Sophomore Retention Issue
Sophomore to Middler year loses (order of 10%) as many from Freshman to Sophomore year. However, the service support is more for F year, with easier curriculum.  New curriculum in Freshman year will help a lot.  Eta Kappa Nu helps in the ECE department, and also ILS. However, the sophomore class has little monitoring or mentoring, unlike the weekly checking/mentoring in the Freshman year. The graduation rate is holding us back, though NU rating is increasing. This is also a motivation to work on retention. More tutoring in the sophomore year from each department .

Some possible elements to increase retention:
Element 1: UG teaching fellows
Element 2: Expand role of Eta Kapp Nu (currently 8 hours of tutoring) Maybe the same as element 1.
Element 3: Track student progress closely/ talk with students having difficulty.
Element 4: Weekly Evening ILS and/or Exam Review Sessions
Element 5: Cheat sheet from Freshman Year
Element 6: TA involvement in Tracking Students
Element 7: Appoint course coordinator to ensure this is done.
Element 8: Appoint someone to coordinate sophmore year retention. Faculty, Staff, Gateway Faculty or ?

Next Steps:

1. Ask Ellen about which courses need additional tutoring or cause difficulty in other ways
2. Identify likely candidate courses: Circuits/Digital Design/Algorithms and DS, Electronics
3. Prepare a proposal about what level of support we need, how many TAs? Hourly rate pay for Eta Kappa Nu? This will also help a more professional approach towards problem solving
4. Say, ILS has a weekly problem solving class
5. Possibly review student progress through weekly meetings by the instructors for these courses
6. Ask Ali to appoint a “lead instructor” when there are multiple faculty teaching the same course, and this also helps in ABET
7. Professors with the help of TAs can track students through attendance/HW and report aggressively to Ellen/someone in new position?
8. Dedicated review sessions before exams

Concerns:

• Concern is that who would the coordinator be – Rick’s role?
• The question is whether to have mandatory extra classes or not? Possible additional burden?
• Last year, some students who failed were those who simply stopped coming – how to get them to these additional courses
• Whether say, a certain course group (professors, TA, volunteers) can sit together and formalize this structure well. A professor may use the TA position to support UG students as an incentive.