A comprehensive programmatic approach to recruitment and retention in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Ensuring a diverse engineering workforce has never bean more important than now as technology impacts every aspect of both global businesses and our personal lives. At the same time general interest in engineering is at a twenty year low. The ability to attract students into technical fields begins very early with collaboration of teachers, counselors, parents, business partners, university faculty and community. Since engineering is not a part of a normal junior high or high school curriculum, special creative efforts need to be made to motivate potential students about the multiple career options they have in technical fields. Students very early on need to see the relationships between the things that interest them and how an engineering career is a vehicle to impact and to improve the future of that interest. The author describes how the Office of Student Affairs for the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS) at Arizona State University (USA) has a three pronged collaborative, sustained program for the recruitment and retention of engineering students that addresses these concerns.