1.  Introduction 
 
As our society demands professionals with 
engineering skills, is important to identify 
that the attrition rate in engineering schools 
is  significant.  Research  in  this  area  has 
presented analysis [1-16], evaluation tools 
[2-10], and methodologies to  [4-6, 12-20] 
help  to  understand  and  mitigate  this 
problem. 
 
The attrition rate can be attributed to diverse 
factors  like,  social  (ethnicity,  sexual 
orientation and/or identity) [1, 8, 11, 22-23, 
25, 27], economic [1, 14 23, 26], personal 
(lack  of  belonging,  health)  [1,  6-8,  11] 
institutional  (poor  teaching  and  advising) 
[1,  4-5,  11,  13-14,  18-19,  22-24,  26], 
academic [1-4, 10-11, 13-15, 18, 23, 26-28] 
and/or, motivational [1-2, 10-11, 19-21. 24]. 
It is sometimes easier for the facilitators to 
simplify the  problem  as  a  lethargic  phase 
that the student will push through, and if not, 
then his interest or abilities lie somewhere 
else. However, in some cases, we can help 
the student to push through their lethargic 
phase  and  turn  them  instead  in  a  highly-
trained professional. 
 
Let  us  consider  a  random  student,  which 
finds some subjects appealing, and have an 
excellent performance in it, while disliking, 
or  finding  other  courses  not  interesting, 
meaning, that he does not believe it has any 
real-world use for it, or find it very difficult, 
due to  gaps  in  the  knowledge required to 
understand such  subjects.  This  last  one  is 
the  case  for  some  students  when  dealing 
with mathematics and physics [2-4, 6, 17, 
26, 28]. Such courses are often the reason 
for students falling behind and/or dropping 
out. 
 
The previous case tends to be significant for 
public  universities,  where  a  public  entity 
(maybe the state and/or country) absorbs by 
far the cost of educating each student, i.e., 
each  student  has  a  cost  per  semester 
attributed to it, and so, if a student does not 
finish  his/her  studies  and  earns  a  degree 
these resources are effectively wasted. 
 
Is the duty of the school to try to maximize 
the number of students that earn their degree 
while maintaining an academic standard?  
 
Many  academic  programs  exist  to  help 
students,  tutoring  hours  are  available, 
remedial  courses  are  given,  and  group 
collaboration  between  students  is 
encouraged. 
 
However, as important as these efforts are, 
the activities that motivate the student, are 
paramount, and is or our firm believe that 
the  academic  and  the  motivational  are 
intricately linked. A motivated student will 
surpass any hurdle presented. 
 
Many  higher  learning  schools  have  a 
periodic  seminar  where  the  students  are 
presented  with  talks  that  range  from 
research activities, scientific dissemination, 
or  academic  talks.  In  some  schools 
attending to them is optional, while in other 
schools is mandatory and can be part of their 
curriculum. 
 
No evaluation of such activities was found 
in  the  literature  and  we  believe  that  the 
students enjoy such activities and can have 
a  high  motivational  impact,  and  which 
serves to  keep  them informed of  research 
scholarships,  social  service  programs, 
professional bonding  opportunities,  and/or 
postgraduate choices.