Using School Climate Data To Understand Engineering Retention and Promote Change

The Project to Assess Climate in Engineering (PACE) is a multi-site research project intended to identify issues that affect persistence rates among engineering undergraduates and help participating schools improve the climate in their engineering colleges. PACE involves quantitative and qualitative data collection at 22 engineering schools in the US. The structure of PACE, how this structure promoted changes at the college level, and some recent results from an analysis of expected retention will be described. In particular, recommendations from the PACE institutional reports were used by the schools to create a “Framework for Action” that helped them focus on key areas of need. The PACE team followed up with the schools and now has data on the interventions being implemented by the schools. Results from survey data analysis will be reported—one important finding is that student experiences mediate the effects of key individual characteristics, such as race/ethnicity and gender.