Freshman Faculty ForumEngineering a Change
A roundtable discussion
led by
Professor William J. Riffe
Manufacturing Engineering
Kettering University
[email protected]
With strategic and moral support from
Dr. Kenya Ayers
Vice Provost
and
Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs
Organization of the Forum
Math
Comm
Chem
Comp Sci
Freshman
Faculty Forum
Mgmt
ME
ECE
IME
Vision of the Forum
The vision of the Freshman Faculty Forum
is to enable students at Kettering
University to be successful in their initial
year and to create a foundation for
academic success.
Mission of the Forum
Our mission is to improve Kettering
University’s first year success rate by
delineating academic expectations and
employing appropriate intervention
strategies for all students, whether at-risk or
not. Our current first year retention rate is
84%, and our overall retention rate is 65%.
Uniqueness of our Challenge
 Kettering University is a five-year closecoupled cooperative education school
 85+% of our students are in engineering
 Engineering courses are begun in the first
year
 Stringent admissions criteria
Admissions criteria
Topic
English
Math
Science (lab)
Adv Stdg
ACT
SAT
Minimum
6 cr
7 cr
4 cr
--26 avg
1200 avg
Preferred
8 cr
8+ cr
4+ cr
yes
Our Students
Because of the nature of our required
cooperative education program, 95+% of
our student body is composed of
traditional 18-22 year old students
Uniqueness of the Forum
 The Freshman Faculty Forum is totally faculty
driven. It was conceived by and is populated by
faculty.
 It reports to the university through the Vice Provost
and Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs
 It operates in cooperation with the University
Retention Committee – KEEP (Kettering Educators
Encouraging Persistence)
Faculty concerns
Our concerns can be separated into three
classifications:
The student – the raw material
The culture – the environment
The profession – the final product
For student maturity
• They find it hard to relate to classmates, faculty and
the
University
• They believe the “war stories” told by
upperclassmen
• They wait until too late to face and resolve problems
• They demonstrate increased rudeness and a lack of
respect
• They fail to take responsibility for:
•
class preparation
•
study skills
•
on-time attendance
•
funds expended on their behalf
For student attitude
“Layaway Plan of Education”
• “I am the only one who counts and you
need to bow to my wishes”
• Don’t understand that education is a job.
If you don’t do well, you are let go!
•
For student preparation
•
•
•
Difficulty in comprehending written material
Need for reading for life-long learning
Overworked high school teachers – often focused on
meeting state/national testing standards and
requirements other than instructional material
• High school rigor is insufficient for many students as
university preparation for such a rigorous academic
environment
• ACT and SAT are not sufficient indicators for
determining academic success – need to evaluate
maturity and work ethic
For our societal culture
• TV culture is creating a short attention span –
length of class time should not exceed one hour
• Video-game culture is creating long, very focused
attention span, even hours at a time
• Effect of this culture on large and small classes is
very different
• Inability of student to follow instructions comes
from the visual learning (TV generation)
• Want to be entertained rather than educated
For our profession
•
•
•
•
Slide-through students could create an engineering
disaster later
Retention does not get financial backing equal to
other areas such as research, etc. (we have no
intercollegiate sports teams)
Orientation programs are often more directed at
student-student and student-university but not
at student-academics
Students need better advisors and advisor training,
not just scheduling advisors
Catalysts for conversation
 The Forum is faculty driven. Have you
had any similar faculty driven programs
on your campus? Let’s discuss their
implementation and effectiveness.
 What is the comparative success rate of
faculty vs. administrative vs. joint
programs of retention?
Catalysts for conversation
 How do you address the “maturity/student
development” issues from a faculty perspective?
We throw our students into engineering
discipline studies in the first term.
 In what ways is student attitude a challenge on
your campus? What techniques can be used to
create an action-oriented positive change?
Catalysts for conversation
 How do you organize developmental classes into
a program rather than having them stand alone
as a class? How do you integrate students
taking developmental classes into a regular
curriculum—
without stigma?
without long time extension to graduation?
without disrupting the curriculum flow?
Specific academic concerns
 What is the best way to address the lack of
math and reading skills demanded of
college first year students? What
alternatives work and what has been tried
and been unsuccessful?
Some of our ideas
pre-curriculum courses within the
university
- with professors
- with high school teachers on
summer leave
use of community colleges
Specific academic concerns
 In our highly technical university, we often
believe that our responsibility is to teach
the technical subjects and not the
developmental ones.
HOW DO WE CHANGE THIS MIND-SET?
or
MUST WE CHANGE IT?
Specific academic concerns
 Writing – The writing proficiency of most
students, whether first year or last year, is
terrible. Sentence grammar including
punctuation, homonym confusion and
spelling has been negatively influenced by
reliance on computer tools (spell checker)
and the informality of the Internet.
 How do you get students to be able to
write if the curriculum is not geared to
“writing across the curriculum” and if the
faculty do not put forth the effort of
making satisfactory corrections?
An Example – Writing
(Eye can two spell)
Roses are read
Violets are blew
My spelling is prefect
And my righting is two
My computer will due it
Sew give me a brake
Aye, no eye have maid
Knot won small miss steak
I did a spell cheque
And the words were awl rite
The prays for this peace
Should bee weigh out of site
Source unknowm
Some personal thoughts
I believe that the future of saving first year
students is dependent upon the action of
faculty and not on administrative dictates. If
the faculty do not step up and propose new
ideas, plan new programs, and take a vested
interest in the first year student, we will
continue to lose them at an intolerable rate.
I believe that faculty are the ones closest to
the product under construction, the
student. As such, we need to spend less
time on our own image and more time
creating a good self-image for our
students.
I believe that professors for first-year classes
must have an inner desire and special
personality to be able to:
relate more than distance,
understand more than judge,
encourage more than condemn, and
listen more than demand.
The Future?
I believe that we, as faculty and
administrators on college campuses, have
the future in our hands. How we shape
that future is the reason we have discussed
this situation. The future of our societies,
both domestic and foreign, depends upon
resolve to meet these concerns head-on.