Towards increasing the retention of freshman engineering students: Implementing a new course, EE 101 Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering

Authors

• Omer Lateef, West Virginia University Institute of TechnologyFollow
• Mingyu Lu, West Virginia University Institute of TechnologyFollow
• Waseem AlAqqad, West Virginia University Institute of TechnologyFollow
• Charan Litchfield, West Virginia University Institute of TechnologyFollow
• Kenan Hatipoglu, West Virginia University Institute of TechnologyFollow

Document Type

Conference Paper

Publication Date

2026

Abstract

To assist with improving student retention in the undergraduate electrical and computer engineering program, a course was developed and implemented at the freshman level in the Spring of 2021.  This course was named EE 101: Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering and served to give freshman students an opportunity to meet the professors of the ECE department and experience live sessions dedicated to presenting “upcoming” topics and research endeavors of their expertise.  Students typically will not be attending the electrical or computer engineering subjects until their sophomore year and this course, set in second semester for a freshman, attempts to bridge the time gap before students engage in the courses reflecting their major.  This approach was anticipated to assist with student retention, particularly students who may not see the link between preliminary Mathematics courses and GEF’s and their EE or CPE majors. Five years of data will be presented and discussed with initial observations shared in this paper.

Recommended Citation

Lateef, O., Lu, M., AlAqqad, W., Litchfield, C., & Hatipoglu, K. (2026). Towards increasing the retention of freshman engineering students: Implementing a new course, EE 101 Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering. In Proceedings of the 2026 Scholarly Teaching Conference at West Virginia University (pp. 1-5).