Work in Progress: Analyzing Student Outcomes to Inform First-Year Advising Practices and Policies at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering

Abstract

Alex Birdwell is an assistant professor of instruction with the Undergraduate Engineering Office and the Mechanical Engineering department at Northwestern University. His research was conducted at the intersection of robotics and biomechanics in the field of human-machine interactions, and explored novel ways to control robotic prosthetic hands. He is very passionate about student education and currently teaches courses at the undergraduate level that have included manufacturing, design, experimental methods, and thermodynamics. He greatly enjoys advising all levels of undergraduate engineering, but predominantly works with first-year students in his role as a McCormick Advisor. He is the producer for the Lightboard studio, and is currently exploring models for effective online and hybrid teaching models. Dr. Ken Gentry, Northwestern UniversityKen Gentry is a Senior Lecturer and Adviser working mainly with first-year students. He teaches cornerstone design and courses in the biomedical engineering department.

Full Paper: First Year Engineering Undergraduate Academic Co-Advising Improvement

“…A second conference proceeding outlined a similar model of co-advising, differing by assignment to an instructor in the first year and not the students' instructor to avoid power dynamics [10]. This program initiated an evaluation of academic advising based on student behavior as well as utilizing predictive analytics to identify students most at risk of negative outcomes such as probationary status and transferring out [10].…”

“…Since we already knew from evidence in literature [4,10] that such a shift in academic advising would have an aggregate improvement with regards to student satisfaction, we wanted to critically examine if all groups of students reported a similarly high satisfaction with the new co-advising model. More exactly, of the 2015 and 2016 first-time, first year engineering students at a highly selective, mid-Atlantic engineering program: 1.…”