The goal of this project is to organize and host a workshop designed to share ideas on how best to transition students into engineering and to retain them through the first year. The workshop allows participants, who share a common interest in first-year engineering issues, to explore problems confronting all of them. The workshop contains interactive events and is organized to provide a significant portion of time for discussion among the participants and between the participants and the invited speakers and panel. Specifically, the workshop program enables participants: (1) to explore various approaches to engineering courses appropriate for the first year, (2) to develop a network of people with common interests, (3) to consider the characteristics of today's students and how they differ from those from a decade or two ago, (4) to discuss current technologies and their use for first year students, and (5) to examine diversity as it relates to engineering students. An assessment of each activity is planned using surveys at the end of the workshop and one year later. The broader impacts include the focus on diversity and retention and the involvement of a large number of faculty members from a wide range of institution types.
