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.