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National Survey of Student Engagement: CU-Boulder 2000

Highlights for Engineering Majors

Aerospace engineering is a star department. Students in aerospace are pleased with many facets of their UCB experience, including course availability, general education, personal development, general satisfaction, diversity, and advising. Aerospace majors could hardly be more satisfied with the availability of their major courses and they rate the academic quality of their major quite high. They rank high among engineering students on acquiring a broad general education and very high on writing skills. Aerospace majors work hard, are often challenged in their courses, and report that the university encourages studying.

Aerospace students rate UCB high as well, with nearly all of its majors saying they would attend UCB again if given the chance to repeat their academic career. They also give high marks to UCB's contribution to their non-academic development. Ranked high are the extent to which the university has contributed to their self understanding and their honesty and truthfulness. Interestingly, aerospace majors also are higher than other engineering majors on community service/volunteering and on the extent to which they think UCB has helped them contribute to the welfare of the community.

The department is also a benchmark for good advising, with ratings that exceed all other departments. Perhaps surprising, aerospace faculty engagement is not particularly high relative to the other engineering majors. Aerospace majors report more faculty research participation, but they are not higher than other engineering departments on other faculty engagement items.

Computer science ranks lowest among the engineering majors on a number of dimensions, but is not necessarily low when compared to majors in the other colleges. Computer science ranks lower than other engineering departments on the general education, cognitive skills, academic emphasis, and advising scales. In particular, computer science majors are less likely to say they have acquired a broad general education while attending UCB and there appears to be less emphasis in their curriculum on use and development of complex cognitive skills as compared to other engineering disciplines. Computer science majors also are less likely to say they've been challenged at UCB and they report a lower emphasis on studying. Advising suffers as well; advisors are judged to be less available than is the case in other engineering departments and the quality of advising in computer science is ranked far lower than any of the other engineering disciplines.

However, even among these dimensions, as compared to majors in the other colleges, computer science is comparable or ranks higher. Computer science majors rank high on tutoring/teaching others, and in participation in academically-engaging activities such as internships and senior experience. They are naturally highest of any discipline on information technology skill and computer use, but also score quite high on the extent to which they think UCB has enhanced their ability to learn on their own.

NSSE 2000 Table of Contents

Last revision 04/26/02

cb - l:\ir\survey\nsse\00\report\ByMajor_summary text2.doc, last updated 5/21/01