Impact of Summer Undergraduate Engineering Research on Student Performance Highlighted Through GPA Tracking

The engineering workforce is of critical importance for the United States, especially with the changing global landscape post-COVID-19. Especially, institutions such as the University of Texas Permian Basin (UTPB) which is a largely minority-serving institution, are key to providing that workforce in the critical areas of manufacturing, and energy among other engineering disciplines. However, due to open admission requirements at UTPB, students often struggle with the gateway engineering courses such as Fundamentals of Circuits Analysis, Statics, Dynamics, Thermodynamics, and Introduction to Fluid Mechanics causing dropouts or longer graduation periods. Therefore, the authors proposed a five-pronged intervention approach such as Saturday Academy, summer undergraduate research, and peer mentoring through the EM-STEP program. This study highlights the impact of the undergraduate summer research program on the overall academic performance of the students. Students chosen through general applications from a targeted group got the opportunity to participate in a paid engineering research project with a faculty mentor for 10 weeks during the summer. The study shows, 13 out of 17 participating students have shown a positive change in their GPA including more than 50% of these students, showed a GPA increase of more than 10%. The results from this study are promising and highlight the importance of undergraduate research to improve retention and graduation rates in engineering programs.