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Session 2370

The Effect of the Texas A&M University System AMP on the Success of Minority Undergraduates in Engineering: A Multiple-Outcome Analysis James M. Graham, Rita Caso, Jeanne Rierson Texas A&M University

I. Introduction

The Texas A&M System Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (a.k.a. TX AMP), is a multi-institutional, multidisciplinary National Science Foundation program designed to foster significant increases in the number of underrepresented minority students earning baccalaureate degrees in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology (SMET) disciplinesi. There are currently 25 LSAMP projects in existence across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. The Texas A&M System AMP was among the first six to be funded, beginning in Fall 1991. In addition to Texas A&M University (TAMU), the TX AMP has actively included 4 other Texas A&M System Universities and 9 community colleges .

Each campus has pursued the objectives of the AMP Program by implementing strategies intended to increase retention, enrich learning, and encourage progression through SMET BS programs into SMET graduate programs for under-represented minority students. While many activities for nurturing the academic success of under-represented minority SMET students were employed in several or all TX AMP partner institutions, the particular repertoire of tactics employed have varied by campus, depending upon the particular needs of their students, as well as their particular institutional mission and culture. A description of TX AMP program activities is provided in Appendix A. Over the years it has also become a fundamental aim of the NSF AMP program to affect the institutional internalization of the program’s objectives and institutional “ownership” of program activities.

On the TAMU main campus, the AMP Program has operated from within the College of Engineering as part of the Engineering Academic Programs Office. The program’s focal strategy has revolved around building an inviting academic and emotionally supportive minority student community for prospective and enrolled minority students, in which retention and individual academic achievement are fostered. Specific tactics have included high-school to university bridge programs, transfer student bridge activities, scholarship or stipend funding, matching with peer, faculty and/or administration mentors, clustering students, supplemental instruction, special industry internship opportunities, and undergraduate research opportunities.

The TAMU AMP program has traditionally sought to include those minority students often considered most at risk: first generation college students, students with great financial need, and students unprepared to take engineering calculus in their first semester. Since 1996 the TX AMP program has operated under constraints imposed by the Hopwood Decisionii, which prohibits admission or access to special programs, services or incentives based upon racial or ethnic selection. In 1997, the TX AMP program worked to find legal means by which to hold ground on gains which had been achieved in attracting, nurturing, and increasing pools of under-

“Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2001, American Society for Engineering Education”

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Caso, R., & Rierson, J., & Graham, J. (2001, June), The Effect Of The Texas A&M University System Amp On The Success Of Minority Undergraduates In Engineering: A Multiple Outcome Analysis Paper presented at 2001 Annual Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 10.18260/1-2--9161