A Study on the Persistence of Oklahoma State University Students Who Completed a Pre-engineering Program at Tulsa Technology Cente

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education has occupied an increasingly prominent place in American education policy and funding since the 1957 launch of Sputnik, culminating with an emphasis on STEM in the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act. Pre-engineering education for high school students is one common response to the STEM emphasis with little formal data on efficacy of such programs. This research explores the persistence of 71 students in three cohorts of pre-engineering students from Tulsa Technology Center (TTC) at Oklahoma State University. The data suggest that the TTC pre-engineering program completers persist at OSU at a higher rate than does the general population of students that enroll in an engineering major at OSU.