In Spring 2020, the College of Engineering at San José State University (SJSU) conducted a comprehensive analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on faculty who were forced to transition to an online learning environment. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of COVID-19 on faculty teaching methods, assessment methods, and personal well-being. The study was a combination of a quantitative survey and a qualitative study using interviews of engineering faculty teaching in Spring 2020. In the first part, we surveyed all faculty teaching during Spring 2020 in the SJSU College of Engineering about their experiences after the move to 100% online instruction in March 2020. In the second part of the research, we interviewed 23 faculty members to obtain a more in-depth understanding of their experiences during the move online in Spring 2020. Overall, 98 faculty participated in the survey: lecturers (58), tenure-track (18), tenured (13), adjunct (1), and Teaching Associates (1). The faculty reported being worried about their family and their students’ well-being. In addition, 65% of faculty members reported either a moderate or a great deal of stress related to the shelter in place, and this percentage was higher for female faculty (74%) and for tenure-track faculty (83%). Overall, faculty members felt that they had their classes under control most of the time and that the transition to online teaching was positive, even if they felt they had too much work to do and felt always in a hurry and under pressure. From a teaching perspective, the interviews highlight that faculty members’ main concerns focus on testing and assessment and students’ engagement. Overall, SJSU College of Engineering faculty members felt under stress in the transition to online teaching, especially the tenure-track faculty members, but were able to transition their classes with ease.

Project Succeed is a campus-wide initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Its focus is to improve the 5-year graduation and retention rates and close the achievement gap for Under-Represented Minorities (URMs) across all majors at San José State University (SJSU). There are three major goals: strengthen SJSU's core academic performance in retention and graduation; provide an improved supportive environment for URM students; and enhance the delivery and integration of academic and co-curricular support services.For Fall 2015, newly matriculated students in the College of Business, College of Engineering, and Child and Adolescent Development Department (CHAD) were assigned schedules that included at least two shared classes with other students in their declared majors. A total of 1,272 new freshmen (37%) of the class participated in the block scheduling program. The block scheduling approach had a significant difference in student retention among engineering freshmen as compared to previous years and led to more retention of freshmen after one year. For students in the College of Business, the one-year retention rate for Fall 2015 freshmen was 88% compared to 87.4% for Fall 2014 freshmen. For students in the College of Engineering, the one-year retention rate for Fall 2015 freshmen was 90% compared to 87.5% for Fall 2014 freshmen. For CHAD students, the one-year retention rate for Fall 2015 freshmen was 90.3% compared to 81.4% for Fall 2014 freshmen. There was also a difference in the retention of URM students. In this paper, we will discuss the techniques and strategies used in block scheduling the engineering students in Fall 2015 and Fall 2016. Also, we will discuss the results of student opinion of block scheduling.Table 2. Five-Year (2014-2019 Project Succeed Goals and Objectives CDP Goal 1. Strengthen SJSU's core academic performance in two key areas: retention and graduation. Objective 1.1. By Fall 2019, SJSU will increase freshman to sophomore student retention by 5%. Objective 1.2. By Fall 2019, SJSU will increase the 6-year graduation rate by 9% for all firsttime frosh. Objective 1.3. By Fall 2019, for upper division transfers, SJSU will increase the 5-year graduation rate by 6%. CDP Goal 2. Providing an academically supportive environment for underrepresented students. Objective 2.1. By Fall 2019, SJSU will increase the freshman to sophomore retention for URM frosh by 12%. Objective 2.2. By Fall 2019, SJSU will increase the 6-year graduation rate of URM frosh by 12%. Objective 2.3. By Fall 2019, SJSU will increase the 5-year graduation rate of URM upper division transfer students by 12%. CDP Goal 3. Improve delivery and integration of academic and co-curricular support services for students to enhance student success and improve retention and graduation rates. Objective 3.1. By Fall 2019, we will develop and implement Living Leaning Communities for 1,000 URM frosh. Objective 3.2. By Fall 2019, we will implement block scheduling for all incoming URM frosh. Objective 3.3. By Fall 2015, we wil...

Over the past few years, San José State University (SJSU) has mandated that all of the undergraduate degree programs including engineering degrees be set at 120 units. With the existing number of units for the BS engineering degrees, this mandatory requirement has led to new innovations in General Education (GE) at SJSU. We have created a two-course sequence to support the integration of upper division General Education into the engineering major. Advanced GE at SJSU is designed to help students become integrated thinkers who can see connections between and among a variety of concepts and ideas. In the College of Engineering at SJSU, we believe that it is critical that engineering students integrate the GE student learning outcomes into their engineering studies. In these two courses, students are challenged to understand the relationship of engineering to the broader community both in the U.S. and worldwide. In addition to the assignments in this course, the engineering faculty have created linked activities in the senior project courses that allow the students to apply these concepts to your engineering disciplines. The engineering senior level general education classes take a case study approach. This paper will describe the implementation of this hybrid GE/senior project course and will present the assessment of the first year of this program's implementation. IntroductionIn January 2013, the California State University Board of Trustees mandated that, unless excepted, undergraduate degree programs, including engineering degrees, be limited to 120 units. Title 5 § 40508 [1] states that "[a]s of the fall term of the 2014-2015 academic year, no baccalaureate degree programs shall extend the unit requirement beyond 120 semester units…" This mandate and short timeline for implementation necessitated swift action for proposals to be submitted and approved via campus curriculum committees and appropriate governing boards by April 2013. Many programs looked towards "double-counting," essentially the practice of meeting multiple General Education (GE) requirements within a single course or within major courses.The College of Engineering (CoE) at SJSU elected to move more upper division GE Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) into major courses, with the expectation to simultaneously satisfy all GE requirements, ABET requirements, and unit caps while graduating a technical person.

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Self-efficacy refers to the belief in a persons' ability to perform a specific task. Starting in middle school, girls tend to underestimate their abilities in STEM. This confidence gap among girls persists through high school into college [1]. This gap is presumed to be partially responsible for the gender gap in engineering and other STEM fields (e.g. computer science, physics). In 2006, women only earned 19.5% of the undergraduate BS engineering degrees in the U.S. Using the Life Course Expectancy Framework, this paper investigates the motivations of women students at San José State University to pursue engineering careers, including their level of self-efficacy and sources of academic support, and the cultural influences that shape their interest and choice in engineering disciplines and careers for women. Using an adapted version of the Engineering Student Annual Survey, developed by the NSF-funded Assessing Women and Men in Engineering, the researchers explored the personal and cultural motivations of female students at San José State University. With a highly diverse student population in the College of Engineering and across the university, the researchers have been able to delve into the relationship between cultural expectations and STEM aspirations. The authors examined data from student Longitudinal Assessment of Engineering Self-Efficacy (LAESE)surveys. Despite the shrinking number of women engineering students at San José State University , the selfefficacy levels of the women engineering students were high. The authors can surmise that women who choose to study engineering at SJSU feel confident in their abilities to succeed in engineering and or project such confidence given the male-dominated terrain of Engineering. A. Theoretical basis for the research There is little empirical research on the specific impact of cultural attitudes about gender roles on girls' interest and career choice in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields, particularly about STEM interest and career choice for young women of color. Cultural attitudes about gender roles refer to "beliefs and expectations about what is appropriate for males and females in terms of behavior and, in this case, career choice goals" in specific racial and ethnic communities [2]. Research has shown that female students pursue a much narrower set of career opportunities than do boys and, in the labor force, only six percent of women are employed in "non-traditional careers". Also, female students are "more likely to be derailed by negative perceptions of their abilities, attributing setbacks to personal failure" [3]. Attitudes towards STEM fields also differ among students of color, where messages from different groups and communities can conflict with each other and result in a "subtractive education" [4]. Cultural influences such familial obligations and culturally specific gender roles play a significant role in shaping Latina girls' career choices [5] and can create added pressure to reconcile careers with cultural value...