Measuring Commuter Student Support and Success through Academic

This Research Work In Progress Paper presents an initiative to understand engineering commuter student support and success using a validated instrument to measure academic integration. There are many calls to increase the number of engineering students who graduate with a degree; however, there is little work in uncovering the support mechanisms that work for engineering commuter students. Therefore, this WIP paper looks to start to build a case for studying engineering commuter students in more detail by first looking at differences between how residential and commuter students integrate academically. Academic integration is defined by how students are able to access, effectively interact with, and are supported by engineering faculty and staff. Academic integration is an important construct, which contributes to a student's persistence and ultimate graduation. However, it is unknown if there are differences between the way residential and commuter engineering students access the support structures provided for them. Therefore, this paper answers one research question: How do residential and commuter engineering students differ in regards to academic integration in a first-year engineering context? During the spring semester of 2018, 175 first-year engineering students participated in a questionnaire with multiple items, one of which was the construct of academic integration. I measure academic integration using the engineering student integration instrument which consists of five Likert-type questions on a six-point scale ranging from 'strongly disagree' to 'strongly agree.' Results show differences between residential and commuter engineering students with regards to academic integration. Measures of reliability and validity show the construct is acceptable.