Investigating the Role of Social Responsibility on Veteran Student Retention

Abstract

Despite considerable gains made towards increasing students’ interest in STEM education, one specific population, Veterans in engineering, suffers from disproportionally high attrition. Social responsibility is a motivating factor for becoming an engineer and has been identified as a successful intervention strategy to improve retention of first-year engineering students. Social responsibility is also a core value instilled by all branches of the U.S. military while actively serving. Therefore, the objective of this research study was to examine Veterans’ perceptions of social responsibility related to engineering. For this study, a survey instrument was designed, piloted, revised, and launched for instrument validation and exploratory examination of the relationship between social responsibility and Veteran students’ core beliefs. Results of this study showed that both Veteran and first-year non-Veteran engineering students strongly value the tenants of social responsibility. The results of this study indicate the potential for curriculum and policy changes to increase Veteran retention in engineering programs.