Addressing Challenges of Community and Academics for CS Pre-Majors: CS Redshirt Program

Mirroring the trend of the growth of Computer Science (CS) programs nation and worldwide, the CS program in the College of Engineering at Tennessee Technological University has experienced similar growth in the number of students enrolling in its B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. programs. This growth of enrollment in CS has been accompanied by a growth in another student population at the university that is often overlooked: Interdisciplinary Studies - Interest in Computer Science (ICSC) majors. This population represents students who have qualified for admission at Tennessee Tech, but have not qualified for entry into the CS program. Indeed, just as the freshman class of CS has grown 44%, the ICSC program has grown 63%. To address the problem of retention and migration into CS from ICSC, we have developed the pre-CS Redshirt program, which is aimed at providing increased advising, peer mentoring, tutoring, and connections to faculty. Launched in Fall 2020, the challenges facing these students have been compounded by COVID-19. In order to study initial effectiveness, we measured Fall-Spring retention, comparative GPAs for students in the CS and ICSC programs, and conducted a survey of students to measure students' sense of belongingness with the measured population including students of all levels currently enrolled in the CS program as well as the pre-CS Redshirt students.