UA Awarded Nearly $1 Million NSF Grant for New Summer Engineering Program

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The University of Alabama has been awarded nearly a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a new program that will enhance the education of students entering engineering.

The focus of the Engineering Math Advancement Program, known as E-MAP, will be a five-week summer residence that addresses math and engineering prerequisites for incoming engineering students. The goals of E-MAP are to increase engineering student retention and graduation rates by 20 percent and to increase the number of engineering graduates employed in the state of Alabama.

“Entering freshmen need to have a solid background in calculus to succeed in engineering, and many students do not have the required math classes before they start at the University,” explained Dr. Karen Boykin, E-MAP program coordinator. “By offering these advanced math classes and living laboratories before students start in the fall, they will be better prepared to excel in engineering.”

Few students possess the necessary skills to enter into engineering disciplines. Data collected by UA’s College of Engineering revealed a two-fold problem impacting student performance related to math skills and motivation. Roughly half of the entering freshman engineering students required at least one semester of pre-calculus to be considered engineering curriculum ready. This has serious repercussions on the students’ progress by delaying the start of core engineering classes by up to a full year.

In addition to the lack of math skills, the attrition rate for incoming engineering students is approximately 60 percent, and nearly 70 percent of those students change majors from science and math curriculums altogether. The impact is felt in almost every industry because the candidate pool of technically-savvy engineers is continuously shrinking.

E-MAP will incorporate important learning principles that ensure knowledge is retained and not just memorized.

Students will be encouraged to develop their skills through hands-on experiences, problem solving teaming exercises, and by interaction with engineering professors and instructors through an interdisciplinary “Living Laboratory” program directed by Dr. Pauline Johnson, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.

Through the Living Laboratory, students will be asked to participate in community service activities demonstrating the importance of social responsibility in technical fields. The laboratory experiments will allow students to use simple calculus in real applications and see what each engineering discipline does in practice.

E-MAP recruiting activities will target rural, historically low per capita communities and will reserve 33 percent of enrollment space for underrepresented groups. The program will allow students who have not retained the information learned in high school, and bright students with deficiencies in math due to inadequate programs, an opportunity to hone their technical abilities before they begin their college career.

E-MAP will also be open to a limited number of K-12 teachers for continuing education credit. Research collaborations will be promoted between higher education and K-12 faculty and staff under the guidance of Dr. Kevin Whitaker, associate dean for academic programs and director of the E-MAP program.

Funding for the E-MAP program is from the Division of Undergraduate Education, Directorate for Education and Human Resources of the National Science Foundation. The grant total is $974,000 for a five-year period.

In 1837, The University of Alabama became the first university in the state to offer engineering classes and was one of the first five in the nation to do so. Today, the College of Engineering has about 1,900 students and more than 95 faculty. It has been fully accredited since accreditation standards were implemented in the 1930s.