Through its project entitled "Preparing Engineering Graduates Students for the 21st Century (PEGS 21)," the University of California at Davis (UC Davis) will provide a coordinated program of recruitment, retention and workforce development strategies to increase the number and diversity of engineers entering the workforce with the highest level of expertise. The program will provide fifteen scholarships for four years to attract low-income academically-talented applicants to engineering graduate programs at UC Davis. Efforts to recruit students from underrepresented groups, namely first-generation college students and underrepresented minorities, lend to the potential broader impacts of this project. PEGS 21 will have five components that include curricular and co-curricular elements: targeted recruitment of students from California institutions, many of which have large Hispanic student populations, through career fairs; multi-level mentoring at the pre- and post-enrollment stages; cohort development and academic skills training; workforce readiness guidance; and reduced time commitment for Teaching Assistant or Graduate Student Research appointments made possible by the S-STEM scholarship funds. PEGS 21 is expected to increase the number of low-income, academically talented, first generation engineering graduate students enrolling, graduating, and ultimately entering the workforce by at least sixty students over four years. Their enrollment will provide the opportunity to systematically determine if extant curricular and co-curricular strategies are effective in overcoming noted barriers to flow-income, first-generation students' graduate degree completion.
The objectives are to: (1) increase the number of students applying to engineering graduate programs with an emphasis on low income academically talented first generation (LIATFG) students, (2) increase the admission rate of LIATFG students by improving the quality of submitted graduate applications, (3) increase the number of LIATFG students completing engineering graduate programs, (4) strengthen workforce skills of LIATFG engineering graduates, and (5) contribute to the body of knowledge about successful strategies to recruit, graduate and prepare LIATFG students for the 21st century workforce. Building on the literature regarding graduate degree attainment for first generation college students, PEGS 21 will implement and investigate the impact of a set of strategies for overcoming barriers to the pursuit and/or completion of graduate degrees in engineering, thereby contributing to the knowledge base of efforts to broaden the participation of LIATFG students in advanced engineering degree programs.
