News from Grand Valley State University

From snacks to a living-learning community, engineering students thrive with additional academic support

Maple Living Center is the place to be on Monday nights for engineering students who want to connect to faculty, advisors or their peers. 

These Monday night sessions are one example of recent initiatives established by the Padnos College of Engineering to help students persist and thrive in the program. 

Tim Born, interim dean, said other initiatives are a living-learning community (Maple), peer-assisted learning and First-Year Learning Community classes. "Engineering has worked over the last few years to provide additional academic support services to our students and we’ve really started to see them take off," Born said.

Kathryn Christopher, affiliate faculty of engineering, leads the living-learning community and holds office hours during Monday night tutoring sessions. Christopher said sometimes as many as 50 students will drop in. 

"We intentionally make it a welcoming environment," Christopher said. "They can learn from their peers and, of course, there are snacks. We find that students who live elsewhere will make it a point to come to Maple on Monday nights."

three people looking at a laptop, two seated, one standing
Kathryn Christopher, affiliate faculty of engineering, talks with Nicholas Ferreira, at left, and other students during a tutoring session January 27 at Maple Living Center. Initiatives like a living-learning community and regular tutoring sessions on the Allendale Campus have helped first-year engineering students persist in the program.
Image credit - Lauren Roth

Staff from the engineering academic advising department are also available during those sessions. Ben Siebert, academic advisor, said creating a presence on the Allendale Campus removes barriers for first- and second-year students in introductory engineering courses. 

"All EGR prefix courses are held on the Pew Grand Rapids Campus," Siebert said. "That can be a barrier. By being present in their space, it becomes more open for students to have meaningful interactions with their peers, faculty and staff."

It's the third year that Maple has served as a living-learning center for engineering students. Senior Rylan Bernhardt recalled the first iteration of a living-learning community, when he and a roommate represented all of the students interested in that housing style.

"It was just the two of us but we thrived because we did it together," Bernhardt said.

After Bernhardt's first semester on campus, engineering faculty members asked him to become involved as a student tutor in two of engineering's Structured Learning Assistance (SLA) courses, classes with difficult material that offer additional peer-led instruction.

"I just had those classes so the material was fresh for me. The classes can be difficult because most people have not had the opportunity to take drafting or coding classes in high school," he said. "I would see students in the hallways and they would stop to ask me a quick question."

four students site in comfy chairs looking at laptops
Engineering students gather in Maple Living Center January 27 for a tutoring session.
Image credit - Lauren Roth

Nicholas Baine, associate professor and interim chair of electrical engineering, said this marks the college's first year as a First-Year Learning Community (1YLC) participant. 1YLC is an optional program for first-year students in which courses are paired together around a shared theme. Two 1YLC pilots are underway: Engineering Essentials paired two engineering courses in the fall and Tech Odyssey, a history course on technological revolutions and an engineering course on modeling using CAD, is offered in the winter semester.

"The 1YLC continues an emphasis on the cohort model for us," Baine said. "Students are seeing the same classmates in more than one place." 

These efforts are working. Baine said pass rates from the fall semester for first-year engineering courses EGR 111 and EGR 104 have increased 65% and 14%, respectively, compared to the Fall 2023 semester. 

"This positive outcome has significantly boosted faculty morale, all achieved without compromising the standards of the courses," he said.

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