DIVERSITY IN ENGINEERING UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION: A CASE FOR NONCOGNITIVE VARIABLES IN ENGINEERING ADMISSIONS

In this paper we investigate anoncognitive assessment tool that can be used inconjunction with traditional, cognitive approaches (e.g.,high-school averages) to undergraduate engineeringadmissions. The motivation for this work relates to theSchulich School of Engineering’s desire to attractstudents who bring a wide range of interest and abilitiesbased on cultural, race, gender or other aspects ofdiversity. Our hope is that a holistic approach toadmissions will provide us with a means to consider abroader, more diverse student population, while stillproviding good predictors of student success in first yearengineering.We describe a pilot study where all students student inthe Schulich School of Engineering’s first yearengineering design and communication course wereasked to complete the Noncognitive Questionnaire (NCQ)at the beginning of the Fall 2014 term. The results of thissurvey are then compared to overall student performanceat the end of the Fall 2014 term to gauge the correlationbetween NCQ scores and student performance. The resultof our study show that the NCQ is most useful for transferstudent admissions where the population is nonhomogeneous(i.e., arriving from a variety of institution,various age and experience levels), while average gradeis the best predictor of student success for high-schooladmissions.