Work In Progress: Modeling Undergraduate Engineering Recruitment and Retention Using Classical Control Theory

In this work a model of the engineering education pathway from middle school, through high school and through the completion of the B.S. degree in engineering is proposed. The model incorporates the closed-loop infrastructure of earlier models and extends the feedback control loops which characterize external recruitment and retention efforts. A perturbation analysis of the system parameters indicates that feedback intervention at the engineering enrollment stage provides the largest increase in B.S. engineers produced. Preliminary simulation results indicate that with feedback control along the engineering education pathway, the number of B.S. level engineers produced does increase greatly. Issues of sustainability and feasibility of these efforts and the policy implications of this work are discussed