentors near their own age on often difficult topics such as science and math—the fundamentals of engineering—and reinforces core curriculum for UH mentors that help us succeed in continually graduating well-rounded students in the field of engineering that make significant contributions to the technical challenges facing us in the 21st century.”
Claydon, Zerda and Stuart Long, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and the university-wide associate dean for undergraduate research, are all investigators on the most recent grant. In total, the three grants they have earned consecutively from TWC have provided roughly $930,000 toward the college’s student recruitment and retention efforts.